I found out while I was at LibertyCon that I am on the short list for the Gemmell Legend Award for best fantasy novel.
Voting for the short list is now open to everyone. The information is at the link above.
This is an honor because there were a lot of fantastic authors on the long list. The other finalists on the short list are Miles Cameron, David Guymer, John Gwynne, and Mark Lawrence. Of those the only one who I have read is Lawrence, but he is damned good. The man has skills. I’ve not read the book in question, but I loved Prince of Thorns.
I look forward to checking out the others, and I wish all of them the best of luck.
But more important than us writers, Larry Elmore is up for best artist (the Ravenheart Award). Because Larry Elmore is a living legend, and the nicest guy you will ever meet, I really want him to win.
I had not read any Gemmell novels until a couple of years ago. I was on book tour at the University Bookstore in Seattle, and Duane (every author who has signed there knows who I am talking about) was comparing my style to David Gemmell’s style. I said I had not read him yet, and Duane was like WHAT? And immediately gave me a copy of Wolf in Shadow to combat my cultural ignorance.
I’m glad he did, because it was really bad ass, and I read it on the next couple of plane rides. Then I related this story to Pat Tracy at Writer Nerd Game Night when I got home and his response was something along the lines of You Haven’t Read Gemmell Before WTF is WRONG WITH YOU!? (as he shook me violently, and Pat does Strongman competitions for fun)
So basically, Gemmell’s books are awesome. Don’t be a cultural ignoramus like I was most of my life, and go buy some of them.
Larry needs that axe for his armory
They do have the coolest trophy.
Perhaps these new awards are popping up due to the recent Hugo Awards controversies. Looks like they’re trying to position themselves to be the replacements.
Gemmell has been around for about 8 or 9 years I think.
I started reading Gemmell in the 80’s. Bad ass, true.
He died too young.
Done and done… 🙂
Just voted. Read Gemmell a long time ago, starting with the Druss novels. Mrs Czech6 likes them as well, but is always bummed when Mr. Gemmell killed off one of his characters. When I was commenting to her that Son of the Black Sword reminded me of Gemmell’s books, she asked if you killed off the likable characters too.
Strangely enough, I don’t recall reading any of Gemmell’s books either. So I picked up Legend the other day and HOLY FREAKIN COW THAT’S AWESOME! So, being a Larry Correia fan not only gets me awesomeness such as MHI and Grimnoir, it also (oh so often, especially with book bombs etc.) leads me to other authors that I may or may not have found on my own.
I can’t recommend Miles Cameron’s stuff strongly enough. His fantasy is good, but his historical novels (written under his real name of Christian Cameron) are basically a super-charged, improved version of Bernard Conrwell. Meticulous research, tight plotting, and you can tell he’s an unabashed fanboy of Ancient Greek/Medieval weapons and martial arts – making for a nice break from the more typical fascination of most writers with East Asian equivalents.
I like Cornwell, I’ll have to try Cameron.