Pages

Monday, March 26, 2012

More Ditmar Stuff

Today I received the following message from Ford Street Publishing and decided to post it:
 DITMAR nominations have opened. Ford Street’s book Gamers' Challenge by George Ivanoff is eligible in the "Best Novella/Novellette" category, and Changing Yesterday by Sean McMullen, The Key to Starveldt by Foz Meadows and Mole Hunt by Paul Collins, in the "Best Novel" category. Online nomination form is here: http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2012/nominations.html
In case you think there's a conflict of interest here on my part, I'd like to say that while I have indeed been published by Ford Street - my book Crime Time: Australians behaving badly and some short fiction in the two anthologies, Trust Me! and Trust me Too! (the latter will be out later this year) - I haven't actually written any speculative fiction for Ford Street. Crime Time is non-fiction written for the entertainment of gruesome-loving children and both my short stories are historical fiction set in the 1960s. In other words, nothing of mine published by Ford Street is eligible for either the Ditmars or the Aurealis Awards or, for that matter, the Chronos Awards.

But I have read all the above-mentioned books and reviewed all but, so far, the Foz Meadows one. They're all terrific reads and the product of a small Australian press which supports Aussie writers and artists and treats them better than many a large publishing company.

Those of you who have been around long enough will know that Paul Collins was one of the pioneers of Australian speculative fiction publishing. This has been recognised at least twice in recent years - once with the Peter McNamara Award, last year with the A.Bertram Chandler Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction. His writers have been a mixture of big-name and new and he has been willing to take a chance on difficult subjects and on first-timers such as Foz Meadows.

If you'd like to know more about the books mentioned, you can check out the Ford Street web site and you can look up my reviews on this one, using the search window above. Do yourselves a favour and read them all, then consider nominating one of them.

Whatever you do nominate, though, get something nominated! Australian writers and artists are depending on you to help them promote their work so they can do some more for you to enjoy.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I love comments! Do comment - I will reply.