On Being Defined by the Company You Keep

There’s a line I keep circling back to lately: “You’re defined by the company you keep.” I don’t know who first said it, but the thought has been bouncing around my head ever since this year’s award results started rolling in.

When The Wake of Expectations was named Book of the Year at the 2025 Maxy Awards, I was stunned. Not because I doubt the work, but because, like a lot of writers, I sometimes wrestle with a quieter, harder question:

Am I any good at this?

That question never really goes away. It just changes shape.

The Maxy Awards: A Surprising Cohort

When the announcement came, I looked through the other winners and finalists. And what struck me wasn’t pride so much as perspective. These weren’t random names pulled from a hat:

• Dan Lawton won the Thriller category and previously earned a Kirkus Best Indie Book of 2024 for another title — a major accomplishment.

• Michael J. Bowler took Middle Grade & YA, carrying a Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal, a Hollywood Book Festival award, and a strong indie catalog.

• Michelle Medlock Adams, who won for Children’s, already had both a Purple Dragonfly Award and the Golden Scroll Children’s Book of the Year.

These aren’t just good books. These are authors consistently recognized by thoughtful readers, critics, and juries alike. To see my name next to theirs was humbling.

And then, looking beyond this year, I saw the lineage of past Maxy Book of the Year winners — a short list of only nine titles — and noticed something else:

• Managed Care (2019) by Joe Barrett also picked up a PenCraft Award and an Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention.

• Maud’s Circus (2022) by Michelle Rene was another standout — and when I dug deeper into her background, I realized just how decorated she is:

  • Her novel Hour Glass won Chanticleer Review’s Best Book of the Year in 2018.

  • Her novella Tattoo was a Foreword INDIES finalist for fantasy.

  • Her historical novella The Dodo Knight placed as a Next Gen Indie Book Awards finalist.

  • Her YA historical fantasy Manufactured Witches won the OZMA Award for fantasy, the Discovery Award from the Writer's League of Texas, and was named Texas’s Best YA Novel of 2019 by the Indie Author Project.

When you look at that résumé, it redefines what it means to share this designation with her. These aren’t just Maxy winners. These are authors shaping the indie landscape across multiple award ecosystems.

Being on that list doesn’t answer the question “Do I belong here?”

But it does reframe it: Look at the company I’m keeping.

Readers’ Favorite and the Fiction–Realistic Cluster

I felt the same perspective shift when A Pleasant Fiction earned a Bronze Medal in Readers’ Favorite’s Fiction–Realistic category.

The grouping around APF was stacked:

• Francine Falk-Allen’s Wolff in the Family — an intimate memoir-hybrid exploring love, family, and identity. Falk-Allen’s earlier memoirs received Kirkus Stars and landed on Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of the Year lists, which is rarefied company in indie publishing.

• Elias Axel’s Promising Young Man, which earned a Silver Medal at Readers’ Favorite, was also a BookLife Prize Finalist and carries a Kirkus “Get It” recommendation — a rare endorsement reserved for books Kirkus believes deserve wide attention. (And like A Pleasant Fiction, winner of multiple Firebird International Book Awards, too.)

Seeing A Pleasant Fiction side by side with books like those gives that single bronze medal weight beyond the badge itself. It’s not just about “placing” in a category — it’s about realizing who else was there with you.

The Company You Keep

If there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s that awards don’t make the writer. They never could.

But when you’re deep in the work, questioning yourself — and the critic inside whispers, “Are you enough?” — it helps to look around and notice the company you’re keeping. To see yourself alongside writers you respect, admire, and want to celebrate.

I don’t want to measure success by medals or lists. But I also can’t ignore what it means to share a stage, a table of contents, or even just a digital index with writers doing such remarkable work.

It doesn’t answer the question “Am I any good at this?”
But it does offer a hint: maybe I’m at least headed in the right direction.

And for now, that’s enough.

Closing Thought

We spend so much time chasing imagined versions of success — bestseller lists, viral posts, movie deals — that it’s easy to miss the quieter, truer markers of progress.

I’ve come to think one of the clearest signals is this:

Look at the company you keep.

If you find yourself among thoughtful, hardworking, relentlessly creative peers — people pushing the craft forward in their own ways — then maybe, just maybe, you’re doing okay.

I’m grateful to be in this company. Truly.

Javier

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