The Trail Back Out is 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Finalist for Fiction: Short Story Collection

I am honored, awed, and humbled that my short story anthology just received its third distinction. I was notified that The Trail Back Out was selected as a Finalist for the 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award (Short Story Collection) by the Independent Author Network. Go to this link for the finalists and winners:

2021 IAN Book of the Year Awards

The Trail Back Out was also named a 2020 Best Book Award Finalist in Fiction: Anthologies for the American Book Fest. In addition, the title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

I’ve been going for long walks on the trails in the woods and orchards here, trying to absorb the news. The Trail Back Out is available for purchase and download.

NOTES: ©Jadi Campbell 2021. My other books are Grounded, Broken In: A Novel in Stories and Tsunami Cowboys.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award.

Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts. And Broken In just received a second distinction, which will get its own post!

Click here for my author page to learn more and purchase my books.

Here is what readers can expect: From tales of Eddie, high on LSD and trapped by “What Died in the Fridge”, and a compulsive gambler hiding during a Category Five storm in “Better Weather”, to the luminous title story of two strangers meeting by chance in the backwoods during a pandemic, the stories describe the pain and humor of being alive. Included in this collection are “Rules to Live By”, a funny and deeply thoughtful story about what we choose to teach our children. The author examines our responsibility to others when a hunter is shot and left for dead in “The Green Under the Snow”. In “Do Dreams Float?” a wife considers a hit-man’s offer of revenge. And the eternal search for happiness is carried out by a gloomy little girl nicknamed “Princess Rain Clouds”. In ten stories, Campbell paints vivid descriptions of everyday life in strange times. Whether during the upheaval of the last century or the present COVID-19 crisis, The Trail Back Out guides the reader through a labyrinth of questions about how to live and love.

A Liebster Award, for Me?

A few days ago I gleefully told my husband, “Blogging is fun! There are such creative people out there and I’m having a blast discovering them!” And then the next day I received notice that Jaded Apothecary (someone who embodies creative) nominated me for a Liebster Award.

The Liebster Award is intended to recognize up-and-coming blogs, particularly those with fewer than 200 followers. The rules are as follows: Post 11 facts about yourself. Answer the questions posed by your nominator. Pass the award on to 11 new recipients. Pose 11 new questions to your bloggers.

Liebster Award

Next, post a copy of the badge on your blog (you can find several options by doing a Google image search for “Liebster Award”). Finish it all up by notifying your selected nominees, and be sure to include links to the originating blog, as well as to those of the new recipients.

First off, thanks to http://jadedapothecary.wordpress.com/ for the nomination. This mysterious blogger stays private while questioning the world in a funny and informed fashion. Jaded Apothecary, your own acceptance post for the award is a hard act to follow! Here are my answers to your 11 queries:

1. Do you feel like you were destined to become a writer? And by that I mean, do you kind of feel like that scene in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit when Whoopi Goldberg tells Lauryn Hill that if she wakes up in the morning and can only think about singing, then she’s meant to be a singer? Is Whoopi Goldberg saying to you, “You’re meant to be a writer, girl!”…or guy?

I’ve wanted to be a writer since the age of 6. I took way too long to get serious about it.

2. Since I can’t cook, I’d love to read about your worst cooking disaster. Go on now. Make me feel better about myself.

It was a dessert soufflé. I mastered savory soufflés so easily that I thought, How hard could it be to make one for dessert? I disappeared into the kitchen with 2 baskets of strawberries and good intentions. Pride goeth before a fall… and fall is exactly what my soufflé did. I came back out 3 hours later (really) with something flat that had the color and consistency of a rubber eraser. That is the first and last time I ever tried to make a dessert soufflé as the failure scarred me for life!

3. If you were a tree, what tree would you be? And don’t you roll your eyes at me. They ask this question during corporate “development” sessions for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, but still. I’d like to know your answer.

Sugar maple.

4. What’s the last television show you gave up on watching because you just couldn’t deal with it anymore?

24 Hours. The word ‘jingoistic’ comes to mind.

5. What’s your favorite holiday?

Thanksgiving, hands down.

6. Did you, like me, have a panic attack (but a good one) when you first realized that people in other countries were reading your work?

No, I had that panic attack when my husband first talked me into becoming a blogger.

7. If you could make a difference in the world (and I’m talking about a genuine, magical difference…not the Miss America crap), what would it be?

Convince people that we really are all connected. There is no “other”.

8. I can’t watch the commercial for the ASPCA without crying uncontrollably for 20 minutes, clutching my own dog and loving on him until he literally forces himself away from me, and, sometimes, placing a quick call to my therapist. Can you? I mean, it’s sad!

I leave the room when reports on animals caught in man-made disasters come on.

9. Do you have any friends in your life who date back to your childhood?

Yes!

10. What’s your favorite color, and what do you think it says about you as a person?

What does it say about me that I actually have several favorite colors?

11. When you travel, do you ever wish you could pull someone aside, open their suitcase, pull out a different outfit, throw it at them, and then send them to the restroom shouting, “You will change into this right now, because as things stand, you look ridiculous. Who let you believe this was okay? You’re in an airport, ma’am! Pajama jeans and an old Body Glove t-shirt are unacceptable!” Explain.

No. But I’ve wanted to strangle fellow travelers more than once for holding up the plane while they try to stuff their obnoxiously oversized carry-on luggage into the overhead bin. Which part of “must fit into space above or below the seat” did they not understand?

And here are 11 factoids about me:

(Photo from Wikipedia)

  1. I’m a southpaw.
  2. My father worked for the Forest Service, so as a kid I spent every summer in the woods.
  3. We had flying squirrels as pets every summer. (See #2)
  4. My siblings and I agree: we had the perfect childhoods. (See #2 & #3)
  5. I’ve probably watched the film Blade Runner 50 times.
  6. I used to speak conversational Spanish and Italian, but right now German takes up most of the brain space reserved for foreign languages.
  7. I can laugh at myself.
  8. I’ve been licensed as a massage therapist for 25 years. It’s the perfect work for me: it combines science (treatments for injuries, anatomy) with intuition (yes, there is a mind-body-spirit connection).
  9. I’m named for a grandfather who was struck by lightening – twice.
  10. I’m sometimes overcome with Happy Feet! (Steve Martin fans will get this reference.)
  11. My husband is German and no one does cake and coffee better than the Germans. For our stateside wedding party we had the bakery make 6 different cakes rather than the traditional white one. We had chocolate, coconut, yellow, spice, carrot cake, and so on… and asked the bakery to misspell our names on all but one of them. Since we’re Jadi & Uwe it was an easy request.

I nominate the following bloggers for the Liebster Award. Thanks to each of you for inspiring me, as well as giving me a good reason to turn on the laptop each morning:

  1. http://lasesana.wordpress.com/
  2. http://thatgirlwhoreadsbooks.com/
  3. http://cvheerden.wordpress.com/ Her wonderful blog Bridging Worlds currently has 120 followers and I’m happy that fact makes it eligible for this nomination.
  4. http://unpackedwriter.com/
  5. http://travel-stained.com/
  6. http://thinktome.wordpress.com/
  7. http://volunteerfringe.com/
  8. http://themodernmanuscript.wordpress.com/
  9. http://wearenotconnected.wordpress.com/
  10. http://alaskamexicoandbeyond.wordpress.com/
  11. http://windhorseblog.wordpress.com/

 Questions for my nominees:

  1. Do you want to live to be 100?
  2. If you dream that you can fly, where are you flying to?
  3. What is ‘your’ song?
  4. If you could climb in a time machine, where would you go?
  5. Do you need a private space to write, or can you write anywhere?
  6. Are there foods you absolutely refuse to eat?
  7. Do you have a book you reread over and over?
  8. What person or past experience makes you sentimental?
  9. What is the best vacation you’ve ever had?
  10. Do you believe in reincarnation?
  11. If yes, what do you hope (or worry) you’ll come back as? If no, what do you think comes next?
%d bloggers like this: