It’s An Honor To Be Nominated!

I just discovered that the podcast edition of my first book, Brave Men Run – A Novel of the Sovereign Era, has been nominated for a Parsec Award in the Best Speculative Fiction Story (Long Form) category!

(insert a googolplex of W00t! here!)

The Parsec Awards will enjoy their first annual presentation at DragonCon, perhaps the largest science fiction and fantasy media convention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The convention runs September 1st through 4th, 2006. Winners will be selected by a panel of independent judges, none of whom are part of the “podosphere” of podcast creators and personalities… podcasters are an insular lot, so it’s actually more fair to bring in outsiders. Not sure who the judges will be, or even if they will be publicly known.

The one downside to this is that I don’t know if I’ll be able to attend DragonCon. It’s 2,180 miles away, meaning air travel, plus hotel, food, and so on. I don’t have anything near the funds.

I do have a donation fund set up to allow loving readers to help with this sort of thing — they’ve already made it possible for me to enter Brave Men Run in the 14th Annual Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book Awards, and helped pay for my attendance at WorldCon 64, another science fiction convention in late August. If you’re one of those folks who helped out with that, you have my sincere thanks, and I’m not asking you to donate again.

Of course, if you haven’t donated… well, every little bit helps. Wouldn’t it be cool to know I could be there in the room if they announce the Brave Men Run Podcast as the winner?

Heck, it would even be cool to sit at a table and adopt a gracious and genial concession smile if someone else wins. To celebrate speculative fiction and podcasting with so many of my peers and colleagues — many I’ve never met in person — would be geek heaven.

It really is an honor to be nominated. No joke. I’m tickled pink.

What a good day!