It’s that time of the year again, where people are compiling their best reads of the year lists and considering what they might nominate for awards. Speaking for myself, I love it when people make eligibility posts like these to help us remember what came out during the year. Especially if stuff came out in the first half of the year, it can be hard to remember. Posts like these are useful for that. If you’re not into eligibility posts, no worries. This isn’t the post your looking for. *waves hand*
If you are interested and considering work for the Stoker Recommended Reading List, the Nebula and Hugo Awards, any Best Of roundups, etc. here’s what I produced in 2021 and is therefore eligible for all the good stuff:
Published in January 2021, this book is eligible for all the Best Collection categories, being a collection of 5 novellas. Given that each novella in it is also previously unpublished, all five are eligible in all the Novella or Long Fiction categories (each story is between 10k and 25k words). Those stories are “Out On A Rim”, “Mother in Bloom”, “The Band Plays On”, “48 To Go”, and “Rock Fisher”. This is one of my indie releases, so while it’s labelled as published by 13th Dragon Books, that’s me. So this is a self-published release.
(For anyone keen on Gulp updates, the second book of Tales From The Gulp, containing 5 more entirely original novellas and making a full mosaic novel across all 10 stories, has just gone to my editor. I’m looking at an April 2022 release for that, along with a few other very cool bits and pieces, so watch this space! Title and cover reveal coming in the new year. The cover is another amazing Halinka Orszulok painting.)
The other solo book I had published this year was GHOST RECALL, which came out just in time to qualify, in early-December. Ghost Recall is about 35k words long, so it’s eligible in all the Novella or Long Fiction categories. Grey Matter Press released this one, and it’s the third in the Eli Carver Supernatural Thriller Series, that started with Manifest Recall, then Recall Night. This third book does make something of a complete arc across all three books, but it’s by no means the last Eli Carver book if I have any say in the matter. So fingers crossed readers get behind it, then GMP and I can work on bringing you more.
Lastly, CROCALYPSE (Sam Aston Investigations Book 3), a monster thriller co-authored with David Wood, came out in March 2021, so if you’ve enjoyed that and think it eligible for anything, we’d be mighty grateful to you. Hopefully there will be more Sam Aston books going into the future too.
That’s it for book releases. What about short fiction? Other than the five original novellas in The Gulp that I mentioned above, I didn’t have too many short fiction publications in 2021. But the things I did publish that are eligible in the various Short Fiction categories are:
“Nurturing His Nature” – The Bad Book anthology, ed. John F.D. Taff (Bleeding Edge Books, July 2021)
“Come His Children” – Cthulhu Deep Down Under 3, ed. Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira and Bryce Stevens (IFWG Publishing, June 2021)
“All That Matters” – The Saturday Paper, ed. Alison Croggon (April 2021)
There were also a couple of exclusive short stories published on my Patreon page, but I imagine they’re not really eligible, seeing as only patrons can read them.
So that’s it for me. If you think anything I’ve put out in 2021 is worthy of attention, I hugely appreciate your vote. More readers is what we’re always after to build a sustainable career as authors, and while books sales through word of mouth is always the first and best way to achieve that, this kind of award and Best Of attention really helps to raise awareness of our work too. Be sure to look back on the year and see what you can do to raise awareness of all the stuff you’ve loved in 2021. And of course, there’s no obligation to do any of this. First and foremost, reading for your own enjoyment is the only thing that really matters and if you’ve read and enjoyed my work this year, I can’t thank you enough for your time. I appreciate you!
Happy arbitrary end-of-year date to you all – may you find health, happiness and fulfillment every day into the future.