I'm hommmme -and won the first Shirley Jackson award!!

I had a wonderful, exhausting time at Readercon culminating with the Shirley Jackson awards at which all the winning stories were published by me. Scary but very satisfying.

The best part were the nominee "gifts" everyone was given: a large stone with "Shirley Jackson Awards 2007" printed on it. I will cherish it and promise not to throw it at those who don't like the anthology.

SHORT STORY: "The Monsters of Heaven", Nathan Ballingrud (Inferno, Tor)
COLLECTION: The Imago Sequence, Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
ANTHOLOGY: Inferno, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
NOVELLA: "Vacancy", Lucias Shepard (Subterranean 7, September 2007)
NOVELETTE: "The Janus Tree", Glen Hirshberg (Inferno, Tor)
NOVEL: Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)

A bit more on Readercon

Just catching up to lj friend posts and realized I need to at least say a bit more about Readercon (there WILL be pix)...I had a wonderful time but also realized after the fact (and even a little during) that I missed saying hello (or interacting more than saying hello to a few people I know from online groups--I apologize. I either didn't recognize you until too late or kept seeing you enroute to somewhere else that I was running late. Also, there were people I would have liked to have seen that I didn't (even though it's a very small space). Finally, I didn't say goodbye to many folks I would have liked to.

My panels went ok, although I wasn't totally delighted with any of them. They kept getting sidetracked off the center of the topic or avoided the topic completely. No one at fault, just a confluence of panel members, possibly differing agendas, or a misunderstanding of what the panel was supposed to cover.

I attended the 40 minutes movie of Tom Disch reading his 33 poems just after Charlie Naylor's death. He read well. It was "nice" to "see" him one last time. I wasn't as emotionally affected as I worried I'd be. I didn't stay for the discussion afterwards.

I drank too much and slept too little. I had panels at 10 am twice --couldn't use my laptop to fetch email because the hotel wanted to charge $10 a computer per day. I just used the free biz center downstairs to read and respond to the most important emails.

I have to put the photos up before Wed because that's when the Jackson Award fundraiser at KGB is and I'll be taking more photos there!

Two new raffle items

Here are more items donated by Diana Gill of HarperCollins:

a signed first edition hardcover of Neil Gaiman’s ANANSI BOYS.

a galley of Neal Stephenson’s upcoming novel, ANATHEM.



And some more info regarding Neil Gaiman's keyboard courtesy of Paul Berger and Matt Kressel:


"Paul Berger, who is currently attending Clarion San Diego emailed me and said: 'I asked Neil about the keyboard he’s donating. He says it’s a pre-Windows IBM from either ‘93 or ‘96. I asked what he had used it for and he thought about it for a bit and said, ‘Sandman, probably.’'"



(too many quotes within quotes here says I but you get the idea)

and two from Nanci Kalanta:
Editor Nanci Kalanta of Horror World is donating Lucy A. Snyder’s debut collection, SPARKS AND SHADOWS, with seventeen short stories, seven poems and four humor essays. It is signed by Lucy and Nalo Hopkinson (who wrote the Intro).

Editor Nanci Kalanta of Horror World is donating a signed trade paperback of Steven Savile’s LAUGHING BOY’S SHADOW. Signed by by Steven Savile, Gary Braunbeck (Intro) and Robert Sammelin (artist).