Success!

Congratulations, Steve!

Thanks everyone.

Yes, I'm thrilled simply to be nominated. It has given me a sense of validation.

Steve

Congratulations Steve, well deserved.

Congratulations Brad!

Nominated for the Hugo, the Campbell and the Nebula.

http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/201 ... minations/

Well done,

Steve

Congratulations Brad!

Nominated for the Hugo, the Campbell and the Nebula.

http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/201 ... minations/

Well done,

Steve

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Once again, grats from the fan gator!

Congratulations, Brad!

Congrats again!

Awesome Brad! Very exciting Good luck on all three! Have the Philip K. Dick award nominations gone out yet? You could go for four in a year....

Congratulaions, Brad!

Some writers take whole careers to start getting to where they're earning those big Prize nominations, and here YOU'RE doing it since winning this little contest of ours, like ... just a couple of years ago ?!?

Quality shines!

Thanks everyone.

Yes, I'm thrilled simply to be nominated. It has given me a sense of validation.

Steve

Congratulations Steve, well deserved.

Thanks to all.

And Nick - all the best for WoTF. As a fellow Aussie, I'm barracking for you.

Steve

Congratulations Brad!

Nominated for the Hugo, the Campbell and the Nebula.

http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/201 ... minations/

Well done,

Steve

Holy crap, guy! Good job!

Congratulations Brad!

Nominated for the Hugo, the Campbell and the Nebula.

http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/201 ... minations/

Well done,

Steve

Thanks so much! Wow. I was an unpublished schmuck two years ago. Now I am a Nebula, Hugo, and Campbell nominated schmuck. I am sure it's a clerical error! It's got to be. Guys like me don't get high-falutin' literary awards.

So I subbed a story (So Sad, The Lighthouse Keeper) to WoTF and it received a straight rejection. Then it was published in Anywhere But Earth in November, and my story has since received personal comments in a couple of great reviews.

Today, on the publishers website: http://www.coeurdelion.com.au/

Chronos Awards

The short list for this years’ Victorian Chronos Awards has been announced with a nice surprise: Steve Cameron’s Anywhere But Earth short story ‘So Sad, The Lighthouse Keeper’ has been shortlisted in the short fiction category. Go Steve!

The awards will be announced at Continuum in Melbourne on the weekend of 8-11 June.

Best Short Fiction
Neverspring, Peta Freestone (in M-BRANE SF #25)
The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt, Paul Haines (in The Last Days of Kali Yuga)
Gamer’s Challenge, George Ivanoff (by Ford Street Publishing)
One Last Interruption Before We Begin, Stephanie Lai (in Steampowered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories)
So Sad, the Lighthouse Keeper, Steve Cameron (in Anywhere But Earth)

Gotta be happy with that.

Steve

Well done, sir!!

Congratulations Brad!

Nominated for the Hugo, the Campbell and the Nebula.

http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/201 ... minations/

Well done,

Steve

Thanks so much! Wow. I was an unpublished schmuck two years ago. Now I am a Nebula, Hugo, and Campbell nominated schmuck. I am sure it's a clerical error! It's got to be. Guys like me don't get high-falutin' literary awards.

They do if they write jawdroppingly good stories!

I'm a little late to the party, but congratulations Brad and Steve!

Holy crap, guy! Good job!

My sentiments exactly!

Dear Sir,

What’s with all this nonsense about awards for writing? My niece tells me that's all you lot can talk about at the moment. I hear enough yapping Americans when she comes home to visit with that Yank husband of hers. Never shuts up, that man. It's Obama this, and Nixon that, Stephanie Meyer this and Justin Bieber that. Listen up, you lot! Stop your whining and just forget about awards. I’ve never sought one, and goodness knows my wife has never felt the urge to give me one.

That doesn’t mean to say I haven’t won any. When I was a brilliant but poorly young one in Miss Presscott’s Grade three class at Upper Longstocking Primary School, I wrote an incredible story about a fox and a locomotive who decided to run away together. Not only was it my first publication (The Gazette of Upper Longstocking Primary School, or GULPS) but my first award. Miss Presscott, bless her cotton socks, awarded me an Achievement Certificate for my writing. Since then I’ve gone on to receive further awards: The Best Sponge Cake from the West Albionshire Women’s Institute, The Best Knitted Mittens from the same organisation, and The Largest Marrow from the Royal Albionshire Horticultural Society.

My wife also has won a number of awards. I remember back in the trenches when my wife, then the proud holder of three medals as the brigade’s boxing champion, had her best helmet ruined by a stray shot from a Gerry sniper. Immediately, and without any thought for her own safety, she went straight over the top. Her Sten gun chattering as she tossed off grenades left, right and centre. My wife made straight for the enemy. It took seven of the Bosch to bring her down. They wrestled her away as the lads and I cheered on from the safety of the trenches. Later, she stole a plane, an ME-109. On the way back to Blighty, she shot down several other 109s in dogfights over the channel. Her plane was rather badly shot up, in fact the undercarriage was so badly damaged the wheels would not lower. I was sure she’d ‘bought it’, but she was able to bring the old kite in safely and land it without any wheels. As I sat in the hospital, night after night, holding her hand as she recovered from her wounds, I knew then that we would be together always. She really did have a strong grip.....

Of course she won the D.F.C. for gallantry in active flying service. It’s on display in our sitting room along with my medals from those years.

But my point is this. None of these awards have helped me with my writing or publication. The stories must stand on their own merits.

You don’t see me crying like some namby-pamby, nancy-boy, pinko, tree-hugging, lefto twit of the year simply because my work has been unfairly overlooked yet again, year after year for some meaningless, pointless and over-rated award! No, I just grin, puff contentedly on my pipe, take it like a man, and get back to pounding on my Olivetti.

And so does my wife.

My work speaks for itself. And so should your rubbish.

Brilliantly yours,

Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.)

p.s. If anybody has a copy of GULPS from Autumn 1931, please let me know. I’d love to see my story again. Perhaps your little contest would accept it as an entry. Just don’t let this K.D. person know it has previously been published.

Bob Writer for the Award for Writing Inspiration.

touche!

I'm happy to report that my novelette "The Black Cat of the Feast of the Eclipse" will be appearing in Beyond Centauri, a magazine for "the next generation of science fiction and fantasy readers [10 and up] and the young at heart." I'll be the lead story for the year, appearing in the Jan. 2013 issue. This is my first appearance in a print periodical—my other stories were all published in either e-magazines or print anthologies.

There's a good writer lesson here, especially for new writers: when I wrote "The Black Cat," I realized it was a "tough sell" concept for magazines. It was 1) too long; 2) placed in a nebulous zone of "children's literature aimed at adults who read children's literature"; 3) written in the presentational style akin to turn-of-the century children's authors like Edith Nesbit; and 4) comes from the POV of an animal, violating the "don't make your protagonist an animal/child" rule that I've seen pop up in advice columns and guidelines all the time.

Now if I had paid attention to any of the above, I wouldn't have written the story. But I didn't care, I liked the story and I wanted to write it, regardless of whether I could sell it or not. And less than nine months after I finished writing, I sold it.

This is an illustration I developed with some purchased art, to use for e-publishing purposes if I had to go that route. (I plan to write more stories about this character and setting, and perhaps collect them as an ebook later)

Congratulations, Ryan!

I forgot to mention my own success: I just received the contract for my eighth short story sale, notwithstanding the three that got cancelled when a broke publisher folded. Thomas K. Carpenter bought my story “El Mirador” last year for his first Mirror Shards anthology, so I was doubly pleased when he told me that my short story “An Apocalypse of Her Own, One Day” — a flash fiction piece, really — would appear in the second volume of his augmented-reality anthology series. The story has received very positive personalized rejections from places like Shimmer and Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi, so I’m thrilled that it’s going to finally see the light of day.

I wrote the first draft in the space of a single sitting, two or three hours at most, one afternoon this past summer. I’d been to a wedding outside of Chicago a couple days before with my girlfriend, Ashleigh, and on the boring car ride home — in the midst of unending road construction and those goddam tollways — the premise struck me all at once, like an image out of a nightmare. Only I’d been researching AR technology and other, more theoretical science, and casually studying the tenets of Buddhism . . . so the pieces actually fell into place quite nicely. Big thanks to Tom, as well as to Grayson Morris, whose comments were invaluable in shaping the final draft of the piece.

Congratulations, Ryan! And as an added note: I really like that cover.

And congratulations, Alex! Now I'm wishing I had something for Mirror Shards. Sounds like a good book. But I haven't had any ideas that fall into the augmented reality vein.

Congratulations Ryan and Alex!

Beautiful cover, Ryan.

Congrats Ryan and Alex.

Congratulations Ryan and Alex!

And I love that cover Ryan!

I should also mention that Laurie Tom (WotF Grand Prize Winner, Vol. 26) and Patty Jansen (WotF vol. 27, aka my year) have also had stories in Beyond Centauri. So they seem to like WotF winners!

I actually DO have an idea for Mirror Shards! I started working on it last week, and it got me all sorts of excited. I'm exploring at least three different things I haven't done before. Hopefully it turns out as cool as I think it will.

Congrats to Alex and Ryan!! 🙂

Congratulations you guys!

I've just been shortlisted for the Ditmar Awards - in the Best New Talent category.

This was something I didn't see coming, and I'm excited and honoured beyond belief. I'm up aganst a couple of really exciting writers, but simply being recognised at the national level I the sort of validation I really appreciate.

http://wiki.sf.org.au/2012_Ditmar_ballot

Steve

I've just been shortlisted for the Ditmar Awards - in the Best New Talent category.

This was something I didn't see coming, and I'm excited and honoured beyond belief. I'm up aganst a couple of really exciting writers, but simply being recognised at the national level I the sort of validation I really appreciate.

http://wiki.sf.org.au/2012_Ditmar_ballot

Steve

Wow! That's incredible, Steve! Congratulations!

Congrats Steve, Alex and Ryan (and Laurie and Patty)!