Being Shortlisted Makes Me Sad

Just when I’d decided to push a boulder across the front of my cave and have nothing more to do with the world of book promotion, those nice people who manage the Aurealis Awards stuck their collective foot in the door and shortlisted my book, Foresight, for Best Science Fiction Novel. Now I’ve got people congratulating me and saying “w00t” and “awesome” and things like that and it would be awfully rude not to jump back onto the “social media” to thank them all and “favourite their tweets” and whatnot.

I should be celebrating, I suppose. In fact, when I’ve finished this post, I’ll be heading off to find my best beloved to share a bottle of champagne. So I am celebrating, in fact. Being shortlisted for an Aurealis Award is no small thing and I am over the Moon about it. However, the thing is, being shortlisted again this year has left me feeling quite sad. Here are the many and varied reasons:

I had four eligible novels in the period the award covers. Foresight was one, but there were also Heaven is a Place on Earth , The Credulity Nexus , and Cargo Cult . If I’d been asked beforehand, which of these books deserves an Aurealis Award, I’d definitely have said Heaven is a Place on Earth. Despite the cumbersome title (which my best beloved hates with a passion) this is a real sci-fi novel in the best tradition of all the great sci-fi novels I have read and loved in my life. It tackles a theme close to my heart (the deceptions possible when augmented and virtual realities are ubiquitous), it is lovingly crafted with a 4-part, 4-PoV structure, it is very much character driven, it uses a plot development technique based on the method that Robert Goddard uses so effectively, and it’s set here in Australia – it’s On the Beach meets Permutation City for chrissake! Number two on my most deserving list would have been Cargo Cult – not just because it took me 12 years to write, or that it still makes me laugh and I’ve read it twenty times, or even that it too is set here in Australia, but because it is a book full of huge affection for the genre and the tropes I love.
Of those four eligible novels, Foresight was the only one that was commercially published – and that’s the one that was shortlisted. It’s also the third book in a series. The other books (Heaven and Cargo Cult in particular) are more deserving of this honour, and all were stand-alone or the first in a series. So I can’t help having a horrible, nagging suspicion that the success of Foresight over the others is only because it was commercially published, not because it was better. Now that’s probably just pure paranoia talking and, no doubt, does the Aurealis Award judges a terrible disservice (and Foresight), but, well, you have to wonder. Even if there was no nefarious intent to avoid awarding self-published novels, it’s a shame. All of my work is self-published now. If the awards do favour commercially published writers, people who follow them will miss out on much excellent work that will go unacknowledged. Next year, none of my eligible novels will be commercially published. Will I manage to be shortlisted again? Time will tell.
I won’t be able to go to the awards ceremony. I’d love to – just as a thank you to the Aurealis Award organisers if nothing else. These people are all volunteers and do a massive service to Australian fandom in organising the awards each year. The least I could do – especially having been shortlisted – is turn up, wouldn’t you think? But the ceremony is in Canberra, which means it’s a 300 km bus-ride to Brisbane, a 1200 km flight to Canberra, a hotel for four nights (because the awards are during Conflux and you wouldn’t go all that way just to come straight back again), taxis and meals, and the conference fee. Of course, I could spare six days out of my busy schedule, but the total cost of all that is absolutely staggering. I can’t afford it. I can’t even think of affording it. I went to Conflux a couple of years ago so I know what I’m talking about. That time, I walked everywhere, bought cold food to eat in my room, and avoided the cafes and bars to save money. It was pretty dismal and Canberra is not an easily walkable city! Maybe I could drive. My wife has a friend with relations in Canberra and there could be a sofa on offer. It’s an 1100 km drive from here but petrol’s at a ten-year low and I like listening to Radio National…
Which brings me to the fourth cause of my sadness. One of the reasons I don’t have any money is because I don’t sell many books. In fact, I sell so few books that it’s very easy to tell if any particular marketing activity has affected sales and by how much. Last year, when my novel, True Path, was shortlisted for Best Science Fiction Novel by the lovely Aurealis Award people, I did not see any change in sales at all. Let me expand on that, I did not see evidence of any additional sales, either of True Path, or of its prequel, Timesplash, or of any of my other novels. The honour of being shortlisted for the Aurealis Award as Best Science Fiction Novel in Australia that year – which I consider a stupendous honour – didn’t actually mean that anyone bought any of my books. An honour it was, for sure, but it didn’t translate into sales. Which was a surprise and left me feeling very dismal about my prospects as a writer. I mean, what do you have to do to get noticed around here?
For all kinds of reasons, I don’t expect to win. I know that’s just defeatism. I’m sort of prone to it. But, honestly, without Heaven being on the list, I don’t believe I have have my best work on show here and, well, look at the quality of the competition. There’s even Marianne de Pierres in the mix! Also, two of my fellow Momentum authors, both of whom outsell me by prodigious amounts. It’s a tough field. (And check out The Shattered Worlds, why don’t you? Great writing.) I’d like to be more up-beat about it but it’s not happening. I probably need to get on Twitter and read a load of “never give up” motivational crap. That’ll buck me up.
Finally, this would be a good year to support the awards, and a really good year to win one. Most years I bitch that the sci-fi novel category is half-filled with fantasy novels. I mean, WTF? There’s a separate fantasy section, so clear out that stuff and give some real sci-fi writers a chance! This year, however, I cannot complain. One novel seems to be a little bit iffy but the rest are good, solid sci-fi, no doubt about it. There is only one category in these awards that is worth winning for me and that is Best Science Fiction Novel. The rest don’t matter. My life is sci-fi. My world is sci-fi. If you’re an Australian sci-fi writer, this is the only place to be. These are the awards. This is the category. And I’m there, and it’s a really good shortlist. And if I were to win, and I wasn’t at the ceremony, I’d regret it my whole life. So it’s just as well I won’t win, huh?

FORESIGHT: Timesplash 3