World Fantasy Awards 2008 (not a con report)

[Mary Robinette Kowal and I at the bar Thursday night; I am kind of a big deal; photo copyright John Picacio]

In a weekend that included conversations about giant gladitorial penguins, 192-proof Polish rectified spirits, the 2008 US presidential election, meal plans, pink drinks, and everything in between, I lost two World Fantasy Awards.

Or rather, I was not the winner of the two World Fantasy Awards for which I was nominated. Theodora Goss' lovely story "The Singing of Mount Abora" from Logorrhea did win the Best Short Story award. I'm very happy for Dora, and was thrilled to pick up her statuette (even though some people will claim I smart-marked "I hoped to come up here for something else" when I got to the podium).

Last year, I tried to sum up my feelings about being nominated. This year, I was up for two awards, and those feelings were doubled. I know that I felt sick to my stomach for a good portion of the day.

But unlike last year, I did not allow myself to spend the day alone away from people. I had a lovely breakfast with Jay Caselberg and Jemma EveryHope at the Avenue Diner that was filled with interesting conversation to start my day. After that, I had several hours to kill before the ceremony. I walked around some, chatted to various people. Went into the dealer's room. Blah blah blah.

Eventually I went upstairs to get ready, and discovered the Packers game on tv. I, of course, called Jim Minz so that we could watch some of the game. The game took my mind off the impending ceremony, which was nice (a Packer win would have been nicer . . .).

Again, unlike last year, I worked to be a part of the banquet conversation. Even though I had relegated my mind to the fact that Windling and Snyder were most likely going to win for Non-professional, and that it was a toss-up for Best Anthology, although the scales looked to be tipped in Ellen Datlow's favor, I was still nervous when the ceremony started.

It's hard to explain, although I bet fellow nominees know exactly what I mean, but there's a point when the names are being read off that you absolutely DO NOT WANT TO WIN, because you do not want to get up in front of people to say anything. Will I laugh? Cry? Mumble? Drop the award? And when someone else's name is called there's a moment that goes something like: ohno ohno ohno ohno ohno ohno whew! wait . . . crap.

And I take great solace in the fact that one of the stories I edited won an award. And I am truly honored at being nominated in the first place. There were a lot of congratulations for me afterward, which was nice. There was also a few 'you were robbed' sentiments, but even if I did feel that way, it does me no good.

There's no way I can try to provide a list of all the people I saw and talked to over the weekend. So instead, here's an incomplete list of people whom I met for the first time this weekend (or spent a decent amount of time talking to for the first time; alphabetized for convenience's sake):

Amelia Beamer, Victoria Blake, Charlene Brusso, Paul Cornell, Aliette de Bodard, Jemma EveryHope, Mike Gallagher, Daryl Gregory, Alaya Johnson, Karen Jones, Heather Lindsley, Marjorie M. Liu, Todd Lockwood, Todd Lockwood, Adrienne Loska, Lee Modesitt, Michelle Muenzler, Derryl Murphy, Garth Nix, Christie Skipper Ritchotte, Diana Rowland, Liz Scheier, Ken Scholes, Robert Shearman, Carrie Vaughn, Jacob Weisman, Tad Williams, Walter Jon Williams . . . I'm sure there were more, but that seems like quite a lot, right? I apologize for anyone that I missed.

It also looks like I met/talked to more women than men as far as new acquaintances go, which is always nice. I also had a lot of people coming up to me to meet me this weekend, including very well established writer types who, as one put it, were "very well aware of the work you do."

There was no one (and that includes people from other countries) I met this weekend we had never heard of Electric Velocipede, or me for that matter. In fact, it was quite clear that people wanted to meet me based on the magazine and the anthology. It was very cool and more than a little disconcerting to be made aware of that level of recognition in the field.

I guess I had better be on my best behavior from here on out, right?