The voting window for the 2014 Whitney Awards* closed last week. The gala takes place Saturday, May 16, 2015, and you still have two more days to purchase tickets. I’ve already explained my criteria for judging the nominations for the historical fiction category and shared some advice for Mormon writers of historical fiction. Now, it’s time to reveal how I ranked the five finalists (and if you paid attention to my previous posts, this list won’t come as a huge surprise):
- Softly Falling by Carla Kelly
- An Ocean atween Us by Angela Morrison
- Eve: In The Beginning by H.B. Moore
- Deadly Alliance, by A. L. Sowards
- Gone for a Soldier by Marsha Ward
As a nominations judge, I was invited to vote in any of the other finalists categories that I wanted to (and read all the books in), but I decided that I didn’t want to do another huge reading push so I just voted in the Historical Fiction category. I kind of wish that the big push for this wasn’t in March and April because they tend to be busy months for me in other areas of my life. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want the awards to be any later than they are.
*I’ve been inconsistent in how I refer to the awards. Technically these are the awards for books published in 2014 so The Whitney Awards organizations call them the 2014 awards even though they are awarded in 2015.
A Motley Vision 
I doubt anyone was curious about this, but: I won’t be attending the awards gala. I live in Minnesota. Airfare to SLC is expensive. And I work in higher ed and the gala is the same week as our Commencement. What I need is for LTUE, the AML Conference and the Whitney Awards gala to be across two weekends so I can do one mega-trip to Utah.