Only 2 weeks left to submit your books to these prestigious CIBA Divisions and embark on an extraordinary journey to success. With over $30,000 in prizes awarded annually, now is the time to make your mark!
The Cover Design Awards are still open!
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2024 Cover Design Award for Fiction!
Ann Phillipp –Grand Theft Death
C.L. Olsen –Old Crabby Turtle
Deborah Swenson –Till My Last Breath
Laura C. Rader –Hatfield 1677
Gail Noble-Sanderson–The Book of Rules
Margaret Porter –A Change of Location
Mark A. Gibson –A Song That Never Ends
Travis Davis- One of Four
R.W. Meek- The Dream Collector Book 1; Sabine and Sigmund Freud
And a huge round of applause for the 2024 Cover Design Fiction Grand Prize Winner:
Luna, Rhone and Stone Book 2 by Strider S.R. Klusman
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2024 Cover Design Awards for Non-Fiction!
Anne Gately – Sunburnt: A Memoir of Sun, Surf and Skin Cancer
Kasey J. Claytor–Finding The Light: Navigating Dementia with My Son
Kathryn Caraway –Unfollow Me
Linda M. Lockwood –Sky Ranch: Reared in the High Country
Marianna Marlowe –Portrait of a Feminist: A Memoir in Essays
And a huge round of applause for the 2024 Cover Design Awards Non-Fiction Grand Prize Winner:
Teaching in the Dark by Genet Simone
The CIBAs offer more than just recognition — they provide a ladder to success with a range of achievement tiers and expert long tail marketing strategies. From the highly anticipated Long List to the prestigious Overall Grand Prize Winner, the CIBA lists energize both authors and readers, maximizing your digital footprint and expanding your fan base.
We are always eager to support the Best Books through the CIBAs. Join the ranks of celebrated authors who have already taken this critical step in their publishing.
Your book deserves to be discovered, celebrated, and shared with the world. Don’t miss the chance to showcase your talent and gain valuable exposure at the Chanticleer Authors Conference (April 2026) where Winners from all 28 Book Award Divisions will be announced and honored.
In a world hungry for good books, your story deserves to be heard. Submit now and leave a lasting impression.
The Cover Design Awards recognizes emerging new talent and outstanding works in every genre. The Grand Prize Winner, Genét Simone’s book, Teaching in The Dark will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Cover Design contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!
Australians love the sun – our outdoor lifestyle is part our trademark appeal. It’s also the reason that every thirty minutes someone is diagnosed with melanoma. Why skin cancer is called Australia’s National Cancer, and two out of three Australians are likely to be diagnosed with it before turning 70.
After living an average Aussie life playing sport, spending languid days on the beach, and falling in love with ocean swimming, Anne Gately received unwelcome news. She had Stage IV melanoma.
Yet Anne is one of the lucky ones. After a dire prognosis, she dug deep to face the clear and present prospect of death, head-on. In Sunburnt, her revealing memoir, Anne recounts the emotions and challenges of her life-saving immunotherapy treatment under the care of Professor Georgina Long to come through the other side.
Not only has Anne survived, she is issuing a clarion call for a change to the bronzed Aussie culture. In SunburntAnne combines a nostalgic view of a charmed Aussie childhood, a jolting review of Australia’s sun-worshipping norms, and enough scientific research to encourage us all to redefine our relationship with the sun.
Through braided memories that flash against the present day, Portrait of a Feminist depicts the evolution of Marianna Marlowe’s identity as a biracial and multicultural woman—from her childhood in California, Peru, and Ecuador to her adulthood as an academic, a wife, and a mother.
How does the inner life of a feminist develop? How does a writer observe the world around her and kindle, from her earliest memories, a flame attuned to the unjust?
With writing that is simultaneously wise and shimmering, nuanced and direct, Marlowe confronts her own experiences with the hallmarks of patriarchy. Interweaving stories of life as the child of a Catholic Peruvian mother and an atheist American father in a family that lived many years abroad, she examines realities familiar to so many of us—unequal marriages, class structures, misogynist literature, and patriarchal religion. Portrait of a Feminist explores the essential questions of feminism in our time: What does it look like to live in defense of feminism? How should feminism be evolving today?
From Chanticleer:
Marianne Marlowe’s memoir, Portrait of a Feminist, reveals the evolution of her feminism through a collection of thought-provoking essays.
“I would say, if it were possible, I was born a feminist” is at the heart of Marlowe’s story. She relates to this defining identity throughout years spent in Peru, California, and Ecuador, where she navigates childhood, marriage, motherhood, and a professional career.
The section titles reflect periods in Marlowe’s life that correspond to nature’s rhythms— “Seeds Planted”, “The Growing Years”, “Maturation”, and “Harvesting”—and maintain strong connections between her thematically-linked experiences.
As a Peruvian American woman, Marlowe navigates the concepts of gender, race, and culture from a personal and critical point of view.
At the age of eight, Linda Lockwood moves with her family to an isolated ranch in eastern Washington State. Within two years, she’s patrolling the ranch on horseback alongside her border collie—herding sheep, killing rattlesnakes, and defending the ranch’s livestock from coyotes, bears, and even trespassing hunters—and working tirelessly to realize her dream of training horses. But her most daunting challenge is one hard work can’t overcome: her mother is descending into madness. And Linda’s deepest fear is that she might inherit the schizophrenia that threatens to dismantle her family.
At age twenty-five, Linda marries, but the joy of her first pregnancy is darkened by her mother’s suicide. Then she endures a painful miscarriage and the death of her beloved grandmother, traumatic events that send her back in time to the births and deaths of animals—domesticated and wild—that she loved in childhood. Eventually, her own family grows, but her happiness is haunted by questions people have tiptoed around all her life. How did her mother become schizophrenic? What did she endure as a patient in 1960s mental hospitals? Might Linda and even her children be next to battle that catastrophic mental disorder? Driven by the courage and will she sharpened as a rancher, Linda vows to find out.
Also the 2024 Journey Grand Prize and a Clue First Place Winner!
This book about the author’s harrowing experience with a stalker is not yet released, but we are excited to see it come out and see her story get told. To find more information see the authors website kathryncaraway.com or her advocacy project at unfollowme.com
What happens when a younger person gets dementia and becomes filled with peace?
Finding the Light is a poignant memoir about a mother’s journey caring for her son with a terminal form of early-onset dementia, Frontotemporal Degeneration, or FTD. From the overwhelming tasks that must be done to ultimately sharing the meaningful insights that can be gained in this experience, you can’t come away without being deeply moved.
Claytor shares ways to lessen the toll of caregiving with stress-reducing methods and options for self-care, financial tips, and suggestions for good estate planning.
But most importantly, her message is about developing a way to instill a sense of well-being in dementia sufferers and their caregivers. When Kasey Claytor found out that her 49-year-old son had Frontotemporal Degeneration, her world came crashing down…
Finally grappling with this situation head-on, she set out to learn everything she could about this devastating condition and create an environment around her son that would hopefully give him a sense of well-being despite the odds.
From Chanticleer:
Some stories are impossible to look away from, and from its very first sentence, Finding the Light, Navigating Dementia with My Son by Kasey J. Claytor proves itself one of them. “…when my 49-year-old son, Justin, was first diagnosed with a form of early-onset dementia, I was stunned.” Without hesitation, the book draws readers into a saga of family, illness, and resilience.
Although a memoir, Finding the Light is in many ways an instructional text, too. Readers don’t need similar medical situations to draw from Claytor’s lessons of improvement. The conversational, approachable writing style serves this purpose well.
Although it’s in chronological order, this is an unconventional, modern text.
Traditional scene-based paragraphs are offset by poetry, informative sidebars, and even the full text of letters sent throughout Justin’s illness. Claytor deftly shifts between these sections, building a cohesive narrative from which readers can easily learn.
A young teacher buys a one-way ticket to Shishmaref, Alaska. Within minutes of landing, she finds herself dealing with unexpected, rustic accommodations, and the culture shock of living in a remote Iñuit community. She relies on her courage, resilience, and wit while enduring freezing temperatures, power outages, loneliness, and first-year teacher anxieties and missteps, but eventually realizes that those challenges pale in comparison to the life lessons she learns about the heart of teaching—lessons from her students, their culture, and their community, on the vast, windy landscape at the edge of the Chukchi Sea.
From Chanticleer:
How does place shape who we are—and who we’ll become? In this memoir, Teaching in the Dark, Genét Simone puts that question to the test by recounting her first year as a teacher.
The initial year of teaching is never an easy feat, but for Simone it was especially challenging, and transformative. She spent it with Native students in the remote island village of Shishmaref, on the Arctic edge of Alaska—no small wonder the school year became an unforgettable one.
Today, Simone has decades of teaching experience to draw upon. Yet, in this memoir she rarely employs her present voice to reflect on the past. Instead, the narrator remains in the moment: a young and inexperienced Simone, who only knows that she feels destined to be a teacher. When she signs up for the Shishmaref teaching job, she doesn’t even realize that it’s on an island.
Honoring those who have died in service to our country on Memorial Day is a tradition that goes back to the Civil War, but it was the First World War that provided us a symbol of remembrance that we continue to see today – a red poppy.
The Red Poppy – A Symbol of Remembrance
The red poppy is an annual flower that grows for only one season, but produces hundreds of seeds that germinate almost anywhere. During World War I, the Ypres battlefield began to bloom waves of red poppies, and it was this sight that inspired Canadian doctor Lt. Col. John McCrae to write “In Flanders Fields,” a poem mourning the death of so many of his fellow soldiers.
After the United States entered World War I, an American professor Moina Michael read “In Flanders Fields” and was inspired her to write her own poem. In “We Shall Keep the Faith,” She solidified the red poppy’s place as a symbol of remembrance. Michael went on to teach disabled war veterans and eventually they began to sell silk versions of the red poppy to raise money. By Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) 1921, millions of silk poppies were sold across the United States and England to help Great War Veterans with housing and finding jobs. Michael, who died in 1944, is remembered as the “Poppy Lady” for her part in memorializing service members with a symbol that grows among them in the fields where they died.
Chanticleer honors those who served and who have made the greatest sacrifice.
In the United States, Memorial Day occurs annually on the last Monday in May. This year that date falls on May 27th, and we want to celebrate the authors who bring those soldiers’ stories to life on the page. Here are just a few reviews of books with a military theme that we highly recommend!
Chop That Sh*t Up! By CSM Daniel L. Pinion Military and Front Line First Place Winner
In Chop That Sh*t Up: Leadership and Life Lessons Learned While in the Military, Daniel L. Pinion reminisces about his experiences in the US Army, both good and bad, before he retired as a Command Sergeant Major.
Some of the stories and lessons he offers are heartbreaking, some are horrifying, and some are insightful. As it turns out, some are even heartwarming.
The author explains his origins: a quiet and uneventful childhood that did not give him much idea of what he should do with his life. Some counseling and a few incidents led Pinion, after high school, to the National Guard and eventually the US Army, where he found his life’s calling.
Michael M. Van Ness, the grandson of “the general in command,” has created a remarkable biography chronicling the adventures of a farm boy who rose high rank in the US military and served with distinction in two world wars as a combatant, officer, and sage observer.
Born in 1891, John Benjamin Anderson must have had considerable intelligence as well as patriotism and grit, since he was accepted at West Point Military Academy at age 19, an honor conferred on only 130 applicants per year—and finished in the top third of his class. He would soon serve under General Pershing in the Mexican War, giving him the experience of combat and coincidentally, his first ride in an automobile. That deployment earned him inclusion in Pershing’s ranks in World War I. It was then his diaries began, and though he protested humorously that “I hate to write,” these personal recollections give readers an up-close picture of the devastation of warfare.
Not many people can capture the emotions that coincide with war, but Vicki Cody joins the ranks of those who do in her wartime memoir, fly Safe: Letters from the Gulf War and Reflections from Back Home.
This powerful memoir shows us the behind-the-scenes lives of the women, children, and families left at home while their soldiers set off for war, bringing us close to their raw vulnerability. Fly Safe fascinates as it informs readers of what one wife experiences as her commander husband leads his battalion to the middle east.
Cody takes us back in time to the early 1990s when the first President Bush called up troops in an operation called “Desert Shield,” which turned into Desert Storm. She captures the events that led up to our first conflict in the middle east, but far from being strictly pedantic and historical, centers on the warmth, love, and fears that most of the wives were experiencing. Her letters from her husband – and her journal entries read like daily affirmations and blend well in telling this story.
Amidst the ruins of Post-WWII, Berlin struggles to rebuild from the ashes, torn apart and facing down the promise of another bloody dictator. A myriad cast, all shaped by that same war, become entwined with the broken city as its hour of need approaches.
Just as Germany is divided between the Americans, British, French, and Soviets, Berlin has been cut into pieces. But the balance of the occupation powers tips eastward as the Soviet Zone surrounds the city, giving them control of all ways into and out of Berlin – save for the air. The occupation currency is worthless thanks to Soviet over-printing, leaving Berlin on a barter system of cigarettes and black-market trading. In order for Germany to recover, the Western Allies plan to introduce a new currency, even if it angers the Soviet bear.
Facing the Dragon by Philip Derrick explores the Vietnam War era through the eyes of an extraordinary high school student named Jim Peterson, who at fifteen made the varsity football team as a freshman. He’s intelligent as well as physically fit as he begins his journey in the backseat of a station wagon with his sister on their way to a family vacation, seemingly a typical teenager.
In the first couple of pages, his dad picks up a hitchhiker in an Army uniform, and the story takes off from there. Jim ends up separated from his family and tries to reunite with them in the Carlsbad Caverns; instead, he is the only witness to their murders.
Jim watches in horror as their bodies are disposed of in the Deep Pit of the Carlsbad Caverns, and shortly thereafter makes the decision to become the young soldier and follow the murderer to Vietnam where he will enact his revenge for his family.
All of us at Chanticleer have family who have served, and that makes holidays like Memorial Day important to us. We ask you to take time out of your day to remember the veterans in your life and those who have died in active service on this day of reflection.
Do you have a book with a military theme that deserves to be discovered? You can always submit your book for an Editorial Review with Chanticleer!Chanticleer Editorial Review Packages are optimized to maximize your digital footprint. Reviews are one of the most powerful tools available to authors to help sell and market their books. Find out what all the buzz is about here.
Submitting to Book Awards is a great way to get your book discovered!
Anytime you advance in the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards, your name and book are promoted right here on our website, through our newsletter, and across social media. One of the best ways to engage in long tail marketing!
Thank you again to the authors who wrote these wonderful books, and to all those service members who continue to inspire us!
Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the USA to honor and remember those who died in service to our nation. The date of the holiday changes but it always falls on the last Monday of May.
In the U.S.A., Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance of those who died in service to their country. The holiday was officially proclaimed in 1868 to honor Union and Confederate soldiers who loss their lives in the Civil War.
The latest historical research has the Civil War death toll at 850,000. This number has surpassed all the other wars the U.S.A. has fought in combined. The population was estimated to be approximately 31 million (not counting Native Americans or Black Americans).
Click here to access the U.S. Census Memorial Day Infographic for more information and the complete infographic.
The important takeaway from this graphic is that all other wars, skirmishes, conflicts, and battles that the US has been involved with combined, none have taken the toll that the war that took place on the U.S. soil—the Civil War—has. Period.
Civil War Death Toll: 850,000 deaths (latest research)
All Other US Military Involvements since 1870s until 2020: 707,081 deaths
Memorial Day is one of three official days The United States has to honor those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces.
Memorial Day, a federal holiday, is observed the last Monday in May, honors those who have lost their lives in action in service to our nation.
Veterans Day, a federal holiday, that is observed every year on November 11th to honor all those who have served in the Armed Forces.
Armed Forces Day is a celebration day that honors all active and former personnel across the six branches of the United States military. It is celebrated on the third Saturday of every May. This year’s (2023) has already passed on on May 20.
As any of you know, the head and founder of Chanticleer Book Reviews, Kiffer Brown is a self-described military brat. Her father, brother, her Aunt Ellen, nephews, and cousins have served or are serving in the military. Recognizing and honoring the service of those in the Armed Forces is a longstanding tradition for her and her family.
National Moment of Remembrance
On Memorial Day, remember that there is a National Moment of Remembrance. To honor the moment, pause for one minute at 3 p.m. at your local time, and remember those who have died in service to this nation.
Second Lieutenant Billy Wayne Flynn was killed in action, Vietnam, January 23, 1967. He was 24 years old. (He gave to me my first book of poetry before he left for Vietnam. I still have it. Kiffer Brown)
The Military and Front Line Book Awards
Submit by 10/31/23!The 2022 Grand Prize Winner for the Military and Front Line Awards, Lost in Beirut by Ashe & Magdalena Stevens
Every year we receive several non-fiction books that deal with serving in the military or some other front line capacity in service to our nation. This year the number and quality of submissions was great enough that we are excited to announce the new division that recognizes work focusing on those in Military or Front Line Service.
The new Division honors the following Non-Fiction Narratives:
Military and Armed Forces Service Narratives
Medical Stories focused on Nurses, Doctors, Health Care Workers, and other Essential Workers
Stories of Community Service Workers such as Firefighters and Police
CARE, Peace Corps, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and other service organizations
Work in Agencies that serve their Community and Government
Families of those who serve in these Community Roles
Keep Telling Stories – They Are Needed!
We are always honored to be trusted with any book at Chanticleer. It is a pleasure to be able to highlight these stories in particular with their own division.
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.“–Mark Twain
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” – Maya Angelou
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”—Joseph Campbell
All of us at Chanticleer have family who have served, and that makes holidays like Memorial Day important to us. We ask you to take time out of your day to remember the veterans in your life and those who have died in active service on this day of reflection.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2024 Cover Design Award for Fiction!
