The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is currently open for voting! This award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugos, even though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo, and will be presented this year in Chicago, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony. Having been on the Campbell ballot in 2010, I can testify that it is a huge, huge honor to be nominated, and that it gets your name in front of a lot of eyes that might not otherwise have heard of you.

(I can also testify that winning is amazeballs best thing oh my sweet Great Pumpkin corn maze paradise wonderful. But that's probably true of winning most awards that you really, really want.)

If you are currently a member, either Attending or Supporting, of Chicon 7, you are eligible to vote for the Campbell Award, along with the Hugo Awards. If you're not a member, either Attending or Supporting, you can view the membership rates by clicking right here. A Supporting Membership comes with voting rights and the complete Hugo packet, and is only $50.

Because writers who are eligible for the Campbell are, by their very nature, relatively new writers, it's possible that you don't know anything about this year's candidates. Jim Hines has sensibly decided to help you with this little problem, and has conducted interviews with all five of this year's nominees. Go, read, and be enlightened!

We have a truly awesome class of Campbell nominees this year; any one of them is worthy of the tiara. Because remember, the Campbell is one of only two major genre awards that comes with a tiara (the other is the Tiptree).

In closing, I present the comic strip I drew to commemorate my own eligibility:



TESTIFY!

Click the thumbnail to see the details!

Wicked Girls being nominated for a Hugo Award made me stop and think about just how many wonderful, wicked girls I know. This comic is just a few of them. (Seriously. Every girl I drew, I realized two more I had forgotten.)

Top row, left to right: Seanan, Vixy, Erin, Kate, Amy, Patty.
Second row, left to right: Rachel, Kaja, Brooke, Betsy (with Arial).
Third row, left to right: Devany, Teddy, Kirsten, Morgan, Emily, Torrey.
Fourth row, left to right: Jude (with Frost), Tara, Bear (with GRD), Catherynne.
Bottom row, left to right: Beckett, Teddy, Tara, Vixy, Seanan, Amy, Dr. Mary, Kate.

I am sorry I couldn't fit more people into a single sheet of paper. You are all, forever and always, amazing.

And now we reach the end of our countdown to the release of A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]; it comes out tomorrow, and I don't feel like going into negative numbers. ("Reason -6 why I am getting really tired of this game...") One more day. One more day before the sky falls on my head and I suddenly have to admit that book two is actually out.

Aigh.

On the plus side, this means that as of tomorrow, I can start going crazy over different things. You know, things like "do people like the book?", "will people like book three?", and "will I be the top-selling paperback at Borderlands for the month of March?" (Hint on that last one: they do mail order, they'll have signed copies, and I would really appreciate it if you could order from them if you wanted a signed and personalized book but can't get to any of my signing events.) I can also resume going crazy over the process of writing book five, The Brightest Fell, which is kicking my ass in the most delightful of ways. Seriously, this book is like "no, you don't know what's going on, now shut up and sit down." If I don't wear my seat belt, I may go through the front windshield of the book the next time it hits the brakes. It's very odd, but sort of awesome.

Amy the Fiddler arrives tonight, fresh from the wilds of Alabama, where she's been staying with my Halloween Family for a week. I envy her immensely, but I'll forgive her instantly, because it means I get an Amy, and I really need an Amy right now.

In other news, I have uploaded a bunch of new strips to the "With Friends Like These..." strip gallery, and will continue updating it as I get them re-sized for easy viewing. We're actually moving into the ones where the art isn't quite so primitive. Yay!

And now we must rinse.

Okay, so here's the thing: I qualify for the Campbell Award this year (and next year). You can view the rules by clicking this link, and they basically come down to a) when you made your first professional sale, and b) how long ago that was. The John W. Campbell Award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugo, even though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo. To be able to nominate a writer for the 2010 award, you must have either been an attending member of Anticipation (the 67th World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal) or be a supporting or attending member of Aussiecon Four (the 68th World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne) before Jan. 31, 2010. (So it's too late to become a member of the convention this year, but again, I still qualify next year, as do many other awesome people.)

I would, I think naturally, like to win this award. I mean, who doesn't want to win an award? Especially an award that will be presented in Australia, THE LAND OF POISON AND FLAME? That's like, the delicious whipped cream on top of the sundae of venomous awesome that is an entire continent full of cuddly things forged in the very flames of hell. But Australia isn't my main inspiration here.

No.

Did you know that the Campbell Award comes with a tiara?!

I mean...



...just sayin'.

It's official: my short story, 'Animal Husbandry,' will be appearing in the anthology Grants Pass, to be published in July 2009 by Morrigan Books. This anthology focuses on the world eighteen months after a man-made pandemic has killed, oh, practically everybody. (We're not quite talking The Stand levels of 'who dies? Everybody dies!' here, but we're definitely into 'game over, man, game over' territory.) The world's few survivors are staggering towards the promise of a safe haven, a meeting-place for the people who made it through alive.

Grants Pass, Oregon.

I don't know about the rest of the anthology, but I can promise you virology, corpses, and big buckets of creepy. Also, a chance to get your hands on my very first anthology appearance, which is going to be awesome. Remember, your purchase prevents my mother from acquiring more than six hundred copies, and thus saves me from being forced to kill her.

Or, to announce this fantastic news in another way:



Because nothing says 'holy shit, I sold a story!' like a comic strip full of corpses.

PS: James Gunn needs to call me.

Mantis: still in my bathroom. He has relocated his tiny insectivore self to the roll of paper towels, where he has a higher vantage from which to snatch unsuspecting flies out of the air and devour their tiny brainless bodies. He's very yellow, and too small for my camera (which is actually Rey's camera, and not terribly high-tech) to be very happy about trying to focus on him. Which is a pity, 'cause he's pretty.

The mantis will probably be going to live in Kate and GP's garden tonight, where, as Kate puts it, 'he will grow fat and strong in the Bird of Paradise.' As they currently have no mantids, and I have an entire home-grown colony, this is probably fair, but I'm still going to miss him.

Lycanthropy: still finished. I was a little worried when I woke up this morning that I'd discover my belief that the book was done to be some sort of perverse, wicked hallucination, brought about by inhaling too many Sharpie fumes, but no, the book is really done. This draft of the book, anyway. Now I get to start doing the heavy lifting of revision and correction...but since you can't revise or correct until a book is finished, I'm really not finding myself all that concerned.

Although...



...just sayin'.

Lilly would like my attention now, and as I do not believe in thwarting Siamese when avoidable, I'll be back later.