Gemmell Award News

We interrupt your Nano broadcast with some awesome news from those funky people at the David Gemmell Awards...

-- PRESS RELEASE --

New Award Categories

"When we established The David Gemmell Legend Award For Fantasy it was with the intention of subsequently introducing further award categories to cover other aspects of the fantasy genre. We are now pleased to announce two new, additional awards, to be presented at next year’s ceremony. They are -

The David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Newcomer
and
The David Gemmell Ravenheart Award for Best Fantasy Cover Art


"The Morningstar Award will give recognition to emerging talent in the field of fantasy fiction. As David Gemmell always took a keen interest in new writers, and helped many onto the path to publication, we regard this as an appropriate category to add, and one we feel sure David would have approved.

"The Ravenheart Award will honour the best fantasy book cover art. The importance of fantasy cover art deserves admiration, as do the artists who produce it, yet there is no major UK award acknowledging this. The Ravenheart Award will fulfil that role.

"Like the Legend Award, the winners of these new awards, for best debut author and best cover/artist, will be decided by popular vote. The first Legend Award, for best fantasy novel of the year, presented at a ceremony in London in June of this year, garnered an incredible 11,000 votes from around the world. We are confident that the Morningstar and Ravenheart awards, which are being created with the full approval of the Gemmell family, will be greeted with no less enthusiasm.

"Details of the process whereby these new awards will be administered can be found on our website.

"Our aim is to establish, over time, a set of awards covering all aspects of the fantasy genre. Launching this pair of new awards takes us a step nearer to that objective.

"The 2010 David Gemmell Awards ceremony will again be held at The Magic Circle headquarters in London, on Friday 18th June."

DGLA Ceremony

Phew, what a night! Where to begin? There was Anne Nicholls with a moving tribute to David Gemmell, there was the awesome double act of Stan Nicholls and Debbie Miller doing many and various, and then there was the fabulous James Barclay. What a guy! Auctioneer supreme, he won himself whole legions of fans with his rendition of A Call to Arms. Give the guy an Oscar, for he is a god!

As for the awards... with just over 10,000 people voting on the short & long lists combined, from 74 different countries, the winner of the David Gemmell Legend Award was: Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski. A Polish author who's well known in his own country, this was his first English work (I think!). The award was a large engraved battle axe thingy and was accepted on his behalf by the fabulous Jo Fletcher, Goddess of Gollancz.
Each of the nominees also nicked off home with their own mini-Snaga.

And then there was the auction, with some high quality luxury prizes. The charity was Medecins Sans Frontieres, and over £1000 was raised. Half of which came from getting £500 for a signed first edition of Legend. Blimey. Personally, I'm utterly gutted that some rich git had done an internet bid on a cameo in a Stan Nicholls Orc book because that meant the starting price was totally out of my league. Bugger. The boys of Bragelonne (and also sponsors of the event) seemed to be quite enthusiastic bidders too.

And there were a nice bunch of people in attendance, too. Juliet McKenna is always great to talk to (and I never seem to get to talk long to her, alas) and Robert Holdstock... what is not to love about talking to Robert Holdstock, what a fab gentlemen!

And I even got to play photographer's assistant as m'good friend Pete Coleborn was official court photographer for the event! The photos will go up on the DGLA website shortly, I think...

All in all, a great night. Definitely one that folks should try and get to next year. And don't forget to pop along to their website and show your support!

June Catch Up

Ah, so May was the zombie month for this year was it? Last year August was the no brainer where nothing useful got done.

Ne'er mind chickadees, here's June, so it's time for fun... :->

First up, a recommended read... just got done reading Elizabeth Moon's trilogy compilation thingy The Serrano Legacy - that was great fun. Especially liked the Aunt-Power! in the third one, Winning Colours. And am loving the space piracy/privateering. (Well, who doesn't love space piracy! Now all we need is some space ninjas...)

Next up, am midway through an OU short course - Archaeology: The Science of Investigation. Proving to be quite fascinating, and a bit challenging with some of the science bits. Also there's some giggle-worthy names on some of the case study sites so my inner 12 year old has plenty to snicker at... (Wetwang! Krapina!) :->

The DGLA swanky do is coming up in a couple of weeks and, thankfully, they've downgraded the compulsory Black Tie edict to optional. Which is good because posh frock and me...ain't ever happening. Think I've managed to find a suitable moderately quirky outfit... now just have to work on that whole lack of social graces thing... :-> Luckily Alchemy mates Jan & Pete are going too so I've got someone to talk to. :->

On the Alchemy front, check out the Alchemy blog for my peeps' news... Mike Chinn has sold a couple of stories, Jan's sold a story and an article, and Debs is up to five novels on Authonomy! Crikey. Busy bunch.

And li'l sis has jumped onto the web, suddenly being all twitter and myspace and facebook and bloggy. What's actually quite disconcerting is seeing her age written down in black and white. She's not that old. She can't be that old. How did she get to be that old? She's only supposed to be wee. :-O

Of course, it's all her fault that I discovered Twitter. (Oh look, there it was. Quick, plant a flag...) So if you tweet, I'm on as jenqoe.

DGLA Shortlist

So last night at Eastercon the shortlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award was announced and it has very quickly jumped webwise... so the lucky five are:

Joe Abercrombie – Last Argument of Kings
Juliet Marillier – Heir to Sevenwaters
Brandon Sanderson - The Hero of Ages
Andrzej Sapowski - Blood of Elves
Brent Weeks - The Way of Shadows

Voting for the shortlist isn't quite open yet, but the DGLA will be setting up some funky sections on their website in order to encourage fan madness and have everyone champion their, er, champions!

So pop over there and give 'em your support. And while you're there, remember... Joe Applecrumble for teh win!! :->

Fun and Frolics

Authors in the Wild!
If you're around London on Thursday 22nd January, 5pm - 7pm, Forbidden Planet in Shaftesbury Avenue will be holding a mass signing where nine lovely authors will be roaming freely doing the chatting and signing thing.
The peeps in question are: Joe Abercrombie, Alex Bell, Mark Chadbourn, David Devereux, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Tom Lloyd, Suzanne McLeod, Steven Savile and
James Swallow

Write Fantastic!
And if you happen to be in Oxford on Saturday 4th April, The Write Fantastic will be doing a reading & writing f&sf panel at Borders of Oxford as part as the Oxfringe Festival. It starts at 7pm and all are welcome to join in on the Q & A.

Not only that...if you're a Juliet E. McKenna fan, Monday 6th April will find the ever fab J.E.M. doing an illustrated talk at the Corner Club in Oxford covering Oxford and its influences on authors such as Tolkien, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll and others.

Fantasycon
Yes, it's still going to happen! The web difficulties are almost sorted so the spanking new page should be going up soon. Apparently there's going to be an easy to click on paypal thingybob for membership purchasing purposes so it'll be even easier for you to spend your money!
Until then, don't forget: Fantasycon 2009 is 18th - 20th September at the Britannia Hotel, Nottingham and we have the ever lovely Ian Watson as MC.

And finally... the David Gemmell Legend Award has topped 2000 votes so far! Woot!

Year End bits

• Oh noes! Elastic Press is ceasing to be... Andrew's done a full press release thingy on the Elastic newsfeed, a copy of which is also on the BFS boards. 'tis a great shame as Elastic always put out some neat looking books.

• Coo... Stan Nicholls of the The David Gemmell award thingy reports that they've had 800 votes since they opened the polls on boxing day. How cool is that! And that's just to get the long list to short list. If you've not voted for your fave heroic fantasy book of the year, get over there and do so as the voting is dead simple and you don't even need to register on their website or anything. Apparently, the final award will be given out at a do in June, at the Magic Circle HQ in London. Crikey! (Must remember to mention this to our Hell's magician boyf.)

• Ooh er... Newcon 5 is down for 26th - 27th September '09. Which, unless I'm very much mistaken, is the week after Fcon is due to be... Oh that's going to be interesting... :-> (Of course, the Fcon site is due a major relaunch next month so our details aren't up on the current site yet...)

Book blast:

And talking of David Gemmell, have recently read Legend and Waylander as I'd never read them before and thought I really should get around to it... Legend was pretty intense and it had me hooked right up until the end... and then there was a bit of a cop out with one of the characters and a miraculous resurrection when they really should have stayed dead. Bugger. Things were going so well until then. Didn't help that the purpose of the resurrection felt like a blatant rewarding of the hero chap by bringing his woman back to life. A woman that died a decent fighting death too. Sigh.
Waylander didn't quite have the intensity but the ending was a bit more solid and the characters were very well drawn.

Also read Ravens of Avalon by Diana L Paxson - which I picked up from our Jan at the last Fcon. Apparently this is connected to the Mists of Avalon series that Marion Zimmer Bradley did (which, of course, I hadn't read...) But Ravens was some serious fabulous stuff - it was a pagany telling of the Boudica story just busting with enchantment all over the place. So, quite naturally, I then had to read Mists of Avalon by MZB just to see where it all began and I was totally blown away by it. Utterly, absolutely, magical stuff. Doing the Arthur thing from Morgan le Fay's perspective. Brilliant!

Also read Duma Key by Stephen King. Definitely a cracking good yarn, that one. Bit of a heartrending death towards to the end and some great characters.

Now I've a pile of Xmas and birthday books to get through so hope everyone had a fab Xmas and have an excellent new year!

- X -