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Gasiti acolo 2 carti de-ale mele, plus 6 antologii la care am colaborat.

Dancing on Mars and Other Fantasy Stories Review

It's been a while since "Dancing on Mars and Other Fantasy Stories" was published, but it's always nice to see a new review coming out. Read it in Galileo Online.

CititorSF: Voting Time

A bit late, but it was Easter so I got distracted by yummy food and other things and I forgot to announce that voting time has begun for CititorSF's readers. Luckily there still time as the polls are open until April 13.

The easiest category to vote in was Best Cover Art and I was glad to see "Dancing on Mars and Other Fantasy Stories" got nominated. That cover rocks!

So go vote.

Clasamentele CititorSF 2009

It looks like it's time for the Cititor SF awards, only that this time they changed the title from awards to classifications or ranking, which technically is more appropriate, although I liked the ringing of "awards" better.

The categories are:

• Best translated sci fi novel
• Best translated fantasy novel
• Best Romanian novel/anthology/collection
• Best horror novel/anthology/collection
• Best Romanian/translated anthology/collection
• Best translated short story
• Best Romanian short story
• Best translation
• Best cover art

Nominations can be submitted until March 31, and voting starts on April 2.

For more details visit Cititor SF.

Compared to last year, I have two stories that are eligible (The Richest Woman In The World, published in Nautilus, and The Souls Of The Trees published in Dancing on Mars and Other Fantasy Stories, the 2nd AtelierKult anthology) and not just one (Freeze published in Nautilus - the winning story for 2008), but I don't expect any of them to be nominated. It's still good the way things are progressing and for now I'll settle for that. I guess I should have three stories ready for next year? Better go back to writing then...

First Step of Getting Published

So I'm getting published. No, it's not a novel. As it happens I haven't written that one yet. It's a short story, really short, called "The Souls of the Trees".

For over a year now I've been a member of Atelier Kult, an on-line literary workshop. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I'm not one of the most active members, I've only got three stories posted there and they are not even my best ones. I received some good advices there, critics and praises, and I got insulted for my own critics. Oh, well... Let's just say it was an interesting experience.

About four years ago a selection of texts was published as a fantasy anthology and now they want to repeat the experience. Imagine my surprise when last month I was contacted regarding one of my stories, which they wanted to include in the new anthology. The title is "Dancing on Mars and Other Fantasy Stories" and mine is just one out of 19 stories. The poor thing will get lost among them, though I've read most part of the others and it won't be in such bad company, considering the fact that they are all new aspiring writers.

The book is announced here on the publisher's blog, and it can be seen and ordered here. No detailed description available so far.

What freaks me out a little is how easily it happened, especially without me having to put too much effort into it. I remember when I turned 28 I promised myself I would give myself two more years of writing whatever silliness I felt like doing, and then I would seriously focus on writing. Two years later I had one story published in an on-line magazine, the same story won an award later on, and now another story is about to be published on paper this time. Who would have thought? Definitely not me. I mean, I've always known I would write and publish someday, but not so soon.

Hmm, I guess it's time to go back to work and start on a new story. The theme is imposed but there's no word limit. Yey, happy me! I'll let you know how it went in three months.