San Francisco Book Festival – Wild Card Award

San Francisco Book Festival – Wild Card Award

I just learned that the audiobook version of my novel Mind the Gap has won the Wild Card Award at the 2020 San Francisco Book Festival.

The audiobook version of Mind the Gap is a fully-produced sound creation (eight hours twenty minutes long), featuring the narrator’s voice and 45 character voices, as well as music and sound effects. I did the narration and performed all the character voices myself, then mixed and mastered the audiobook. Wait, I forgot: I also wrote the book in the first place!

The Wild Card Award is given at the San Francisco Book Festival for surprising, out-of-the-blue works which don’t fit its other categories. The Festival has been held virtually this year, because of COVID-19.

You can get the audiobook here: https://www.audible.ca/pd/Mind-the-Gap-Audiobook/B07QWN6FJH

The print version of Mind the Gap previously won the 2020 Reader Views Award for Best Humor/Satire of the Year.

Excerpt from the review in Reader Views:
Mind the Gap by George Tombs is one of the most unique stories I’ve read in some time. With quirky characters, a colorful storyline and an overall feeling you’ve just stepped into another world, it’s a lively, humorous dance revealing the very definition of family dysfunction. It’s a coming of age story about Richard Grey who is basically at odds against the world. Or at least his world…. This is such a fun read! The writing is brilliant, the author creating a world with vivid imagery through his words. It’s witty and engaging with a plot that arouses a natural curiosity – it’s hard to put down once you get started!” – Reader Views
Link to entire review:

Excerpt from the review in Kirkus Reviews:
“The Canadian writer/filmmaker’s first novel is a seriocomic dysfunctional-family saga and magical-realist coming-of-age tale that will put some readers in mind of John Irving’s work—if Irving had a fondness for hockey. The well-drawn characterizations carry along a plotline that seems a bit too bumpy and meandering for its own good. Fortunately, the characters are sympathetic, vulnerable, and oddball enough to make the rocky journey worthwhile, and some of Tombs’ details—especially in his portrait of a shady book publisher—have an impressive realism.
“An effective novel of family and society from a writer with a flair for the offbeat.” – Kirkus Reviews
Link to entire review:

A screen capture from the announcement on the San Francisco Book Festival website

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