It wasn’t to be, alas. As I noted earlier, the quality of the other nominees is superb, and I’m not surprised to have been blown out of the water by such excellent pieces as Matt Wallace’s thoughtful “No World for Warriors,” Jason McDowell’s audio tour de force “Sacrifice” (check them both out at Variant Frequencies, a superbly produced collection), and Paul Berger’s “The Watching People” (Escape Pod).

You can find the complete list of finalists at http://www.parsecawards.com/2007Finalists. Give ’em a listen; there’s good stuff here.

It’s time for the second annual Parsec Awards for excellence in podcasting, which will be given out at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia (31 August–3 September 2007). Two of my short pieces have been nominated and will be considered by the Parsec steering committee as they choose ten semifinalists and five finalists in each category. Five outside judges, who are not involved with podcasting but are involved with related areas such as literature, science, and communications, will then choose the winners.

My two entries:

• For “Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form)”: “Distinctive,” from Round 1B of the first Pickle Tales competition.
  The PT judges were rather hard on it (although if they had to trash it, at least they did so gently). I heard from several listeners, however, who were surprised by that and told me they liked the piece. We’ll see what different judges think.
   
• For “Best Audio Drama (Short Form including Independents)”: “Monster Story: Scott Sigler’s Infection from the Triangles’ Point of View.”
  When Scott podcast his novel Infection (to be published in hardcover next April, thoroughly revised and improved, as Infected — mark your calendar!), he introduced a segment of phoned-in comments with a bit of audio. Episodes 9, 10, and 13–“post-mortem” featured this trilogy of monologues. I figure this one has already succeeded, in that it caught Scott unawares — the kind of achievement normally reserved for his monsters.

Scheduling conflicts will likely keep me from Atlanta and the awards ceremony, alas. But given the excellence of the other nominees, it’s gratifying to be welcomed onto the playing field.

The results are in … and I’m out. Not a problem; hey, out of the initial 26 submissions (and you’ll get to hear all of them during the various Pickle Tales podcasts), I was chosen to be one of the 12 competitors, and I’m told that’s an accomplishment.

Here are the winners of Round 1:

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