by
Steve Lazarowitz
December 2000
THE DREAM REALM AWARDS!
It's been a hell of a week. The flight to Dallas (on Thanksgiving Day yet), the preparations, the wait, the show itself, the rest of the con and finally, the flight back to New York City. I guess I have lots of reasons to be drained.
The show ran about an hour and a half. There were eight guest award presenters and finalists representing some 19 different e-publishing companies. This was not the Frankfurt Awards. The finalists were all primarily e-authors.
From a table near the front, author Joni Latham spoke on a cell phone to Janice Murphy of Cybling. She relayed the play by play, bringing the entire show to the online audience.
My co-host Lisa DuMond shared the stage with me, while we named the winners, but all the finalists were winners. All the participants were winners. Even the e-authors that never entered the contest were winners. How can I say this?
All of the finalists and in fact most of the entries were excellent. I'd have been hard pressed to pick a winner. I know I've spoken about Jeff Strand's work in this column before and Patrick Welch's and Jonathan Fesmire's. I'd like to add a few other names to that. M.D. Benoit's first novel, 'Til the Fat Lady Sings' was simply put, excellent. Kate Saundby, the first lady of e-published Science Fiction made a good showing finaling in two categories (not counting the two covers gifted to her by her son, which also finaled). Charlotte Boyett-Compo, who should need no introduction to the online audience, finaled. Edward Stack, who wrote the excellent 'Ilya's Dream' finaled in the anthology category with 'Wizards, Wonder and Worry'. Lois Wickstrom and Jean Lorrah finaled for 'Nessie and the Living Stone'.
Everyone listed above, in fact every single finalist, has written and sold a book... which is more than most aspiring authors will ever accomplish. That should be a sobering thought.
But again, I say that even e-authors that didn't enter the contest, won. Because this sort of contest validates the hard work of ALL e-authors. This was not the Frankfurts, where a handful of print publishing companies tried to take credit for having the best e-published books. This was a hard-fought contest between people that represent the best of the best.
We all came from the same place. We all wrote and submitted and wrote and submitted. Some of us were lucky enough to have bypassed the Madison Avenue slush pile blues, but not most of us. Some of us were lucky enough (and good enough) to sell a story to a major print genre magazine, like Patrick Welch and Jonathan Fesmire. And yet our babies, the works we care most about, sat like orphans, waiting for someone to adopt them.
E-publishing is all about giving opportunity to authors that just don't fit the mold. Madison Avenue has set up all sorts of arbitrary criteria that has become a prison for creativity. Go into a bookstore and look at the fantasy books. How many different cover designs can you find? How many different blurbs? Do you really want to read ANOTHER book about elves? Where has the originality gone? Who is pushing the envelope?
The e-authors are. The people who took a chance and said something different. The writers who approached the world from right angles to reality. Books like 'Westchester Station' by Patrick Welch (which I'm in the midst of even as we speak). Books like 'Darkers' by Lisa DuMond, which is as good as speculative satire gets. Books like 'Under a Bear Moon' by Carrie Masek, which won not only a Dream Realm Award, but an Eppie as well. Books like 'New Life Incognita' by my good friend Gracie McKeever.
These are books worth investigating... worth READING.
You can support e-published speculative fiction too. If you're an author, next year, enter the Dream Realm Awards. If you're not an author, you can volunteer to be a judge, or just think about attending the awards, so you can applaud your favorite authors in person.
For a complete list of Dream Realm Award finalists, check out the Dream Realm Awards home page at http://www.dream-realm-awards.com .
Webpage & Graphics by Samandi Adams
Copyright (c) 2003-2004 ~ All Rights Reserved