I’m still eligible for a Campbell, dammit!
Friday, February 26th, 2010Well, last year I missed the Campbell nominations for Best New SF Writer by one measly vote, so for my final year of eligibility I’m throwing caution to the winds and announcing my unofficial non-campaign to put me over the top. It’s bad form to campaign TOO hard for those things (though you have until March 13th to vote here). Meanwhile I have a team of strategists digging up dirt on my competitors. For example:
Erin Cashier: who I went to Clarion with. . . she can switch across the breadth of SF (and beyond) with astonishing skill, and is as happy writing about wizards as robots. If I tried to write about wizards, it would be embarrassing, and I would create crap like “Fred the Magician and his Magic Fucking Hat.” And Erin writes about planet-sized spaceships too: her “Cruciger” remains one of the best stories I’ve ever read, and can be found in last year’s Writers of the Future Anthology.
I’m not doing a great job of character assassination, am I? Ok, how about:
Jenny Rappaport: not only was she the agent extraordinaire who sold my Autumn Rain trilogy to Bantam, but she also is a top-notch writer in her own right; stories include “The Sock Thief,” and my personal favorite, “The Untimely Demise of the Quack Quacks,” which she wrote when she was in the third grade, and which still cracks me up every time I read it. So technically her eligibility really ought to have passed by now. Besides, when I was in the third grade I was largely preoccupied with picking my nose and no one ever thought of giving me a prize for it.
DB Grady: who served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan (!), and whose writing combines two of my favorite things: Mars and noir. And from the looks of his website, the man’s as big a Raymond Chandler fan as I am.
Ian McHugh: guy writes fab stories, and won Writers of the Future altogether last year. And he’s Australian too, which clearly gives him an advantage in that that’s where this year’s convention is. At least I sure hope it does, because I’M HALF AUSTRALIAN MYSELF AND AM DESCENDED FROM A FUCKING CONVICT WHO GOT HORSEWHIPPED BY THE BRITISH SO VOTE FOR ME DAMMIT. (That’s actually true. And thanks for letting me get it off my chest.)
And the most vulnerable target of all:
Gail Carriger: who is so commercially successful these days that there’s no way she could be a good writer too. Because that would be too much for my heart to bear. <Leafs through Gail’s debut novel SOULESS while weeping >
Anyway, here’s the ballot, which you have until March 13th to fill out. . though my razors hacked Aussiecon’s computers so that you can’t submit it without putting my name on there. Because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re descended from convicts.