The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association

I have a short story on the eligibility list for the Aurora Awards!

/ Melanie Marttila

The nomination period is open until April 6, 2024, for the 2024 Aurora Awards, recognizing the best of Canadian SF & Fantasy published in 2023.

This year, I have one eligible work in the Best Short Fiction category, “Psychopomps Are Us,” which was published in Pulp Literature No. 38, Spring 2023. (May 6, 2023. ISSN: 2292-2164. pp 107-116.)

Cover of Pulp Literature Magazine, Issue no. 38, Spring 2023.

I’m proud of this quirky little story told in second person with snarky footnotes. To tell you anything more would spoil the story 🙂 I would be so pleased if PAU made the ballot this year. Consider nominating it, would you?

If you haven’t read it yet, you can support the good people at Pulp Literature by purchasing a copy at the above link 🙂

How to nominate a work for the Auroras

To nominate, you need to be a member of the Canadian SF & Fantasy Association (CSFFA), the organization that administers the awards.

If you’re not a member:

  • Visit the CSFFA web site and select “Not a member yet?”
  • Fill out your name, email, and home province.
  • Select a username and password for the site.
  • Registration is CA$10, which lets you nominate and vote on the final ballot.
  • Once you’re logged in, click on “Pay membership fee with PayPal.” Don’t use PayPal? You can also pay by debit or credit.

Already a member?

  • Visit the CSFFA web site and select “Log in” under “You are a member?” then enter your username and password to access the Awards main page.
  • If you haven’t paid for 2024, click on “Pay Renewal Fee with PayPal.” Don’t use PayPal? You can also pay by debit or credit.

Nominate:

  • Select “Nomination” from the middle of the screen to access the online nomination form.
  • To nominate a work, just select one of the boxes under the category and select the appropriate title of the work you wish to nominate from the drop-down list of eligible works.
  • You can nominate up to five works in each category, but you don’t need to nominate in every category or that many in any category.
  • When you’ve finished nominating in a category, make sure you select the “Update nominations” button for the category, then move to your next category.

And … c’est tout, mes amis!

The next chapter: April 2014 update

/ Melanie Marttila

The Next ChapterIf March was a little weird, April was a whole lot weird.

Lemme ‘splain.

I abandoned the thought of keeping to any kind of “schedule” with regard to my writing. At the end of last month, I had drafts for Apprentice of Wind and Figments completed, or so I thought.

So you’ll understand my surprise when I went to print off Figments, that I hadn’t, in fact, finished it. A few hundred words fixed that up, but boy was I embarrassed.

Then, once I had AoW and Figments printed, I heard Initiate of Stone calling my name. Even though I haven’t heard back from all my betas yet, I needed to do a little work on IoS.

I just finished reading Roz Morris’s first Nail Your Novel, and before that, I read Victoria Mixon’s Art and Craft of Story. I wanted to do a combination approach with each draft, using Roz’s form of beat sheet and Victoria’s holographic structure.

With IoS, I had previously eliminated a POV character. Now I’ve decided to remove her entirely and give the specifics of her plotline to other POV characters. It was something others had recommended and I resisted. I guess I just needed time and space away from the ms to realize the truth.

And it wasn’t half so difficult (read fraught) as I thought it would be.

So I knew that I would not be doing a lot with regard to “new words” in April because I’d mostly be focusing on working with my printed drafts and most of the new work would be on my blog.

Then I edited a couple of stories for submission, but the net new words for that was just over three hundred.

Once again, I find myself surprised.

April's word count

I am still eternally grateful to Jamie Raintree for this fabulous tool

Total word count for the month: 11, 612 (!), 10,930 of that from blogging alone.

Amaze-face.

Mind you, I have been blogging all those juicy sessions from Ad Astra. It’s transcription, but it counts.

Here’s the round up for the year so far:

Month Total Blog Initiate of Stone Apprentice of Wind Figments Gerod and the Lions Short Stories
January 11,532 7,114 0 2,781 207 821 609
February 9,789 6,303 0 47 308 1,296 1,835
March 10,781 8,193 0 333 1,488 312 455
April 11,612 10,930 0 0 381 0 301

So this has been an interesting month, and the next few promise to be as well.

I won’t be actively querying until I have revisions done on IoS, so that’s on hold, again, too.

I did receive my contributors’ copy of Sulphur IV, the literary journal of Laurentian University. I have three poems in there. The CV has been updated.

The Sudbury Writers’ Guild, with its slick new web site, is moving forward with its anthology, so I’ve set aside some work for that.

I made a decision at the end of March. I’d been an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets since 1999, but I’d never gone to its annual conference or AGM. So I decided this year not to renew my membership and instead invest in SF Canada and the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (home of the Auroras).

It’s been interesting so far.

As far as what’s coming up, Baen Books has a short fiction contest, and I’ve just become aware that Lightspeed has an open reading period for Women Destroy Fantasy.

So there you are.

Progress continues to be made.

How is your writing life going?