Voting for the David Gemmell Legend Award ends on Saturday, and anyone can vote for free. If you’ve read the nominated works, I encourage you to vote. The nominees are:

• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
• Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
• The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett
• War Master’s Gate by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

The Gemmells also host the Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut novel and Ravenheart Award for best fantasy book cover artist, and voting for those awards also ends on Saturday.

Four Writing Excuses episodes have aired that I haven’t yet mentioned on the blog. These are: Showing Emotion, Creator vs. Creation, Sanderson’s 3rd Law, and a microcasting episode that touches on these topics:

• Should you include your prologue as one of the three chapters you send in a submission packet?
• How do you get out of the spot where your protagonist has no motivation?
• What’s the best way to prove to a spouse that your writing is more than a hobby?
• How do you get back into a project after taking a break from it?
• Where do you start research for historical fiction?
• Let’s say you sold your first book. How do you tackle book 2 in a series?
• How do you go about writing an overarching setting, like Brandon’s “Cosmere?”
• What part about being a writer do you most enjoy, besides the actual writing?

Shawn Speakman has put a short interview with me up at Suvudu, mostly about Firefight.

Today’s free episode of StarShipSofa includes a complete audiobook of my novelette “Defending Elysium,” narrated by Nick Camm. You can also read the text version here.

An interpretation of Shallan’s lullaby from Words of Radiance has been recorded by Vi Hart. Give it a listen!