OMG Nebula! OMG Philcon!

[catvalente]

EXCITING THINGS HAVE HAPPENED!

I was at Boskone all weekend, which was crazy and wonderful by turns. It’s been about eight months since I’ve been to a con and it was amazing to not be burned out on cons while at one. I really needed the rest, and I was so happy to see my friends.

AND THEN I GOT NOMINATED FOR A NEBULA OMFG.

I heard the news right before Boskone and couldn’t tell anyone while I was there! Even at the Clarkesworld reading where I read form Silently and Very Fast! Which is what was nominated! In the novella category! EEEEEEEE!

Seriously, this is insane. I wrote Silently for WSFA because I was the GOH at Capclave. Normal people give them short story reprints or a trunk novel. But I got it into my head that I should write an original AI story because then I could commit SF without anyone being all PLZ STAPLE YOUR DEGREE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE TO ALL SUBMISSIONS. From scratch, digging up an idea I’d been nesting on since I first moved to Ohio a million years ago but didn’t know enough about AI to write, a long, long story that was not long enough to be a novel but too long to be a short story. And then of course the deadline came as I was so exhausted from touring I was nearly catatonic.

It is what you call an unlikely contender. This is, in fact, my first Nebula nomination. The Andre Norton Award is Not a Nebula, as stated by large and bolded print in the rules. If I manage to get nominated for a Stoker some year, I’ll have the royal flush of nominations (Hugo, Nebula, WFA, and Stoker). No wins, but I’ve been nominated. I’ve been invited to the game. It’s a big deal to me, personally, and especially because SAVF is my first major work of SF as opposed to fantasy. It’s a work that I’d been planning for five years, learning and researching so I could get smart enough to write it. It means maybe there’s room for me in the science fiction club, after all.

Speaking of, my other big news is that a lovely gentleman waited in my signing line (I had a signing line! It was long! Wow!) so that he could ask me in person to be the Principal Speaker/GOH at Philcon 2012 this fall. Philcon is the oldest SF convention in the country, and I am floored to be asked. So I will see you all in Jersey just north of Thanksgiving, right?

It has been a long weekend of silent, repressed squeeing. Now I squee from the rooftops.

Yawp, too.

It is for times like this I made this icon.

Mirrored from cmv.com. Also appearing on @LJ and @DW. Read anywhere, comment anywhere.