David Gemmell Legend Award, Updates, THE SPEED OF DARK

First off, a note about the David Gemmell Legend Award. Named after the late, great UK writer of heroic fantasy, the award is in its second year and seeks to showcase novels "in the spirit or tradition of David Gemmell's own work" (for what that means, see here). Titles are nominated by publishers and then whittled down by online voting from fans. This year Tor has nominated both WARBREAKER and THE GATHERING STORM along with 11 other deserving books, making for a long list of 60 titles from all nominating publishers. Online voting on the long list of nominees has just begun and will continue through the end of March. At that point they'll tally up the top five vote-getters and start a new vote (vote totals don't carry over from the first round). I made the short list last year with HERO OF AGES (which wasn't even out in the UK at the time) and expected to get soundly beaten by Joe Abercrombie's LAST ARGUMENT OF KINGS, but instead the final nod went to BLOOD OF ELVES by Andrzej Sapkowski. Anyway, if you'd like to vote on the 2009 book you feel best fits the criteria, you can do that here. The committee has also started two new awards this year, the Morningstar for best newcomer and the Ravenheart for best cover art.

In the most recent MISTBORN 3 annotations I discuss the Lord Ruler's final message as well as Sazed's memorization skills and Breeze's nobleman status. New annotations go up every Tuesday and Thursday. If you haven't checked out the annotations before, they're like the director's commentary on a DVD—I discuss my books chapter by chapter, and so far I've talked about ELANTRIS, MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE, and MISTBORN 2: THE WELL OF ASCENSION. I'll also start posting WARBREAKER annotations sometime in the next few months, possibly before I'm done posting the MISTBORN 3: THE HERO OF AGES annotations. I figure that the dedicated fans who come to my website deserve some good bonus content, so here you go!

In this week's Writing Excuses episode I discuss tragedy with Dan Wells and Howard Tayler. Why write tragedy, and how to do it well? Give the podcast a listen.

By the way, my agent, Joshua Bilmes, also represents the talented Elizabeth Moon, and he wants help tracking down a mystery. Elizabeth's book THE SPEED OF DARK sells far more copies in trade paperback in the Salt Lake City area than anywhere else in North America. Why is that? What Salt Lake-area fans/booksellers have been recommending the book to all their friends and customers? Joshua is dying to know.