The Eds are out!

The 2007 Edgars awards nominations have been announced—Sarah Weinman has them on her blog. I’ve been the general chair this past year (salute when you call me general, soldier,) which mostly involved badgering thirteen hard-working writers back in December 2005 into agreeing to chair the individual committees, then standing back. Theoretically, I was there to settle any disputes, but since no disputes came up that the chairs couldn’t handle themselves, I was relegated to the job of cheerleader (“You’re doing a great job—thank you SOOO much!” and “Nearly there, only 250 submissions yet to go!!”)

The Edgars are an award judged by writers, five judges to a category (except the Best award, which has eight, and if you look at the number of submissions to that award, you’ll know why.) Chairs are asked to aim for diversity in their committees—geographic, gender, and genre-based—which makes for some interesting discussions come December. But the nominated books are uniformly great, so I’d suggest you print off the list and toddle down to your local independent bookseller, and get them all on your shelves right now before other people with the same idea order the end of the print run (and no, publishers never schedule a new print run after an Edgars nomination. Why? Don’t get me started.)