The Awards for 2007 have been announced and can be seen here. Alas, I have to remain as only a shortlisted author yet again. (How many times is one a bridesmaid before they say you’ll never be a bride? I think I have already surpassed the number!!)

Joking aside, many thanks once again to the Aurealis team – and they were mighty quick this year with getting the results posted, which I appreciate. They have even put up the judges’ comments. (If there were any comments for last year’s results, I never saw them anywhere.)

Here’s what they said about Song of the Shiver Barrens:

“Both the second and third books in this series were nominated this year, and the judges rated both highly. However, this one made the shortlist as it was a much stronger book, perhaps because it finalised the trilogy, but also because of the nature of the relationship between the characters. The plot was powerful and the fantasy stylish,and the writing was highly polished and engaging.”

Nice, eh? I am delighted. And I had good company. Here’s the overall comment on the fantasy novels:

“The quality of work nominated in 2007 was generally of a very high standard. The major publishing houses are producing quality novels in the fantasy genre. However this standard was not consistently maintained by smaller publishers, self publishers and the vanity publisher books.”…………“We could easily have had ten books on the shortlist and a further six or seven honourable mentions, and of course the debate for the winner was fierce as so many books had standout qualities.”

Once again, my thanks to all those involved in the Awards, to Orbit Books for their support of the Awards, and my congratulations to all those winners in all categories.

Australia’s spec fic is alive and well!!

I will be away for a couple of days, and I am not sure what sort of connectivity I will have for the next couple of days. Back Sunday night.

In the meantime, check this out: a site devoted to sff awards and (??hopefully??!) the controversies they generate come time for nominations, rule changes and winners…

Many thanks to the (very experienced sff) team who ran with this idea and have the site up and running. It’s on my list of favourites already.

And if the date and time of posts here is puzzling you, it’s because I haven’t changed by computer clock/date away from Malaysian time, which is exactly 12 hrs in advance of east coast USA.