If you’re new to the concept of an awards eligibility post, people do them because are a bunch of nominated awards around (such as the Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and Australian Romance Readers Awards) and it can be hard to figure out which authors and works are eligible in which awards and categories. And this is mine!
As a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, in addition to the general international awards for speculative fiction and romance, my works are also eligible for nomination in New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, which open for nomination on 1 January 2023. Anyone, anywhere can nominate for them at no cost. I also run a crowd-sourced spreadsheet of as many New Zealand works as I can find to help the nomination process, which you can access through this link.
The three works I’m most proud of from 2022 that I would LOVE for you to consider nominating for whichever awards you read for are:
Novel
Title: City of Souls: Soul Court Ascension Book One
Author: Mel Harding-Shaw
Published: 9 November 2022
Publisher: Coruscate Press
My contact details: see my contact page
Eligible for: Best Novel or Debut Novel in the genres of Romance, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Speculative Romance, Urban Fantasy, and Paranormal Romance
City of Souls won Agent’s Choice in the RWNZ Great Beginning Contest and has a bunch of reviews on Goodreads if you want to see what people are saying about it.
Short Story: Professional/Paid
Title: ‘My Nascent Garden’
Author: Melanie Harding-Shaw
Published: June 2022
Publisher: Analog Science Fiction & Fact, July/August 2022 (you can listen to it for free on your favourite podcast, including this one)
My contact details: see my contact page
Eligible for: Best Short Story (1,980 words) in the genres of Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and Horror.
Short Story: Unpaid
Title: ‘From the Ashes’
Author: Mel Harding-Shaw
Published: April 2022
Publisher: Coruscate Press-Available at no cost to my newsletter subscribers and through promotions
My contact details: see my contact page
Eligible for: Best Short Story, Best Fan Writing (Sir Julius Vogel Awards-category tbc but they’ll shift nominations if needed), Fantasy, Speculative Fiction
Also eligible for short story nominations
‘A Little Dragon Waits’, Frozen Wavelets Issue 7, [2 October 2022] Flash Fiction - Fantasy Free to read
‘Wall or Hearth’, Etherea Magazine #13, [August 2022] Short Story - Fantasy Free to Read
Reprints from 2022 (not eligible for nomination)
‘Unrequited Sonata’ (Reprint), Tales from the Tavern, a Limited Edition Charity Anthology for the NZ Drug Foundation, [1 December 2022] Short Story - Fantasy
‘Data Migration’ (Reprint), Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Volume 4, Paper Road Press, [3 October 2022] Short Story - Creepy Cli-Fi Winner, Best Short Story, Sir Julius Vogel Awards
‘A Planet Named Beatrice’ (Reprint), BRAVE NEW GIRLS: CHRONICLES OF MISSES AND MACHINES, Revenue goes to the Society of Women Engineers Scholarship Fund [1 July 2022] Short Story - Middle-Grade Science Fiction
‘GAC ATG ATT ACA’ (Reprint), Aftermath: Stories of Survival in Aotearoa New Zealand, SpecFicNZ Anthology, [23 April 2022] Flash Fiction - Cli-FI