Very pleased to see Salvage among the six nominations for best novel of 2012 in the Ditmar Awards. The awards are popularly nominated and voted upon, so perhaps can be seen more as a measure of awareness within fandom, which makes the listing very cool.

Salvage and Blood and Dust are both finalists for best horror novel in the Aurealis Awards, and Blood and Dust is up for best novel in the Australian Shadows, so the Ditmar nom balances the books nicely!

There was a little confusion with Salvage, due its word count being precariously balanced on the cut-off 40,000-word mark between novella and novel. My fault, really: I should’ve got a final-version count from the publisher rather than going off an earlier version. We’re talking a difference of one or two sentences, but enough to tip it over into novel territory.

Also up for the Ditmar is a star-studded field, including Kirstyn’s Perfections — also a finalist in Aurealis and Shadows.

The awards will be announced at Conflux in Canberra in April. (Edit: I originally said the awards would be presented at Continuum in June; sorry Conflux!)

Once again, the Ditmars show the stature of podcasts and the internet in the realm of fan publications, and strong fields elsewhere. Here’s the full list:

Ditmar Finalists 2012

Best Novel

Sea Hearts, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)

Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth (Random House Australia)

Suited (The Veiled Worlds 2), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)

Salvage, Jason Nahrung (Twelfth Planet Press)

Perfections, Kirstyn McDermott (Xoum)

The Corpse-Rat King, Lee Battersby (Angry Robot)

Best Novella or Novelette

‘Flight 404’, Simon Petrie, in Flight 404/The Hunt for Red Leicester (Peggy Bright Books)

‘Significant Dust’, Margo Lanagan, in Cracklescape (Twelfth Planet Press)

‘Sky’, Kaaron Warren, in Through Splintered Walls (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story

‘Sanaa’s Army’, Joanne Anderton, in Bloodstones (Ticonderoga Publications)

‘The Wisdom of Ants’, Thoraiya Dyer, in Clarkesworld 75

‘The Bone Chime Song’, Joanne Anderton, in Light Touch Paper Stand Clear (Peggy Bright Books)

‘Oracle’s Tower’, Faith Mudge, in To Spin a Darker Stair (FableCroft Publishing)

Best Collected Work

Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)

Epilogue, edited by Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)

Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)

Light Touch Paper Stand Clear, edited by Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie (Peggy Bright Books)

Midnight and Moonshine by Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter, edited by Russell B. Farr (Ticonderoga Publications)

The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011, edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)

Best Artwork

Cover art, Nick Stathopoulos, for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 56 (ASIM Collective)

Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for Midnight and Moonshine (Ticonderoga Publications)

Illustrations, Adam Browne, for Pyrotechnicon (Coeur de Lion Publishing)

Cover art and illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, for To Spin a Darker Stair (FableCroft Publishing)

Cover art, Les Petersen, for Light Touch Paper Stand Clear (Peggy Bright Books)

Best Fan Writer

Alex Pierce, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus

Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth

Grant Watson, for body of work including the ‘Who50’ series in The Angriest

Sean Wright, for body of work including reviews in Adventures of a Bookonaut

Best Fan Artist

Kathleen Jennings, for body of work including The Dalek Game and The Tamsyn Webb Sketchbook

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce

Antipodean SF, Ion Newcombe

The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe

Snapshot 2012, Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Ian Mond, Jason Nahrung et. al.

Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely, et. al.

Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Sean Wright

Best New Talent

David McDonald

Faith Mudge

Steve Cameron

Stacey Larner

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review

Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, and Tehani Wessely, for review of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh, in ASIF

Tansy Rayner Roberts, for ‘Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That.’, in tor.com

David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Tehani Wessely, for the ‘New Who in Conversation’ series

Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, for ‘The Year in Review’, in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011

Rjurik Davidson, for ‘An Illusion in the Game for Survival’, a review of Reamde by Neal Stephenson, in The Age