I just learned today that my book, Three Parts Dead, was chosen as a ‘Must Read Fiction Book for 2013’ by the Massachusetts Book Awards.  All the Must Read books get promoted in libraries throughout Massachusetts during spring and summer, and the ‘Must Read’ list is also the shortlist for the Massachusetts Book Award—which means I’m one of six fiction finalists!

This is a huge deal for me for a few reasons.  One, the slate is absurd.  Three Parts Dead is on there with The Song of Achilles, which won the freakin’ Orange Prize, and is an amazingly awesome book that you all should read now, for the love of Pete what are you doing still reading my blog?  Matthew Pearl’s The Technologists is on there.  So are William Landay’s Defending Jacob and Maryanne O’Hara’s Cascade and B.A. Shapiro’s The Art Forger.  In fact, if I’m counting right, the slate has three New York Times Bestsellers, one book by a New York Times Bestseller, a first novel Slate, the Globe, and People called one of the best of 2012, an Orange Prize winner… and my book.

This isn’t humblebragging.  This is serious “honor just to be nominated” territory.

Also exciting is the category under which Three Parts Dead was considered: Fiction.  Not science fiction or fantasy or urban fantasy or books with zombies.  Just, fiction.  It’s a nice, simple word, and the umbrella of its definition shelters three different breeds of literary thriller, a Trojan War romance, a novel of art and desire in the Great Depression, and my legal mystery theological second world contemporary 21st century industrial capitalism fantasy explosion.  I do love the genre section of the bookstore (especially when it’s nice and close to the front, as it is in Porter Square Books), but it’s cool that the Mass Book Award takes into account all books, regardless of immediate shelving.  Because we’re all in this together, and after reading the descriptions of these novels, I want to read ’em all.