22 March 2011

What a nice compliment!

"Medair" made the short list for the 2010 Aurealis Awards.  I'll just be over here being astonished and speechless...and celebrating by playing "Dragon Age II".

4 comments:

  1. Andrea, I just read The Glacier, and it certainly seems to me you deserve some kind of award!

    Congratulations on making the shortlist and good luck.

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  2. Thanks graywave! I'm just glad the Glacier is behind me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was just wondering a week or so ago, in the context of a conversation about self-publishing, whether you'd ever managed to get anywhere with 'The Silence of Medair'. I'd been meaning to contact Am&da and see if she had your current address to ask you about it. Then by weird coincidence a friend of mine tweeted a link to the saga of the slush pile tonight.

    I don't know what to say about that story. Your perseverence and patience and apparent unwillingness to commit justifiable homicide would put most saints to shame. I doubt I'd have maintained your sense of dignity, at any rate.

    I remember when you emailed me the manuscript back in '99 or 2000, looking for comments. I read it in half-hour lunch break snatches once or twice a fortnight. It took me about a year. I don't remember if I ever sent you any useful feedback. A lingering sense of guilt suggests that I didn't - I probably figured that I'd missed the boat on contributing anything and let it go out of embarrassment at my tardiness.

    What I may have and certainly should have said is that it's a terrific book. I loved the central conceit, I love the character of Medair and I loved the inexorable escalation of the scope and sense of doom.

    I'm very excited that you've managed to get it out there and that it's received recognition. The Aurealis nomination is well deserved acclaim. I couldn't be more pleased for you.

    (I'm buying a copy as soon as I work out how my Smashwords account works. And - ooh, sequel? Wooah!)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Dave! Thanks - you did actually comment about Medair on your blog, AND email me about it, so no need to feel guilty.

    The whole Glacier thing is really just...well, I never really understood why they didn't just say "No" and pretend they'd read it. If I thought they were holding on to out of malice (Publisher's Chicken, heh), maybe I'd feel angrier at them, but it always seemed to me a great deal of inadvertant impoliteness. Not that I didn't gnash my teeth and tear my hair on more than a few occasions.

    "Voice of the Lost" isn't a sequel. I broke the MS you read into two parts and added to the second part - book one is before she breaks her silence, and book two is her dealing with the consequences of admitting who she is.

    I still haven't quite recovered from the Aurealis shortlisting. That it was "Medair" which made it through (I submitted "Champion" as well) does have a marvellous sense of balance.

    ReplyDelete

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