I don't pay a huge amount of attention to awards, having failed to win any since I was seven, but I got a nice e-mail from Pseudopod's Shawn Garrett the other day and I thought I'd break my rule, especially since it's not really a rule anyway but more a habit or vague inclination.
Shawn happened to mention in passing that the nominations period for the Parsec awards - a celebration of speculative fiction podcasting, as their website banner usefully points out - is open, and pointed out too that not only is Pseudopod itself eligible for "Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology Podcast" but that my story Prisoner of Peace (along with almost everything Pseudopod publishes) is potentially nominatable in the category of "Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Short Form)".
As you surely know if you listen to it on even the most semi-regular of bases, Pseuodpod is great and entirely worthy of a nomination. However, since winning another award, or even being nominated for one, would probably just detract from that one blazing moment twenty eight years ago, I won't ask that anyone put my name forward for Prisoner of Peace.
It is, however, surely the best horror story I've written, or at least my own personal favourite. A tale once described as "Oldboy meets Memento in a prison cell somewhere just west of Hell," (by me, in fact, just then), it's certainly amongst the parts of my work that I'd most like to see nominated for an award or seven. Here's the link again, in case you missed it before.
Still, like I said, it would be a genuine shame to dim the glory of that seven-year old me's triumph. As Oscar Wilde possibly said, unless I just made it up, some moments shine too brightly to be tarnished with the tawdriness of repetition.
But you should totally nominate Pseuodpod, yes you should. And if, while you were at it, you felt an unaccountable urge to mention my story too, well, however much the part of me that will always be that skinny seven year old, clutching his trophy or whatever the hell it was I won, standing in the floodlights and...
Wait, I'm pretty sure my school never had floodlights. Maybe I just dreamed the whole thing. Oh all right then, nominate Prisoner of Peace if you're so damned determined.
I promise not to hold it against you.
Shawn happened to mention in passing that the nominations period for the Parsec awards - a celebration of speculative fiction podcasting, as their website banner usefully points out - is open, and pointed out too that not only is Pseudopod itself eligible for "Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology Podcast" but that my story Prisoner of Peace (along with almost everything Pseudopod publishes) is potentially nominatable in the category of "Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Short Form)".
As you surely know if you listen to it on even the most semi-regular of bases, Pseuodpod is great and entirely worthy of a nomination. However, since winning another award, or even being nominated for one, would probably just detract from that one blazing moment twenty eight years ago, I won't ask that anyone put my name forward for Prisoner of Peace.
It is, however, surely the best horror story I've written, or at least my own personal favourite. A tale once described as "Oldboy meets Memento in a prison cell somewhere just west of Hell," (by me, in fact, just then), it's certainly amongst the parts of my work that I'd most like to see nominated for an award or seven. Here's the link again, in case you missed it before.
Still, like I said, it would be a genuine shame to dim the glory of that seven-year old me's triumph. As Oscar Wilde possibly said, unless I just made it up, some moments shine too brightly to be tarnished with the tawdriness of repetition.
But you should totally nominate Pseuodpod, yes you should. And if, while you were at it, you felt an unaccountable urge to mention my story too, well, however much the part of me that will always be that skinny seven year old, clutching his trophy or whatever the hell it was I won, standing in the floodlights and...
Wait, I'm pretty sure my school never had floodlights. Maybe I just dreamed the whole thing. Oh all right then, nominate Prisoner of Peace if you're so damned determined.
I promise not to hold it against you.
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