Well, Granny is a humble woman but the authors who write about her believed she deserved some recognition. And - she got it! The Reader's Favorite International Book Awards gave Granny an Award Finalist in the Mystery Category on Sept 1st 2021.
We want to thank everyone who has been involved in the project especially Lone Animator for the pictures that really brought her to life; the Guyanese community for all their reading of manuscripts and correcting my awful Creole...
She also got a listing on the BookAwards site:
To point out what an achievement this is you might want to know that the book almost didn't get off the ground. People were not entirely supportive of the concept of an old Creole speaking woman as a detective - there were no other books of this type as far as we knew.
But we did it anyway. I (Joshua) got a second job to pay for the pictures and we reached out to members of the Guyanese community to help us edit and correct - and slowly but surely the book came together.
When the book was released it only sold slowly. But gradually as we reached out to more organisations related to Guyana awareness started to grow. We got featured in local magazines, internet newspapers, and ended up doing Black History Month Readings and reading on stage at the Guyana Folk Festival 2019.
Two years of negotiations led to the Guyanese Government purchasing hundreds of copies for the educational system and during that time I wrote more books. I'm just about to release The Granny JJ Adventures Volume 5!
So, in the words of the Captain in Galazy Quest: "Never give up, Never surrender!"
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