Saturday, March 26, 2011

Acception: quietly having a little insurrection in the Ditmars

It has been brought to my attention that "Acception" has squirmed its way in among the cool kids and is currently shortlisted for the 2011 Ditmar Awards.

The 2011 ballot is as follows:

Best Novel
————————————————————————
* Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson (Hachette)
* Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott (Pan Macmillan)
* Power and Majesty, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Voyager)
* Stormlord Rising, Glenda Larke (Voyager)
* Walking the Tree, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot Books)

Best Novella or Novelette
————————————————————————
* “Acception”, Tessa Kum (Eneit Press)
* “All the Clowns in Clowntown”, Andrew J. McKiernan (Brimstone Press)
* “Bleed”, Peter M. Ball (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “Her Gallant Needs”, Paul Haines (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Company Articles of Edward Teach”, Thoraiya Dyer (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story
————————————————————————
* “All the Love in the World”, Cat Sparks (Sprawl, Twelfth Planet Press)
* “Bread and Circuses”, Felicity Dowker (Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
* “One Saturday Night With Angel”, Peter M. Ball (Sprawl, Twelfth Planet Press)
* “She Said”, Kirstyn McDermott (Scenes From the Second Storey, Morrigan Books)
* “The House of the Nameless”, Jason Fischer (Writers of the Future XXVI)
* “The February Dragon”, Angela Slatter and Lisa L. Hannett (Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)

Best Collected Work
————————————————————————
* Baggage, edited by Gillian Polack (Eneit Press)
* Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears, edited by Angela Challis and Marty Young (Brimstone Press)
* Scenes from the Second Storey, edited by Amanda Pillar and Pete Kempshall (Morrigan Books)
* Sprawl, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Worlds Next Door, edited by Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)

Best Artwork
————————————————————————
* Cover art, The Angaelien Apocalypse/The Company Articles of Edward Teach (Twelfth Planet Press), Dion Hamill
* Cover art, Australis Imaginarium (FableCroft Publishing), Shaun Tan
* Cover art, Dead Sea Fruit (Ticonderoga Publications), Olga Read
* Cover art, The Girl With No Hands (Ticonderoga Publications), Lisa L. Hannett
* “The Lost Thing” short film (Passion Pictures), Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan

Best Fan Writer
————————————————————————
* Robert Hood, for Undead Backbrain
* Chuck McKenzie, for work in Horrorscope
* Alexandra Pierce, for body of work including reviews at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus
* Tehani Wessely, for body of work including reviews at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus

Best Fan Artist
————————————————————————
* Rachel Holkner, for Continuum 6 props
* Dick Jenssen, for cover art of Interstellar Ramjet Scoop
* Amanda Rainey, for Swancon 36 logo

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
————————————————————————
* Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, edited by Alisa Krasnostein et al.
* Bad Film Diaries podcast, Grant Watson
* Galactic Suburbia podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce
* Terra Incognita podcast, Keith Stevenson
* The Coode Street podcast, Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan
* The Writer and the Critic podcast, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

Best Achievement
————————————————————————
* Helen Merrick and Andrew Milner, Academic Stream for Aussiecon 4
* Amanda Rainey, cover design for Scary Kisses
* Kyla Ward, Horror Stream and The Nightmare Ball for Aussiecon 4
* Grant Watson and Sue Ann Barber, Media Stream for Aussiecon4
* Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, Rachel Holkner, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Tehani Wessely, Snapshot 2010

Best New Talent
————————————————————————
* Thoraiya Dyer
* Lisa L. Hannett
* Patty Jansen
* Kathleen Jennings
* Pete Kempshall

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
————————————————————————
* Leigh Blackmore, for Marvels and Horrors: Terry Dowling’s Clowns at Midnight
* Damien Broderick, for editing Skiffy and Mimesis: More Best of Australian Science Fiction Review
* Ross Murray, for The Australian Dream Becomes Nightmare
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for A Modern Woman’s Guide to Classic Who


To those who nominated, thanks. I am well sheepish, bemused and ego-fat.

More importantly, Baggage itself is up for a Ditmar as well. Huzzah! This is a brilliant thing, and not just because the book itself is a devious little collection.

As was announced a couple of weeks back, Eneit Press is closing.

I've been grappling with the problems created by the RedGroup's collapse for the last few weeks, but the lead up to that collapse was, for Eneit Press, the most disasterous. You see, last year Borders hosted the launch for Baggage, and at their prompting I bought the biggest print run for any anthology I'd yet done.

The launch, just prior to Aussicon 4 was a huge success, and the store took half the print run, keeping some boxes of books on consignment for selling at this year's Supanova. I duly invoiced them for the books they sold at Worldcon. And re-sent 8 weeks later.

...I was just about to ring again when the news of them entering voluntary adminstration broke.

Nothing short of a miracle can save Eneit Press now.


The ending of Eneit Press is nothing to do with quality of books, having printed a collection by Kaaron Warren and Gillian Polack's latest Ditmar-nominated novel, there is nothing but quality in that back catalogue. The conduct of Borders has left me with a churning gutful of bitter froth, and left Sharyn with a financial debt that she did not bring about and has slain her dream.

Normally, I would offer to send "Acception" for free to anyone who wishes to read it before voting. In this case, however, I urge you to buy the few remaining copies of the anthology from Eneit Press direct, and alleviate some of that debt.

It has always been said that the Australian speculative fiction scene is a supportive community. Please, don't just talk the talk. Buy the book, read the book, stick it to the goddamn man.

Baggage may be purchased here. For international orders drop Sharyn an email to query shipping.

Details on how to vote in the Ditmars may be found here.

If you could retweet, reblog, facebook, tumbl(r), share this and spread the word around, please do. This isn't about awards.

6 comments:

  1. well done! that's absolutely awesome!

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  2. Huzzah, you!

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  3. And you, Aurealis fin!

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  4. Anonymous28/3/11 20:58

    Outstanding. Good luck

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  5. Thanks Anon!

    Peoples, I've been given the go-head to offer Acception as a free taste-test for Baggage. The PDF has been generated, I just need to get home and pop it online for downloading.

    WATCH

    THIS

    SPACE

    ReplyDelete