First Place Prize for “The Wallace House of Pain”

It’s been a long journey — more than seven months — but I’m thrilled with the end result: The Wallace House of Pain has been awarded a First Place prize in the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) competition for 2023. For those of you who have been riding along on this entire journey, as my little story was named to the Long List, then the Short List, and then the Finalists list, this should be the final update!

CIBA has been recognizing excellence in writing for 13 years. My First Place prize was in the Short Stories and Novellas category.

There are actually seven First Place winners (don’t ask me to explain that…I can’t), and one Grand Prize winner: C.H. Brown‘s story The Heart of Kublai Khan’s Menagerie Keeper. Congratulations to her!

The Same Cast of Characters

The cast of characters in The Wallace House of Pain is the same as in my novel Beautiful and Terrible Things, which comes out in mid-July. So if you read the novelette and like the group of six friends, you can spend more time with them in the full-length novel.

Other Awards

The Wallace House of Pain has also been awarded the 2023 American Fiction Award for Best Novelette, and a 5-Star Review from Readers’ Favorite, as you can see on the cover above.

(Hmm, where am I going to put the CIBA award-winner badge on the cover of The Wallace House of Pain? It’s getting a little crowded.)

Readers’ Favorite Review

If you’d like to know more about the novelette, this Readers’ Favorite review offers a good summary:

The Wallace House of Pain: A Novelette centers around Xander and his estranged father, Jim. S.M. Stevens uses this short story to introduce us to Xander and his uncomfortable dinners with his father and his second wife, Kathy. Xander and Jim don’t seem to see eye to eye on anything and it’s getting increasingly harder for Xander to truly be himself around his father. Through a series of dinners, Xander introduces Jim and Kathy to the greater, less conventional world out there. The exposure forces them to see that not everything is black and white and that fighting for something important is worth the effort. Fortunately, it turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.

S.M. Stevens uses The Wallace House of Pain to introduce us to several central characters. Stevens tackles sensitive but relevant topics that many of the older generation don’t understand or refuse to acknowledge, including gender identity, sexual preference, racism, and women’s rights. The book might very well mirror a lot of young people’s upbringing or family situations and detail their difficulty in either coming out or going against the grain, so to speak. Stevens has done a wonderful and respectful job of bringing across a positive message of acceptance and love that any person who has ever struggled with that would love to read. I’m excited to read any future novels by this author and see what impact she has on the world today!