A Curious Statistical Anomaly

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (published in 2009)

“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen, Norilana Books (July 2009).

“Images of Anna” by Nancy Kress, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by Cat Rambo (September 2009).

“James and the Dark Grimoire” by Kevin Lauderdale, published in Cthulhu Unbound, edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunseri, Permuted Press, (March 2009).

“Race to the Moon” by Kyell Gold, published in New Fables, Summer 2009,  edited by Tim Susman, Sofawolf Press  (July 2009).

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster, published in Interzone (January 2009) / Apex Magazine (August  2009), edited by Andy Cox (Interzone) / Catherynne M. Valente (Apex).

“Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, published in Twelfth Planet, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (October 2009).

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #27, 10/08/2009, edited Scott H. Andrews.

“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram” by Jeff Soesbe, published in DayBreak Magazine, edited by Jetse de Vries (October 2009).

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2009). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 22-24th in Rockville, Maryland.

The Washington Science Fiction Association [http://www.wsfa.org] has created of a literary award to honor the work done by small presses in promoting and preserving science fiction. The WSFA Small Press Award will be given yearly for original short fiction works (17,500 words or fewer) of imaginative literature (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction or like literature) published by a small press.

For the purposes of the award, a small press is defined as a hard copy print or web publication house releasing from 3 to 25 titles per year. Eligible periodicals are those with a paid circulation of fewer than 10,000 in the year that the story is published. Periodicals must have an must pay authors in cash as opposed to non-monetary items. Any story published in a periodical owned by a major publishing house or media producer is not eligible for this award. For complete rules check the website.

For this our 4th Annual WSFA Award, eligible works are those published for the first time in English in 2009. To help us identify worthy pieces, we are asking for small press publishers and authors to nominate stories. (The story does not have to be published by you, although we generally expect you to nominate works from your publications.) You may nominate up to three (3) stories as a publisher, one (1) story as an author.

FOR THIS YEAR THE DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS IS April 1st.

Nominated stories _must_ be submitted in electronic form, in any of the common formats (e.g. doc, rtf, pdf). Judging will be blind, that is the name of the author and publisher will be stripped from the story. Therefore, we ask that you either send the story in a format that allows us to edit the file to remove the author’s name, or strip the name yourself but be sure to include the name of the author in the accompanying email message.  Nominations should be sent to admin at wsfasmallpress dot org. The accompanying email should indicate the name of the person or entity that holds the copyright to the story and permission from that person or entity to circulate the story within WSFA for the purposes of judging. We also need to know the publication information (Publication name, issue date) The story WILL NOT be circulated beyond WSFA members and will be housed on a secure, password-protected website.

The award will be presented at the annual WSFA convention, Capclave, held each year in October in the Washington, DC, area. The award winner and the publisher will be notified prior to the convention.

Additional information about the award can be found at the website.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction: “The Absence of Stars: Part 1” by Greg Siewert, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing.

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year. An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story. The award consists of certificates for both the author and publisher as well as a trophy and $250 for the author.

The other finalists were:

“Drinking Problem” by K.D. Wentworth, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008).”

Hard Rain at the Fortean Café” by Lavie Tidhar, published in issue 14 of Aeon Speculative Fiction Magazine, edited by Bridget McKenna.

“His Last Arrow” by Christopher Sequeira, published in Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, (October, 2008).

“Silent as Dust” by James Maxey, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing.

“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008)

“The Toy Car” by Luisa Maria Garcia Velasco, (translated from Spanish by Ian Watson) published in April 2008 edition of Aberrant Dreams, edited by Joseph W. Dickerson.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction
Association and is presented at their annual convention, Capclave, held this year on October 16-18 in Rockville, Maryland. Present to accept their awards were Greg Siewert and Edmund R. Schubert, the editor of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.
Also present to accept their Honorable Mention certificates were: James Maxey for his story “Silent as Dust” and John Joseph Adams editor of Seeds of Change accepting for Nnedi Okarafor-Mbachu and K.D. Wentworth.

We went live with the magazines at midnight on September 1st, but we just finished all the tweaks and polishing of the chrome this evening.  The major problem this month was me.  Yup, me.

I got the flu or a cold but it might be the flu.  Yes, I googled the symptoms and I’ve got all of them so I don’t know what I’ve got.  So, I’ve been dragging around for a couple of weeks barely getting out of my own way and trying to do the things that absolutely had to be done and smoothing over the rest.  That means I OCR documents, put the pages together and proofed  them.  Entered and proofed reviews that were sent to me.  Stared at the screen for inordinate amounts of time but didn’t add a line to my novel.  Sent out the announcement of the finalists for the WSFA Small Press Award. I answered some email and entered books.

And I read.  I don’t know what most people do but when I don’t feel good I read.   I read nearly everything I was assigned this month and then some.  The problem is that, feeling as crappy as I did — I didn’t write the reviews immediately but waited.  I thought, silly me, that I’d write them the last three days of the month since I’d already taken notes and stuck stickies in the books to remind me of things I could do that.  Except I then got laryngitis and Hyperion got sick and several people who normally don’t wait to the last minute did and ….

Well, I ended up adding new material on September 1st and 2nd.  So, now we’re really done with the zines and so, if you already checked it out — check again — there may be new stuff because I combed my email today for everything I missed and now–deep sigh,  it’s time to start all over again for the October issue.

Speaking of upcoming events, I’m hoping to get an interview with Monica Fairview the author of The Other Mr. Darcy in October.  She’s doing a blog tour and I’m hoping she’ll be able to squeeze it in between stops.  I’ve got the list of the blogs she’ll be visiting and will post it closer to the start of her tour and just before I post my review of the book.

Gumshoe is going to be running an interview with Laura Childs in October to go with the release of her new book, Tragic Magic (A Scrapbooking Mystery).  I’ll also be reviewing season one of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

On the SFRevu side, I need to see what books we’re reviewing for October and start contacting people to line up an interview.  The problem is usually not that there aren’t enough people to ask but that I dither on trying to decide who to ask because I want to ask them all.

Then there’s the knitting.  I’ve got a pair of socks on the needles and the first one is nearly to the heel.  I’ve got a sweater that needs to be steam pressed and hemmed and a button added.  And, I’ve got two other started sweaters that I hope to finish this fall.  Then there’s the spinning of yarn that I need to do.  I’d hoped to get some spinning done by requesting an audio book for review but when it arrived it was print–no problem but I was looking forward to the listening time.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my act together to get geared up for Capclave 2010. I’m really excited about the opportunity to be a convention chair and hope that the convention will turn out to be one that everyone enjoys from the Guests of Honor to the Volunteers to the attendees.

Looking this over, I think I may be over-committed…nah…it will be fun.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2009 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (for stories published in 2008):

“Drinking Problem” by K.D. Wentworth, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008).

“Hard Rain at the Fortean Café” by Lavie Tidhar, published in issue 14 of Aeon Speculative Fiction Magazine, edited by Bridget McKenna.

“His Last Arrow” by Christopher Sequeira, published in Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, (October, 2008).

“Silent as Dust” by James Maxey, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing, January 2008.

“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008)

“The Absence of Stars: Part 1” by Greg Siewert, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing, December 2008.

“The Toy Car” by Luisa Maria Garcia Velasco, (translated from Spanish by Ian Watson) published in April 2008 edition of Aberrant Dreams, edited by Joseph W. Dickerson.

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2008). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 16-18th in Rockville, Maryland.

This is the 3rd year of the WSFA Small Press Award.

“The award is open to works of imaginative literature (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.) published in English for the first time in the previous calendar year. Furthermore, the Small Press Award is limited to works under 17,501 words in length that were published by a small press. The nominees are narrowed down by a panel elected by the membership of WSFA, and these finalists are then judged by the entire membership of WSFA in order to select a winner. Throughout the process, the author and publisher of each story are kept anonymous, and the winning story and its author are announced at Capclave, the WSFA convention held in the D.C. area each October.”

This year, I’m the award administrator. The nomination period is over and the stories have now been stripped of author and publisher information and have been entered into our database. Passwords are being generated for the committee members who will read the stories and select the list of finalists. Once the finalists are chosen, members of WSFA (Washington Science Fiction Association) will be given passwords and allowed to read the finalists and vote for the winner.

The winner will be announced at this year’s Capclave, the club’s annual convention. This year we have 59 valid nominations. We hope that with each year the number of nominations will increase as we manage to inform more of the small presses who are eligible about the contest.

Now, until the finalists are chosen my job is in wait and see mode. But, there are some great stories in this group of nominee and I’m anxious to see which of these 59 stories make the list of finalists.

Today was work, work, work — getting books entered, reading for reviews, taking notes and getting set for a WSFA (Washington Science Fiction Association) Meeting in DC. For the next six month or so the club is meeting in DC … usually we meet in Virginia for the first Friday of the month, and Maryland for the third Friday.

If you live in the DC, northern VA, Maryland area and love science fiction and fantasy you should check out WSFA. You can view their website at www.wsfa.org. There’s some great people, lots of nice geeky (SF, fantasy, science, technology, and social) discussions after the short business meeting.

WSFA puts on a yearly convention called Capclave. Capclave is usually held in October. This year it will 16-18 October 2009.
Guests of Honor will be Harry Turtledove as Author Guest of Honor and Sheila Williams as Editor Guest of Honor. The convention will be held at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville, Executive Meeting Center, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.

WSFA also presents the WSFA Small Press Award at a short ceremony during the convention. This is the club’s third year giving out this award and the number of nominations are growing each year. The award honors the work of small presses and the short story (under 17,500 words).

Check out the websites to learn more about WSFA and their activities. I enjoy the people, the discussions, and the chance to get involved in the community of fans.

[Besides I needed to do a post tonight and thought I’d talk about a group that I give a lot of my time to. I’m Capclave chairperson for 2010, one of the two webmasters, and the current WSFA Small Press Award Administrator.]
So if you live in the area, come to a meeting and check us out.

I thought readers might just be interested in this. Besides, this year I’m working as the award administrator — meaning I’m the clerk for the committee. It’s blind judging of the stories so someone has to take all the identifying information off the stories and this year that’s me. I’ve been working on this all day to get ready to send out the announcements tomorrow so thought I’d kick it off by posting it here.

WSFA Small Press Award Committee now accepting nominations for works published in 2008:

The Washington Science Fiction Association (http://www.wsfa.org) has established a literary award to honor the work done by small presses in promoting and preserving science fiction. The WSFA Small Press Award will be given yearly for original short fiction works (17,500 words or fewer) of imaginative literature (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction or like literature) published by a small press.

For the purposes of the award, a small press is defined as a hard copy print or web publication house releasing from 3 to 25 titles per year. Eligible periodicals are those with a paid circulation of fewer than 10,000 in the year that the story is published. Periodicals must have an editorial staff and must pay all authors at least one cent ($0.01) per word. Any story published in a periodical owned by a major publishing house or media producer is not eligible for this award.

For complete rules check our website: http://wsfasmallpressaward.org.

For this our 3^rd Annual WSFA Award, eligible works are those published for the first time in English in 2008. To help us identify worthy pieces, we are asking for small press publishers and authors to nominate stories. (The story does not have to be published by you, although we generally expect you to nominate works from your publications.) You may nominate up to three (3) stories as a publisher, one (1) story as an author.

FOR THIS YEAR THE DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS IS MARCH 1.

Nominated stories _must_ be submitted in electronic form, in any of the common formats (e.g. doc, rtf, pdf). Judging will be blind, that is the name of the author will be stripped from the story. Therefore, we ask that you either send the story in a format that allows us to edit the file to remove the author’s name, or strip the name yourself but be sure to include the name of the author in the accompanying email message. Nominations should be sent to admin@wsfasmallpressaward.org . The accompanying email should indicate the name of the person or entity that holds the copyright to the story and permission from that person or entity to circulate the story within WSFA for the purposes of judging. The story WILL NOT be circulated beyond WSFA and will be housed on a secure, password-protected website.

The award will be presented at the annual WSFA convention, Capclave, held each year in October in the Washington, DC, area. The award winner and the publisher will be notified prior to the convention.

Additional information about the award can be found at our website– http://www.wsfasmallpressaward.org.