News And Shameless Self-Promotion

Now that Devon Archer has moved on from Novel Spaces, we will have occasional empty blogging slots that our writers will use for promotion and news.

I believe I am the first to take advantage of this opportunity, and I have several pieces of news to share.


Campbell Award


I am in my second (and last) year of eligibility for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. If you are eligible to nominate works and people for Hugo Awards, you can nominate as many as five people for Campbell Award at the bottom of the Hugo ballot.

Please consider nominating me for the Campbell Award. Last year, it took only 40 nominations to get on the final ballot, so your five votes really do count.  

A list of people eligible to be nominated for the Campbell Award is posted at Writertopia. Clicking on a name will take you to a page telling you what work made that person eligible. Most pages also have a bio and a list of fiction publications and awards. My own page is at http://www.writertopia.com/profiles/ShaunaRoberts.

You don't need to nominate five works or people in every category on the Hugo ballot; in fact, you can leave entire categories blank. If you vote, the nomination ballot must be received by March 11. Thanks.

Novel Sale

Hadley Rille Books, the science fiction and fantasy press that published Like Mayflies in a Stream, will be publishing my novel Ice Magic, Fire Magic.  

Ice Magic, Fire Magic is a fantasy with strong romantic elements. Its heroine is a woman who is  incapable of doing evil and who must become the ruler of her world. Meanwhile, evil people who want to seize her power are out to stop her.

I wrote the novel to explore in more depth the good Kirk–bad Kirk dilemma: Can a person who is all good be an effective leader?

Ice Magic, Fire Magic has some cool elements I had fun creating. The land is sentient and chooses the ruler. The rulers are true servants of the people, and they go barefoot as a constant reminder that they should serve, not be served. Two species of humans share the land; one species wields magic, and the other relies on advanced technology. Women and men work different types of magic; their magic is complementary, and both kinds are needed for the land to thrive. A lonely, 1000-year-old evil spirit tries to influence both the good heroine and her evil opponents. And then there are the ice dragons and fire lizards.

The book is scheduled for publication in 2013.


Story Sale

My fantasy flash story "Moonlight, Reflected in Dewdrops" was published in the January 2012 issue of 10Flash Quarterly. You can read it for free at http://www.10flashmagazine.com/10flash-fantasy/moonlight-reflected-in-dewdrops/. 


 New e-Books

My novelette "The Hunt, " despite having been published twice, is hard to find. This science fiction mystery is one of my favorite pieces I've written. So I've put it up at Amazon.com as an e-book. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006WEVR7I.

I hope within the next week or so to put up my 1983 dissertation for Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) on mating behavior of Nicobar pigeons (Caloenas nicobarica) at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Although mating behavior has been studied extensively in other pigeons, to my knowledge my dissertation remains the only such work on Nicobar pigeons, so it will be useful for a few specialists to have it available.

Of more interest to Novel Spaces readers, this spring, if all goes well, I will e-publish my epic fantasy novel Shrine of the Heavens. More on it later.