Posts Tagged ‘Awards’

It’s that time of year where authors flock to the internet to blatantly proclaim all that is mighty and good of their works from the previous year. Some people consider this a tad unsavory, while others have pointed out that if the author cannot stand proudly for his/her own stuff, then who can?

Speaking as someone who is published by small presses, I tend to err on the side of pragmatism: the odds are good that most people haven’t seen my work and anything that helps them to encounter my fiction is a “good thing.”

And that includes an annual bit of blog-inspired self-promotion, so let’s get to it.

For your reading pleasure and award consideration, I present my novella, Calendrical Regression, published by the fine folks at NobleFusion Press as a slender trade paperback, but also available from their site as a free ebook (both ePub and mobi formats).

This is the third novella in the past three years that I’ve written in the Amazing Conroy series of tales. It came out late in the year (November 6th, 2014) and from an even tinier small press than ever before, which basically means despite the thing being an utter delight (hey, would I lie?), most people simply haven’t seen it.

So let me tell you a bit about it.

Calendrical Regression features Conroy, my stage-hypnotist-turned-wealthy-CEO protagonist as he attempts to slip away for a little downtime performing for conventioneers in the midwest. Some well-meaning aliens show up, intent on luring him down to Mexico with the promise of gourmet cuisine. They want him to hypnotically regress the descendant of a Mayan priest, with the intention of unraveling the mystery behind the ancient calendar that apparently predicted Earth’s contact with the rest of the galaxy when its grand tun ended in December of 2012. I could tell you more, but, spoilers! Suffice to say that complications ensue, some amusing and some dire, and the whole wraps up at under 20K words.

This is probably a good place for a bit of the ol’ “full disclosure.”

I mentioned above that this is my third Conroy novella in as many years. I should add that the previous two efforts both landed on their respective Nebula Award ballots. I’m not sure if that’s happened before, consecutive novella nominations from the same universe, but I feel confident that if SFWA members decide to put me on the ballot again this year, the resulting “hat trick” will be something of a record. And that’s kind of cool.

But that can’t happen if people don’t read it, which, again, is why we have posts like this one. I encourage you to follow the link, download a free copy of the ebook, and give it a read.

If you’re a SFWA member and you’d prefer a different format, this URL (http://j.mp/SFWA2014Schoen) will take you to my page in the SFWA 2014 Fiction archive where “Calendrical Regression” is available as a downoad in not just ePub and mobi, but in PDF and DOC formats as well.

This novella is released under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
Follow the link if you’re not sure what that means.

Ten days from now, nominations for the Nebula Awards will close. Before that happens, I’m hoping many many members of SFWA will read my novella, “Trial of the Century,” and write its title on their ballots.

Mind you, I’d also be happy to see any of you who attended last year’s Worldcon in San Antonio, and/or have memberships in this year’s Worldcon in London, to go ahead and nominate it for a Hugo. And while we’re at it, let’s also include those among you who have nominations rights for this year’s World Fantasy coming close to home in D.C. in the Fall.

Okay, having pimped my work for this year’s raft of major awards, let me go on record as saying I have mixed feelings about authors posting notices about what works they have that are eligible. On the one hand, part of me thinks it’s kind of crass. On the other, who am I kidding, right? This is all part of how it’s done, and I’ve benefited from it in the past. And yet…

Because no one should have to live with such cognitive dissonance, let me share with you the reasons (excuses, justifications, rationalizations) that I point to to make it, if not “okay” then at least acceptable, for me to behave in this way:

• It’s a novella (and chances are you don’t read a lot of them, if for no other reason than because, relatively speaking, not very many are published).
• It was published in World Jumping, an anthology from a small press (which is also a polite way of saying that it didn’t get the kind of promotion and distribution that would put it in front of a lot of readers).
• The anthology’s release date was December 26th, 2013 (meaning it snuck in for eligibility with all of five days to spare, and again, hasn’t been around long enough for lots and lots of people to have read it).

So here’s the deal: click on one of the icons below, and you can download an electronic version of the novella, free of charge, no questions asked. If you like it, well, obviously I hope you’ll consider it for your nomination pleasure. If you don’t, sorry, sometimes that’s just how it goes.

Finally, let me just add that, there’s a lot of great fiction out there, and if you’re able to nominate you really should take the time to do so. This is your community, and you should have your say.

 

This novella is released under a Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license.
Follow the link if you’re not sure what that means.