Dateline LBF: And the winner of Lit Idol is…

A huge and hearty congratulations to Otis Twelve, who takes the Lit Idol crown for his debut novel, ON THE ALBINO FARM.

I just got off the phone with him and though he’s still rather in a bit of a daze (with much celebration to be had later) he did say, in response to his win, that “it’s a great Monday to be in London.”

In second place was Catherine Hendricks of Seattle, Washington, for JUDICIAL DISCRETION, and taking third place was Luke Block from Kent for PASSENGERS.

Congratulations to all the finalists, but yeah, I’m really quite pleased that Otis won. After being shortlisted twice for the Debut Dagger, 3rd time truly is the charm!

UPDATE: The proprietor of the blog “All Mirth and No Matter” provides her reaction to the news:

Why is this interesting? Because while I was growing up, Otis Twelve was a DJ on Z-92, then the local hardcore rock and roll radio station. You weren’t cool if you didn’t listen to Otis 12 and Diver Dan Doomie (or however Dan spelled that). They were the local kooks, the kind of guys who would be syndicated nationally nowadays. And they seemed really old to me, though I’m sure they were younger than I am now.

And now he’s winning British literary prizes for crime fiction. I cannot express how odd this seems to me. Kind of like if Ozzy Osborne was nominated for the Booker Prize, only on a smaller scale.

UPDATE #2, 1:00 PM EDT: The official word is out now.

UPDATE #3, 6:45 PM EDT: Daniel Hoffmann-Gill provides the actor’s perspective on reading at Lit Idol:

The strange jobs you get as an actor. This one is best filed under
‘Corporate’ on the old CV next to staff induction videos and pretending
to be a criminal for law students.

…Where I came in, and fellow actor Victoria, was reading the extracts to
the audience, not rocket science admittedly but amazing how easy it is
to fuck up reading. We did a bloody fine job and I even pulled off a
consistent US accent for longer than 8 seconds.

My favourite was the one that won, written by the rather cool Otis Twelve (real

name Douglas Wesselmann, which is perhaps not so cool) and had the

words tit, piss, pee and tug in it so naturally romped home over the

other less exciting and somewhat clumsy entrants. And I read it so it

was bound to win, right?