The Gemmell Awards

The Gemmell awards have a shiny new website  and voting is now open, do it here! (2 clicks, no registration)

(here's a scroll-through of the covers to make choosing for the Ravenheart easier.

The award was set up in memory of fantasy writer David Gemmell, a favourite author of mine and giant of the UK fantasy scene, who died aged only 57. The award has been running since 2009. It's described as an award for 'pure' fantasy.

The award has three sections:

The Legend Award: Best Novel.

The Morningstar Award: Best Debut Novel.

The Ravenheart Award: Best Cover Art.

Authors short-listed for the Legend award get one of these fellows:

Various events take place to help fund the Gemmell Awards, and for the second year running an anthology, Legends, has been produced, featuring work donated by Award authors. I have a Broken Empire story in Legends II, featuring Sir Makin.

You can pre-order the book here and pat yourself on the back for supporting a worthy cause.

It hasn't been all plain sailing for the Gemmell Awards in gaining acceptance. Here a Speculative Horizons blog tells us why the Gemmells are bad for fantasy, albeit in the form of several terribly bad arguments that Joe Abercrombie rightly describes as 'bollocks' in the comments section.

The main argument against the Gemmells is that they might (heaven forfend) give an award to a (shudder) popular book. The shame of it. To prop this up we're invited to believe that bestsellers are bestsellers because of advertising campaigns. We're also invited to follow the rather feeble logic that because being well-written is not an essential requirement for bestsellers ... bestsellers are not well-written.

The idea that a voted award has no merit because it might reflect popular taste doesn't seem to have been extended to the other high profile voted awards.

It's not a function of the size of the voter-base. The Best Novel category in this year's Hugos had over 2000 voters (a record driven by highly political games being played with the award at the moment). Last year's Gemmell award for best novel was perhaps decided by 5,000 voters (16,500 votes from over 70 countries in total over three categories and two rounds, with the Legend Award drawing the bulk of the votes). The difference is that the Hugos are driven by cliques held together by shared politics, shared blogs, shared convention attendance. They talk to each other through blogs, they have their heroes to give them direction, they have their accepted aesthetic. They are a subset of the most passionate fandom. This closeness allows the Hugos to be something they can talk about, argue about, something they feel they can influence and control.

The Gemmells, on the other hand, are voted on by a demographic that's has very little to define it. Gemmell voters are fans of David Gemmell, people who follow the authors involved, their number includes passionate and extreme fans of the genre, but also plenty of casual readers with enough interest to click through and vote. The pundits don't know how to reach out to them, how to influence or persuade them. They don't feel ownership or control ... and that simultaneously scares some of them and bores others. Without that game of influence it's true that the vote moves away from the cliquey, quirky, volatility of the Hugos and does become a closer relation to the bestseller lists. It is more than that though. There is an aesthetic being applied here - not one Hugo voters may like very much - but even so. If there wasn't then Emperor of Thorns would have lost to The Daylight War and Republic of Thieves, which both sold significantly more copies, and all three of them would have been CRUSHED by A Memory of Light which heavily outsold the rest of the short-list combined.

Part of the "it's just a popularity contest" accusation seems to involve the idea that the people voting have only read the book they're voting for. This poll of Hugo and Gemmell voters (at time of publishing) shows an average of just over 3.0 books from the Gemmell short list read by Gemmell voters and an average of 3.0 books from the Hugo short list read by Hugo voters. Indicating that both sets of voters are similarly informed about the books they're voting on.


In conclusion: Hugo if you want to, I'm staying here with Gemmell.



(Additional facts: This year's long list has 40 titles, 10 of them by female authors. The titles are put forward by the authors' publishers, though I believe any member of the public can suggest titles and if they 'meet the bill', i,e epic fantasy for grown-ups, they'll be accepted).

Redundant.

redundant

rɪˈdʌnd(ə)nt/

adjective

1. not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous.

   "an appropriate use for a redundant church"

   synonyms:

   unnecessary, not required, inessential, unessential, needless, unneeded,uncalled for, dispensable, disposable, expendable, unwanted, useless;More

   • BRITISH

     no longer in employment because there is no more work available.

     "eight permanent staff were made redundant"

     synonyms:

     sacked, dismissed, laid off, discharged; More
   • ENGINEERING

     (of a component) not strictly necessary to functioning but included in case of failure in another component.

Writers try to avoid redundancy, whether it be across the length of a sentence, eg:

She lowered herself down. (are you going to lower yourself up? no, so the 'down' is redundant)

He sat on a chair. (the 'on a chair' is generally redundant, only worth noting if unusual)


Or in their day job, eg:

Today I no longer work for the aerospace giant that has employed me for the past 11 years.

Department of Redundancy Department.

Whilst I've succeeded in the former (I hope), I've not been so successful in the latter. I am, as of April Fools' Day, a full time writer, by virtue of no longer having a day-job.

The advanced research centre I worked for has been closed (with ~150 scientists losing their jobs).

Having a very disabled child to look after (born 1 month after I joined the company) makes me too unreliable time and travel-wise to secure a new job, so I'm going to do the writing thing all day!

Now I no longer have to cycle ten miles a day getting to and from work I shall probably grow fat. I've bought myself a PS4 to help burn the spare calories!

Today did bring good news too - it looks as if I will have a publisher for my books for some years to come.

I will miss the science ... but I've been doing this writing thing a while now:

                      ... the boy I'm holding there is now 21!

So really it's something good, something new, and I'm going to enjoy it.

Have you got the sense to be a writer?

We're all different. We all know that. But sometimes I need reminding, and some recent discussions about how we write have done just that.

A thread on reddit posed this question:

Writers, do you mostly describe your mind's eye ? Is there anyone who doesn't ? How well do you perform ?

This is quite an embarrassing question, as i don't think anyone cares about this.

As a context : there are about 3-5% people in the world who cannot picture any image mentally (some of them never dreamt !). While you could think of it as a flaw, some of them perform very well on visual tasks, as graphic artists for example.

The last time i asked this question a writer, she answered me that every bit she wrote was crystal clear in her mind, with motion, vivid colors, etc.

I was wondering if it was a prerequisite to be a successful writer, or to at least be able to write at a good pace ?

Thanks.

I'm not quite in the 3-5% but I certainly never 'see' crystal clear images in my mind. I glimpse aspects of images among a shifting mix of associations and changing/connected forms.

When I write I think in terms of the words, the language, how it makes me feel - I'm not seeing a TV image in my head and trying to describe it to you - I'm trying to find the language that evokes what I'm thinking about, and what I'm thinking about isn't a picture - it's a complex, shifting mass of associations, sprinkled with flashes of different views and images.

Perhaps it's because my imagination is resident in the language - rather than an image that I then need language to translate - that people seem to like my prose...

Continuing the theme of sensory integration/experience and how it relates to writing and consuming writing: I can't listen to my audiobooks. It makes me uncomfortable. In general I find when I listen to writing read aloud, even by experts, it has far less impact on me than when I read it from the page. Highly emotional passages fall flat for me - excitement fails to build. Perhaps it's not being in charge of the pacing, not being able to linger or to race... but either way just as vision is not the core of my imagination - my ears are not the gateway to my reading soul.

I know the reverse is true for many people - they love audiobooks, a narrator brings to life a text that if they read it on the page might do little for them.

I know people who say (& I have no reason to doubt them) that, if I ask them to visualise a horse see a horse, where I see manes, fields, hooves, horseshoes, a muscular flank beneath a glossy hide ... nothing static, glimpses, flux.

My wonder is whether if you take a sub-group like, say, 'highly praised' writers, or writers 'known for their prose' or some such ... whether you would find more commonality in their sensory experience and the way it integrates with their writing, than in the larger group of 'anyone who writes' or just 'anyone'? Or whether they would be every bit as diverse as the population as a whole.

I have no idea.


... but if you think about it ... having a crystal clear mental image of say 'a tower' doesn't help you describe it any more than say ... a crystal clear photograph of a tower does. Unless your goal is an accurate mechanical accounting of the tower's features then a clear and singular image really has very little to do with the art of writing.

You might say that the tower stood, dark against the sky, defying the years with the arrogance of stone. You might say that the door opened onto a room cobwebbed with memory, where the shadows scuttled away into the corners as if frightened by the daylight... none of those words come to you from a photo perfect image - they come from an interlocked complexity of imagery and mood, presenting the feel of a place.

Grim Gathering II

So, this is happening again!

I will be there barring medical emergencies with my daughter (85%), and with or without me you'll be in the culpable hands of Joe Abercrombie & Peter V Brett, along with new man, Peter Newman.

There now follow photos from last year to enthuse you to ditch work early on a Friday and get your arse down to Bristol.

Less huggy on the British side...

There was beer!

My impression of Kermit the Frog went down well...

Lots of people came ... we think someone told them Pat Rothfuss was talking...

Two great nations divided by a common cover

I'm pleased to present the full version of The Liar's Key cover for the UK, Voyager, edition. Also by Jason Chan. The US one is presented next, then both together with a poll so you can register your opinion. The art without the title/author is presented at the bottom.

Why are there two covers?

Voyager / UK cover

Ace / US cover

UK or US? Click here to vote.

After 143 votes 81% of Brits, 59% of Americans, and 72% of everyone else prefers the UK cover.
(36% of voters were Brits(&Australians&NewZealanders), 34% Americans(&Canadians), and 30% 'others')

The rough versions.

The Liar's Key, UK (no lettering)

 

Bloggers: wind or windsock?

Given that I've instigated a blog-off to find and give visibility to the best of self-published fantasy in which the grand prize is to be reviewed on 10 top fantasy book blogs it's probably worth considering how big a prize that is.

Common-sense tells us that it's better to be reviewed on blogs than not to be. It's hard to sell a book that nobody is talking about.

The question is: in general do blogs review books that are already being driven forward by word-of-mouth, that vast off-line network of one friend to another, conversations around the water-cooler or lunch table? Or do blogs initiate and drive forward that larger conversation?

A gratuitous picture of a windsock.

So - how do we know? I mean, obviously the answer is 'a bit of both' but which end of that spectrum is it?

All I have to offer is anecdote, but it's anecdote coupled to some figures.

If you look at the List of Lists I made, showing the Best of 2014 lists that featured Prince of Fools a little clicking around will show that a lot of those lists also include three other titles:

Veil of the Deserters - by Jeff Salyards

City of Stairs - by Robert Jackson Bennett

Mirror Empire - by Kameron Hurley

I'm going by memory here, but I just clicked the first four links on the list and three of them featured Veil of the Deserters.

Bloggers, at least the ones that seem to like my work, love Jeff Salyards. The blog-o-sphere as a whole seemed to catch RJB fever for the last quarter of 2014, and certain high-traffic parts of the blogging world literally ripped themselves asunder in their orgasmic rapture over Mirror Empire.

So how did these books fare?

I'm pretty damn convinced that the number of Goodreads ratings a book gets correlate to sales. If you want to compare two books, then if they are from the same year and same genre the relative number of Goodreads ratings is a half-decent indicator of their relative sales.

Veil of the Deserters - 216 (since May)

City of Stairs - 3725 (since September)

Mirror Empire - 1189 (since August)

For comparison a fair number of popular fantasy books released in 2014 have around 10,000 ratings.

Kameron Hurley reported being pleased with her sales of Mirror Empire, 10,000 copies sold after 4 months is very good going. On the other hand we can see that all of that blog activity (and there was a LOT of it) didn't turn her into a best-seller overnight, or over 4 months.

The real interest for me here is Veil of the Deserters. I've read and enjoyed the book and spoken with Jeff online quite a bit. He readily acknowledges that the book and its predecessor (also lauded on many blogs) have not sold spectacularly.

One obvious reason that the books haven't sold in great numbers is that the publisher, Night Shade Books, collapsed during the release and had to be rescued by selling their titles to another publisher - in the meantime being unable to perform many of the fundamental tasks of a publisher, such as getting copies on shelves.

 Random people excited to be drinking water.

This lack of visibility out in the real world obviously had an impact on those off-line word-of-mouth conversations so vital to selling books. We still had the on-line excitement over electronic copies supplied to blogs - but there was no corresponding drive in any of the other places where books get their boost from. This was a book that was really only seen by bloggers. Many of them loved it (as evidenced by its prominence in so many Best of 2014 list) and yet it seems to have sold only a fraction of the copies of some of its peers which got similar levels of love.

The conclusion then? Well, there's no firm conclusion. But as a single observation, gifted to us by a the combination of blogger love and publisher fail. It seems to push us some of the way toward the windsock theory. A blog-gasm alone cannot assure great sales.

I'm still sure great blog reviews are a very definite help though :)

The Liar's Key writing contest!

Over on my unofficial website (yeah, I have one of those now!) there's a flash fiction writing contest.

The prize is a rare (possibly unique) signed Advance Review Copy of The Liar's Key from Ace Books - but there's also feedback from a panel of authors if your piece of flash fiction wins (or some words from your particular judge if you're one of the pieces they put through to the final).

The contest details are HERE.