Drowning Nor Waving

Spring’s finally sticking around here, and I am daring to leave my writer cave.  Which means: A bucket of upcoming public appearances!  Behold the list of them!

• If you’re interested in hearing about the writing process, Toronto’s underground spaces, and the secrets of cities, I’m doing a Keep Toronto Reading event on just those things on Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 7pm, at the Kennedy/Eglinton branch of the Toronto Public Library.  There will be books for sale at this one, if only a handful!
• The Apocalypse Tour is riding again, with a few Southern Ontario dates!  On Thursday, May 2, 2013, we’ll be at Essa Public Library’s Angus Branch in Angus, Ontario at 4pm — and by we, we mean Megan Crewe, Adrienne Kress, Maureen McGowan, and Cheryl Rainfield.
• On May 4 at 2pm, Megan, Maureen, Cheryl, and I will descend upon Chapters South London to answer questions, sign books, and terrorize the populace.  There’s a Facebook event page here if you’re minded to RSVP, and it’ll be Maureen’s birthday, so a good round of the happy birthday song is welcomed and encouraged!
• On May 5 at 2pm, Megan, Maureen, Cheryl, and Courtney Summers will finish this mini-leg of the Apocalypse Tour without me at Chapters Oshawa, because I am flaking to lead a Jane’s Walk that afternoon.

 

• Finally, I will be at the Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, from May 16-19, 2013.  I plan to have a kicky awards dress and a minimum of jet lag.

And that’s the news!

Originally published at leahbobet. You can comment here or there.

Not much to actually talk about these days: revising continues apace, with a hiccup in the form of my favourite tea shop/work hangout closing last week. RIP, T Cafe. I will miss your smoked duck sandwich and the triple-decker grilled cheese and the pitchers of brewed iced white tea that were only a couple bucks each, and now I need to find somewhere else to work that has wifi and plugs that work and actually stays open to a decent evening hour.

The rest of the week's been taken up by little things: setting up the wireless router, finally; hanging posters; mac and cheese at the Vic; figuring out the shopping list for the housewarming party this weekend; marathoning Vampire Diaries with Dr. My Roommate; a fruit pick down by College that netted me eleven pounds of fresh red grapes. Figuring out what to do with eleven pounds of fresh red grapes, which is still in progress.

I am knitting a fuzzy sweater, because it is cold.

---

Some scattered writery half-news stuff going on, in the middle of all the revising:

Unfortunately Best American Fantasy is closing up shop. Because there won't be an anthology this year, they've posted the list of stories that were under consideration for the fourth volume, and "Six" is included.

The full nomination stats for this year's Hugos are up, and as papersky would put it, apparently "Sugar" came twenty-first out of five, with 11 nominations. This is ultimately meaningless, but rather neat: both for me and for the rest of the Shadow Unit crew.

And my fingers are cold, so it's back to knitting. And vampires. And knitting.

--things have silted up into my inbox and accumulated.

One of them is my draft Ad Astra panel schedule, which is as follows:

Fri 8:00PM, Salon 241
Fairytale Inspiration: Leah Bobet (m), Ken Lillie-Paetz, Miriam Harrison, Marie Bilodeau
Why retell stories that many people already know, and likely grew up with? How do you use elements of fairytales effectively? What can they bring to your story?

Fri 10:00PM, Salon 241
Diversity Balance in SF/Fantasy Anthologies: Leah Bobet (m), Marc Mackay, Derwin Mak, Ryan McFadden, Gavin Stephens
Are women and racial minorities being given fair representation in anthologies? Is this an issue? What are the best ways for a publication to broaden its range of authors and to reach out beyond its "comfort zone"?

Sat 6:00PM, Salon 443
Reading: Leah Bobet, Sarah Jane Elliott

Sun 12:00PM, Salon 243
Not Your Bitch! - Entitlement: Leah Bobet, Gemma Files, Violette Malan (m), Marcy Italiano, J.M. Frey
What responsibilities, if any, do creators have to their fans? Are fans entitled to anything?

Sun 2:00PM, Salon 243
Business Basics of Writing: Leah Bobet (m), Karina Sumner-Smith, James Allan Gardner, Jana Paniccia


I am super excited about that last one, since it's my hobbyhorse suggestion, and I am super excited to be reading with Sarah. I'm also amused that this is the second year in a row where my panel schedule will reflect that I read the internet, but yanno. Someone's got to.

---

Some of the other things that washed up in the ol' inbox were the usual run of reviews and reviewlike objects:

Joe Sherry at Adventures in Reading has "Sugar" on his Hugo nomination ballot, as well as a bunch of stuff from Shadow Unit and assorted friends of.

(Incidentally, I did my own Hugo nominations while away, and nominated four writers for the Campbell, all of whom I think do good work and/or have the potential to do even better work. All of them happened to be writers of colour, three of whom are women, two of whom aren't US-based and one more of whom isn't US-raised. This was not consciously planned; it kinda just happened that way. So as an aside to the people for whom SFF is a really white, male, US-centric place? The new face of science fiction is up here. Srsly.)

Also, there's a double-barrelled review of the February 2010 Realms of Fantasy at Tangent Online, and both reviewers appear to have liked "Mister Oak".

---

Okay, that covers stuff I need to slap up on the blog for this working day. And it is nice and sunny out, if not as sunny as it was in Arizona, and I would like to make myself something vegetably for dinner while I still have the daylight. 'Scuse me.

What're you nominating, or what would you nominate if you had the chance? What do you think is worth directing one's reading attention to?

Okay, so I asked, and you answered, and the overwhelming consensus was that I should get over myself and just post what I've got eligible for nominations this year. The first half of that equation is still in process (heh) but enough to handle the second.

---

Novella
Sugar, Shadow Unit 2x02, April 2009.

Short Stories
"Bell, Book, and Candle" in Clockwork Phoenix, Mike Allen, ed., July 2008.
"Kimberley Ann Duray is Not Afraid" in Strange Horizons, week of September 29, 2008.
"Boxing Day" in H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror #5, April 2009.
"The Parable of the Shower" in Lone Star Stories #33, June 2009.
"Six" in Clockwork Phoenix 2, July 2009.
"Mister Oak" in Realms of Fantasy, February 2010 (release December 2009, according to slushmaster).

Obviously I wrote none of it, but would urge people to consider anything published in Ideomancer this year. Because our authors are awesome, yo.

That being said, if I was eligible to nominate stuff for the Nebula I would be nominating:

The City and the City, China Mieville
The Manual of Detection, Jedediah Berry
The Love We Share Without Knowing, Christopher Barzak
"Intertropical Convergence Zone", Nadia Bulkin, in ChiZine #37
"Miles Blows His Last", Jason L. Corner, in Ideomancer, Sept. 2009
"The Promise of Touch", Steven Mohan, Jr., in Ideomancer, March 2009.
"each thing I show you is a piece of my death", Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, Clockwork Phoenix 2, July 2009.
"Snow Dragons," Elizabeth Bear, Subterranean Press, Summer 2009.

That is most of what truly knocked me on my ass this year.

There you have it, and I'm going back to work now.

It is Nebula time from now until February 15th. Many persons of my acquaintance are posting their eligible works. This means I need to go to you, the people, with something:

[Poll #1486929]

Okay, since I was stupid and lost track of time, I didn't post a reminder to vote for the Aurora Awards. However, they were awarded this weekend at Keycon, and here's the results:

Best Long-Form Work in English:
The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson (Warner)

Best Long-Form Work in French:
Cimetière du musée by Diane Boudreau (du Phoenix)

Best Short-Form Work in English:
"Like Water in the Desert" by Hayden Trenholm (Challenging Destiny)

Best Short-Form Work in French:
"Sur la plage des Èpaves" by Laurent MacAllister (Solaris)

Best Work in English (Other):
Under Cover of Darkness edited by Julie E. Czerneda & Jana Paniccia (DAW)

Best Work in French (Other):
No nominations.

Artistic Achievement:
Lar deSouza

Fan Achievement (Fanzine):
No award.

Fan Achievement (Organizational):
Penny Lipman

Fan Achievement (Other):
Paul Bobbitt (editor of The Voyageur)

Lifetime Achievement:
Dennis Mullin

I am thrilled that The New Moon's Arms won this year, since it was one of my favourite books of 2007 and, I felt, just all-around one of the best books that came out, Canadian or not, in the whole year. I whooped. :)

I am also thrilled that Under Cover of Darkness was recognized, since thesandtiger and Julie Czerneda did such a great job putting the book together and working to promote it in ways that were fun (obligatory disclosure: I was one of the planners for the ARG run at Ad Astra 2007 to do said promotion. And it was fun!).

Congrats to all the winners and nominees both!

I am informed that "Three Deaths", which appeared in Lone Star Stories #21, has been nominated for the 2008 long form Rhysling Award.

I think they're giving them out at Readercon again this year, so I even get to fancy up and lose in person. :)

Whee!