Independent Literary Fiction: The thing that will have everyone talking is the novel’s climax, though, which is cinematic and genuinely jaw-dropping. It’s perfectly set up, with all the individual threads coming together at a single point, and creating a sustained ten-page scene that is both riveting and breathless. The ultimate resolution might be a bit far for some people, particularly those who aren’t big fans of magical realism, but it’s beautifully done and ties in perfectly on a thematic level. It also made me look again at other events in the novel, reconsidering what had gone before, which is a significant achievement of plotting and editing.
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Out of a dozen nominees, Queen of Spades received Honorable Mention (4th Place) in Literary Fiction in the 2017 Foreword INDIES Awards, given yearly to the top books published by independent presses. Please visit here for the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mention announcements, and congratulations to all the winners! -
“Whenever my writing begins to feel boxed in, as if the words no longer possess any degree of freedom, trickling out painfully one by one, I remind myself of Grace Paley’s famous aphorism: ‘Everyone, real or imagined, deserves the open destiny of life.’ This is true for ourselves, certainly, but also for our characters and for the words through which we render their stories.”
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“Du Maurier composed ‘Blue Lenses’ in the Cold War era, and her message proves oddly prescient—increasingly, we are scared less of the unknown, as our prehistoric ancestors may have been, and more of the known and the familiar—those around us, our friends and family, and the social institutions—schools, hospitals, churches, and government—upon which we so much rely.”
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Best Poker Coaching: The visual language of poker non-fiction is used to add to the experience of a poker fiction. It is a work of literature primarily, but it is so steeped in the arrangements of how-to books that it can’t help but let some of that spill onto its own pages.
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Queen of Spades is one of a dozen finalists for Foreword Review’s Indie Literary Book of the Year! Please visit here for the complete list of nominees and categories.
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“I had been accumulating elements of a gambling story for as long as I can remember. One pivotal moment, although I could hardly have known it then, was when I saw an episode of the ABC show That’s Incredible in third or fourth grade. They had a blind dealer on as a guest, and his trick was that he could separate a 52-card deck into two smaller decks, one containing all the royal cards, and the other containing the rest, just from quickly feeling the weight of each card. The especially haunting aspect of his performance was the fact that he made one error—a ten, I believe—which is a card that has almost the same amount of ink imprinted upon it as a face card. I held many, many small experiences such as this in my subconscious that finally emerged when I was composing Queen of Spades.”
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Necessary Fiction: Queen of Spades is overall a brilliant work, fit for both fans of the original story who want to pore over the thematic links, and readers looking to pick up a gripping new novel. For a story that touches on the addictive nature of card games, Queen of Spades is itself a difficult book to put down. (Aleksandra Appleton)
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Queen of Spades landed on the 35 Over 35 list of best 35 debut books by writers over the age of 35! Congrasts to my pressmate Renee Macalino Rutledge who also made the list with her gorgeous debut Hour of Daydreams.
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Queen of Spades also landed on Seattle-area bookseller Mercer Island Book’s Paperback Power Trio along with Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance and Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
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Thanks to Erin Popelka at Must Read Fiction for interviewing Jaclyn and I when we were in Spokane in October. Please follow the link below to view the video!
Michael Shum 