Jeez. Just being in a list with them is heady stuff.

We’ll know on September 4th if I get to keep my Susan Lucci title and notch another title on the bed post of “losing-est author in the novel category.” Fingers crossed and full speed ahead.

Good thing I got Owner’s Share to keep me occupied in the mean time, eh?

Best Speculative Fiction Story (Long Form)

* Novel-length stories containing elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror
* Story audio length (minus intro/promo) over 7 hours
* Uses only 1 or 2 people for the story presentation
* Work completed within the eligibility year and have not competed in a previous year
* Audio samples only, no video

It looks like I may have a chance to win a Parsec after all!

For reference, works completed between May 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, are eligible for this year’s Parsec.

In my world, that’s two books — Captain’s Share (completed October 15, 2009 at something over 11 hours of audio), and Ravenwood (completed February , 2010 with more than 10 hours of audio). If they both make it to the finalist category, I’ll need to figure out which one to hold back. I made the mistake of competing against myself before and I think it was a strategic blunder.

Personally, I’m pleased to see these changes although I know that it puts some of my friends in an awkward spot. Well, we’ll see how it shakes out this year. I’ll still polish up my Susan Lucci Tiara for the ceremony.

In case you’re new to the iTunes Music Store, that’s Captain’s Share as the first title under New and Notable for ARTS! Not Arts > Literature which is cool enough but the parent category of ARTS!!

Thank you SO much to the 46 people who rated and the 21 who left comments. I’m boggled!

UPDATE: Sept 26. If you’re following comments, or Podiobooks on Twitter, or any number of other news outlets, you know that we’ve got a release date of Sept 30. I’ve got the first episode through QC after several false starts (thank you iTunes for hiding what my ID3 tags really looked like — not) and I’m on track to have at least five episodes ready to go when the gates open.

UPDATE: Sept 29. It’s almost midnight on the East Coast of the US and already the 30th in large portions of the globe. Captain’s Share is going live in the next few minutes. I’ll get it posted to iTunes as soon as I can.

Enjoy.

I thought we’d have the first draft done by now. It’s very, very close. Perhaps fewer than 10,000 words from the end. The book in its current draft is already about 145k words but will probably get cut down to something closer to 125 before I’m done with the second draft.

I’d really hoped to have at least the first chapters released to Podiobooks before Labor Day and the Parsec Awards, and for that I apologize. I’m still on track to get it released before the official end of Summer (September 21st).

And I still need music. Suggestions are welcome.

Ok, back to the work already in progress.

The background image is NGC 1316, The Dusty Galaxy.

Unfortunately, I had a little medical issue that’s put a serious crimp in my writing. If you followed the tweets you probably know more than you really wanted to. At any rate, I’m more or less up-right today, having slept for a lot of the last 36 hours and gotten the meds going. I don’t expect to get back up to full steam for a few more days but I’m really happy with the way the book is going so far, and the first readers are being very positive.

I was hoping to have the first draft done this week, but with the medical issues, that might be pushed back a week. I’m still hoping for the first batch of episodes to drop at podiobooks by the end of the month…

Assuming I can find music, and get the cover done

Thanks for all your good wishes and keep your fingers crossed for smooth sailing for the rest of this voyage.

BaltiCon 43 was a blast and I can see now that I didn’t write anything about it.

Bad author. Bad. No cookie.

The upshot is that I’ve committed to getting Captain’s Share out this summer. No I don’t have a date, and I expect it’ll be at the last possible minute, but I’ve got what I hope is a nice tale lined up that will set up the final chapter of Ishmael Wang so we can tie off the series soon. Maybe as early as the end of the year.

Today I’m working on a ‘day job’ journal article. It’s going badly but it has to be done so hang in there.

I’m also going to record and post the short story that I read at the Short Fiction Jam at Balticon. It’s not science fiction, not set in the Golden Age, and it’s just a tad blasphemous (in the technical sense, not figuratively). It may not be something everybody wants to hear, so when it comes out, keep that in mind. That should be available in the next couple of weeks.

So, please forgive me for not writing more here. I’ll try to do better with keeping everybody up to date.