And the envelope, please...

I haven't been very good about posting updates or thoughts or much of anything else here for a while. A lot has been going on, and blogging tends to take a back seat for me when life jumps up and waves other things in my face.

However, I wanted to take a quick moment to do a tiny bit of SSP (Shameless Self-Promotion) and bragging by noting that "Among Thieves" is up for two awards in the U.K.

The first award is the Kitschies, which is a juried award given by the SFF blog Pronokitsch for "those books which best elevated the tone of genre literature" (yeah, I was kinda stunned to find my book under that heading, too...still am, honestly) and meet the criteria of being "intelligent, progressive and entertaining" (ibid).  I'm a finalist in the Golden Tentacle (debut author) category and have already apparently won rum. (Woo! Rum!) The fact that I made it that far is boggling, since 152 books were submitted for consideration, with only five making the final cut in each of three categories (best novel, best debut, best cover art).

The Kitschies are only in their third year, but they have already generated a lot of buzz, to the point of being mentioned in the Guardian and the Huffington Post. The award is being handed out at a big SF shindig called The SFX Weekender on Feb. 3rd (which is tomorrow at the time of writing, but probably today for most people reading). So, news should be forthcoming Real Soon Now.

The second is the Gemmell Morningstar award. This is the debut category for the Gemmell Legend Award. The interesting bit about this is one is that is it done by popular vote, which means anyone can vote with a click of the mouse. This is also a big deal for me, in that the Gemmell wrote Sword & Sorcery and heroic/adventure fantasy, which is pretty much what AT is all about. The list of books up for both the Gemmell Legend and the Morningstar are impressive, and I encourage everyone to go over, check out the lists, and vote. And while I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd appreciate it if people decided to vote for "Among Thieves," I also have to say that it's damn hard to make a bad choice with any of the listed titles. The big thing is to go and vote.

You can vote for the Gemmell Morningstar debut novels here (this is the one I am in the running for).

To vote for the Gemmell Legend (best novel), go here (I'm not up for this one, but lots of other cool people are).

I will also point out that Larry Rostant (artist) and Neil Lang (designer) are up for the Gemmell Ravenheart Award (best fantasy book cover/jacket) for the UK cover of "Among Thieves." Like the other Gemmells, anyone can vote. There are also some other dynamite covers there as well. So go on over and show some artist love while you're at it!

To say I'm both surprised and honored by being nominated is putting it small. I set out to write a book that was a fun, fast-paced read that people would hopefully enjoy. Awards were never a part of the consideration. To even be on the same lists with the other books in these categories is both daunting and a thrill.