Nebula Nominations, or How Did I get into Such August Company?

Only five years ago, I wouldn't have know *anyone* on the Nebula nominations list. The Nebulas felt like this magical black box that spat out wonderful stories that I'd never encountered before.

Now,  I am thrilled to say that several authors I know are it, and I feel as though I'm in the midst of a roiling stew of wonderful writing and terrific authors and super people. And I feel completely privileged to be there.

Going in the order in which they were arranged on the Nebula list::

1.  Vylar Kaftan, whose brilliant short story “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” was published in Lightspeed, is a member of my crit group, Second Draft.  I was one of the lucky ones to see this story at the crit stage!

2.  Aliette de Bodard, nominated for her novelette “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”,(Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 7/10) is a member of my online crit group, Written in Blood... 

3.  Shweta Narayan, also nominated for the novelette “Pishaach”,(published in The Beastly Bride anthology) was at Clarion with me. This was the first story we critiqued at Clarion. It was amazing several iterations ago.

4.  Eric James Stone, nominated for the novelette  “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made”,(Analog Science Fiction and Fact 9/10)  is a member of Codex, an online group for neo-pro authors. Subsets of us sometimes meet up at Cons.

5. J. Kathleen Cheney is another author I  met initially through Codex, and then at a couple of Cons. She's nominated for “Iron Shoes”, (Alembical 2); I look forward to reading it. Its sequel, Snow Comes to Hawk's Folly, is one of my favorites in the Panverse 2 anthology.

6. Everyone knows Ted Chiang, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at Wiscon, several times. His nominated novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, was published  in Subterranean.

7. Rachel Swirsky's another nominee from Subterranean, with “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”.  I know Rachel from various cons, too, and Vylar's our mutual friend. I heard her read an excerpt from this at Borderlands bookstore.

8. I met M.K. Hobson whose novel The Native Star,  was nominated, at Wiscon. This novel, partially set in San Francisco, was a great read.

9. And so was Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal.  It's a delightful Jane-Austen-type-novel but with magic as one of the womanly arts. Everyone knows Mary, and I'm pleased to be one of those everyones!

Congratulations, everyone!!! I'm looking forward to reading all the ones I haven't yet!

(Pardon the excessive exclamation points in this post. I think the occasion deserves it.)