Title: Velveteen vs. The Blind Date.
Summary: What is there for a formerly retired superheroine who's managed to find herself in the state she was aiming for—good—and somehow thrust back into the public eye (bad) at the very same time? Is it time for her to start moving past the things that have been holding her back?

( After the better part of a summer spent in Portland--a summer spent patrolling the rooftops, fighting crime with teddy bears, and being cruelly reminded of the way spandex likes to creep upward when worn for extended periods of time--Velveteen was starting to feel like maybe she had things back under some form of control...Collapse )

The ballot for the 2010 Shirley Jackson Award has been announced. Shirley Jackson is one of those writers I've admired since before I really fully understood that the people whose names were on the front of books had written them, rather than nurturing them in strange gardens, where they were watered with blood and cream, and bloomed only under the light of the full moon. Although maybe, that's what writers really do, and when we talk about "writing," we really mean "plundering the hearts of our neighbors for seeds." Who knows?

Shirley Jackson wrote "The Lottery," and The Haunting of Hill House, which has scared the crap out of me on a regular basis since I was seven. The Shirley Jackson Awards were established with the approval of her estate, to honor "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic."

This year, Feed is on the ballot.

To quote the website, the award is "voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors." It's a jury of my peers, and whether I'm found guilty or not, it is truly an honor to be brought before them. I'll be really honest here: I never expected this. I don't think of myself as writing the kind of books that get nominated for awards, no matter how much I love them. My garden bears strange fruit, but not the kind that takes the ribbon at the County Fair.

But there I am. On a ballot with Peter Straub and Robert Jackson Bennett and Neil Gaiman and Michelle Paver...and it's amazing.

It's just amazing.