Write-a-Thon Midpoint Progress Report

As part of the Clarion West Write-a-thon, I’ve been writing the second draft of my current work-in-progress novel, tentatively titled Noah’s Dragon. You can track my chapter-by-chapter progress in the Write-a-thon tab. Overall, I’m pretty happy with where I am– I’ve managed to stay on track with my goal of editing five chapters a week.

It hasn’t been perfectly smooth sailing, though. Some chapters are very easy to edit, while others require more work than writing them in the first place. So as I’ve worked, I’ve made a list of “Third Draft Changes”– things which I don’t have time to do now, but that I want to work on in the third draft. These may be scenes that need to be add, or overall things (like foreshadowing and explaining the magic system) that I’m working on now, but may need to be improved with an overall look in the third draft.

However, I’ve decided that this week I’m going to pause and essentially “backfill” by taking care of some of the items on that list now. I want to shore up what I’ve got of the second draft so I can finish strongly– I suspect the second half is probably going to require more work than the first half.

This is a shortened week, anyway. Starting on Thursday, and continuing through Sunday, I’ll be at the Cascade Writers Workshop, so my usual writing time this week is cut in half– which makes it a good time to pause in my chapter-by-chapter progress and shore up what I have, rather than rush through another five chapters this week.

There are 23 chapters total, so at five chapters per week in a six week write-a-thon, I had an extra week and a half in there anyway. Using this week to shore things up means I’m still on track to finish all 23 chapters by the end of the write-a-thon, and it’ll hopefully be a stronger effort for taking this extra time.

Meanwhile, at the Cascade Writers Workshop, I’ll be workshopping Chapter 1 of the novel, so I’ll hopefully walk away from this weekend with some more ideas of where to go as I finish up the second draft and for when I start the third. And of course, it’ll be a fun four days of hanging out with writers and hopefully recharging my creative batteries a bit. I’ll also have the chance to practice my book pitch in front of an agent, which is something I haven’t done before. I’m looking forward to it!

A Few Writing Updates

I haven’t blogged much about my writing lately, but it’s not because I haven’t been working on it. If anything, I’ve been afraid that by blogging about what I’m doing, I’ll jinx what’s been an otherwise productive few months. It seems like everytime I blog about a current project, I lose momentum on it… although that could also just be my paranoid writer self.

Anyway, I do have a few updates that I wanted to share:

1) I finished the rough draft of a new novel.

I’ve already posted this on Twitter and Facebook, so if you’ve already seen it there, I apologize for the repeat. But here I can actually go into a bit more detail. I started writing the rough draft of a new novel at the Rainforest Writers Retreat this year, and on June 15, I finished it. The draft is 70,180 words long, and was written in about three and a half months… which I’m pretty pleased with, considering I went through spells of multiple weeks where I didn’t work on it.

Of the three novel-length pieces I’ve finished, this is the one I’m happiest with, without a doubt. I’ll be workshopping Chapter 1 at the Cascade Writers Conference in July, and I’m looking forward to that. But in the meantime, I need to revise the rest of the novel, which brings me to the next item on the list.

2) I’ll be participating in the Clarion West Write-a-thon.

The Clarion West season is upon us, which means lots of author readings, writer socials, and of course the Write-a-thon, Clarion West’s big fundraiser and a good motivation to get some writing done. My goal will be to edit one full chapter a day, and a minimum of five per week. This is the summer, after all… have to save some room for hiking! (On that note, if you want to see photos from my hikes and various summer trips, check out my photoblog.)

But for the Write-a-thon, I’ll be trying to edit five chapters a week. The novel has 23 chapters, so it should take me just under five weeks to get through the whole thing. Any extra time, I’ll use for revision and cleanup of the overall work. People who’ve done a lot of editing might think I’m doing this backward, that I should do large-scale, overall edits and then go chapter-by-chapter… but I actually think the chapter-by-chapter process is going to work better for me personally. We’ll see how it goes. Despite the fact that this is my third novel-length piece that I’ve written, this is the first novel-length piece that I’ve edited, so I’ll be aiming to find the best process for me, and hopefully learning a lot in the process.

So with that said, please sponsor me! Clarion West is an awesome workshop for aspiring writers, and a great benefit to the writing community. But it’s expensive to run, and tuition isn’t cheap. It’d be nice to keep student costs down and increase the scholarship opportunities, and in that regard, every dollar helps. Think of it as a down payment toward the next generation of awesome science fiction & fantasy books.

3) I have a new short story coming out later in 2014.

Because of all the novel work I’ve been doing this year, my short stories have suffered. Nevertheless, I have written a couple– one of which I’m currently waiting to hear back from on its latest submission– but by and large I’m not writing or submitting short stories this year.

That said, it’s not entirely quiet on that front. I do have a short story, The Gatebuilders’ Daughter, which is due to appear in the magazine Stupefying Stories later this year. It may be a few months yet, but I’ll let you know when that appears.

So that’s about it for now, but I’ll let you know as more news comes. Between writing, photography, and hiking, it’s going to be a busy summer. I’m looking forward to it.

And on that note, Happy Solstice, everybody!

I Had A Horrific Weekend (in a good way)

Last weekend the annual World Horror Convention took place in Portland. It’s a slightly different sort of convention than ones I’ve been to in the past; it’s very small, and it was largely composed of a much different group of people than the sci-fi/fantasy cons in the area. One reason is that it was a very professional con; cosplay was not a thing there, and the focus was almost completely on the professional field of writing. So horror writers and editors came from across the country, while lots of writers who live nearby but don’t write horror stayed home.

I hadn’t realized until now just how distinct a genre horror was from science fiction and fantasy– at least, professionally speaking. There really aren’t any large publishers along the lines of Tor Books or DAW; publishers are small independent operations, and on top of that, there’s a larger focus on short stories. Horror seems to thrive as short fiction, even more so than sci-fi/fantasy.

Some of the differences can be seen in the categories of awards given out at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet. The Bram Stoker Awards are basically the horror genre’s equivalent of the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Horror Writers’ Association. Categories in the Bram Stoker Awards which are not in the Nebulas or the Hugos include Best Anthology, Best Young Adult Novel, and Best First Novel– all of which I think are superb categories, especially the latter two, which I’d love to see in the equivalent SF&F awards. (In fairness, Best Anthology is a category at the World Fantasy Awards.)

Attending the banquet required the purchase of an $50 extra ticket, but it was well worth it. I took plenty of pictures (even though, as is the norm for convention stage shows, the lighting was terrible, blinding the participants without the benefit of illuminating them for either the audience or the photographers). The food was decent, the wine at the table was free, and the company at the table was excellent.

Most excitingly, though, I had a personal interest in the Best Anthology category, given that my story Someone to Remember is the leadoff story in After Death…, which was edited by Eric J. Guignard and one of five nominees in the category. And much to my pleasure, Eric won! Which I figure means I can claim about 2% of a Bram Stoker Award.

Other highlights of the weekend included a trip with Scott Edelman and several other folks to Pok Pok, a well-known authentic Thai restaurant in Portland. That was quite good, even if the image of Scott with a fish head in his mouth, making the fish head talk, is one that may haunt my dreams for some time. Mostly, though, it was just fun to hang out with friends in Portland, meet some new folks, and celebrate Eric Guignard’s award with him.

Full gallery of photos here.

By the way, if you enjoy the photography I do at conventions or while traveling, please consider giving my Photography Facebook page a “like”, if you haven’t already. I’ll be posting a lot of galleries and photography-specific announcements there. And while I hate to be “that guy” who begs for likes or shares, I haven’t actually mentioned my Facebook page here before, and well, I’m at 99 likes! The obsessive-compulsive in me wants to hit a 3 digit number!

Another Year of Onions and Roses at Norwescon

Last weekend was Norwescon 37, and the fourth I’ve attended since moving to Seattle. Norwescon has become my “home” con, in multiple senses of the word. It’s the largest sci-fi/fantasy con in Seattle focused on literature and writing– which makes it a good home for me as a writer. But it’s also large enough to host a thriving cosplay community, which makes it a good home for me as a photographer. It’s small enough to be friendly and low-pressure, yet big enough to get some energy out of the crowd. Every year I go, the con becomes more enjoyable as I meet more people, make new friends, and feel more a part of the community.

Every year after the con is over, Norwescon solicits feedback from congoers, asking people to submit feedback in the form of “roses” (good things) and “onions” (bad things). So with that in mind, here I go. Some of these are duplicates from previous years, but if they remain prominent in my mind, well, I’m including them again.

Rose: Panels. There were a lot of good panels this time– and some more advanced and creative stuff, alongside the usual Worldbuilding 101 and ZOMG E-Books.

First Page Idol was a panel with some nice audience interaction, where you could anonymously submit your first page and the panel would judge it, which resulted in some interesting feedback. There were also some good science panels– I particularly enjoyed David Levine’s recap of his visit to NASA.

A few of the panels seemed to wander around their subject a bit, never entirely delving into what they were meant to delve into. For my money, anytime a panel can get past the uber-basic introduction that is widely known to anyone with a passing fancy in the subject, into more detailed and interesting stuff, it’s a win for me. This tends to be why I favor panels with narrowly focused and clear-defined topics, especially if they’re dependent on some unique knowledge of the panelists.

All in all, Norwescon is better than most cons at making interesting panels. In fact, the panels are popular enough that they’re frequently standing room only… the Cascade rooms are often too small for the panels they’re trying to host. I don’t know what the solution is there.

I also saw a lot of demo panels, where the panelists were actually demonstrating something and the audience was usually involved. Those were fun. Weapons and armor demos, horror makeup demos– those were my favorites, without a doubt.

Onion: Registration. Norwescon had (as far as I can tell) basically the same process in place as last year. This meant long lines as people waited to input all their information into a computer (there were about eight computers in the reg area), printed a sheet to take to the cashier, then paid and got their badge. For pre-registered folks with a sheet already printed, they could sometimes skip ahead in the line, but if you weren’t registered, or had pre-registered but didn’t have a sheet, well, then, you were stuck.

There has got to be a better system. These days, Norwescon is the only con I go to that has more than a five-minute wait to register, and from my understanding, there were points on Thursday afternoon when the line was at least an hour long. Maybe I just never see peak times at the other cons? When I was at RadCon, I did see the line back up a bit a few times as I walked by on the first day, but never to an hour long.

One difference between Norwescon and most other cons is that Norwescon prints the names on the badges right at registration, whereas most cons pre-print their badges, or use regular old paper stickers for people’s names. Norwescon’s method results in a slightly nicer badge, but it’s never exactly well executed. This year, the badges were printed well (and you could choose to have ONLY your badge name printed– props for that), but the art design of the badge was such that you could only read the left half of the badge, before the black printing blended into the darkly-colored art on the right side.

Maybe this is a case where something is being Rube Goldberg’d that doesn’t need to be? I mean, in the end, I think most people would be happy with easy registration and a readable badge.

Rose: Room parties. As usual, the room parties were awesome. On Friday night, I particularly enjoyed a party that was hosted by Evil Girlfriend Media, celebrating the launch of an anthology titled Bless Your Mechanical Heart. (Side note: Several friends of mine have stories in this anthology. But favoritism aside, I’ve read a few stories so far and am highly impressed.)

Just like last year, my favorite room party was Master Plan, which is always a blast– the mixology contest on Friday was particularly fun (speaking as a non-contestant, anyway).

Onion: Dealer’s Room. The Dealer’s Room was okay this year, however, it did seem to lack in terms of booksellers. There was only one small bookseller, from what I saw (there were a few writers’ associations and authors with booths, both inside and outside, but only one dealer that appeared to sell more than a handful of books). If an attendee wanted to buy a book by the Guest of Honor, so they could get an autograph (as was the case with a friend of mine), it appears they were S.O.L.

It seems like it would be worthwhile to ensure that there’s a dealer who can sell books by the Guests of Honor and the various writing panelists, so that interested attendees can spend their money… but that didn’t appear to be the case.

Other than that, I had no complaints about the dealer’s room. But I can haz books for sale at my sci-fi con please?

Rose: Photography. I feel like the Saturday evening photo area gets a little bit better organized each year. The layout was slightly changed from last year… the standing area was only behind one row of chairs, instead of two, which meant that the people in the second row weren’t caught in an awkward half-standing crouch, like I was last year.

The photo area is set up like an L-shape, with photographers on both sides of the L looking toward the cosplayer(s) in the middle. I was standing on the short side of the L, while all the photographers giving direction were on the long side of the L… which is okay, although I do have a large number of profile shots because the cosplayer just never turned to face the short side. There are two marks for the cosplayers to stand on, one facing each direction, but they would frequently face the long side from both marks, because that’s where the photographers talking to them were. Tip to cosplayers: for a better chance of seeing good shots, face both directions.

Despite my whining, I did enjoy the photo area– it’s a feature not seen at many other cons– and I stood there for over four hours on Saturday night taking pictures.

Speaking of pictures, you can see the full set on Flickr or on my photography Facebook page.

Thanks again to all the folks who made Norwescon awesome, especially the volunteers who put in a lot of hard work before, during, and after. See you next year!

Creative Vibes by Lake Quinault

Yesterday, I got home from four days at the Rainforest Resort Village on Lake Quinault, on the southwest side of the Olympic Mountains. I was there with 36 other writers, surrounded by lots of awesome creative vibes as well as some awesome scenery– the event was the Rainforest Writers Village, and the goal was to retreat to somewhere isolated with other like-minded folks to get some writing done.

For me, it definitely worked. Over the course of those four days, I wrote 22,346 words for a new novel– it’s a steampunk alt-history story, and I’m really pleased with how it went. Being in the Rainforest, able to focus on the writing for long periods of time without worrying about going to the gym or filing taxes or sorting bills or checking the Internet, was a blast– and because I had a plan, with a freshly-outlined novel ready to start, I feel like I was both more productive and more successful than the last time I went to Rainforest Writers, back in 2012. It was the most fun I’d had writing a novel since my first NaNoWriMo, back in 2009– I loved the characters, I loved the scenes, and I felt like I was playfully romping through the prose, like a puppy playing in a field, chasing zeppelins and dragons and intrigue during an alternate version of the Second Opium War.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about this project. But that wasn’t the only good thing about Rainforest– I got to hang out with some good friends, several of whom I hadn’t seen since my last Rainforest two years ago. I also felt less socially awkward than I did back in 2012, and had more fun hanging out with new folks and meeting people. Part of the reason is that I feel more a part of the writing community than I did two years ago– and probably part of it is also the antidepressants I’m taking, and the general progress I’ve made with my depression.

But in addition to being more comfortable socially, I was also more comfortable alone– I was more than willing to go back to my room in the Inn, which had a fantastic sitting room facing the lake. There I could sit on the couch, put my feet up on the coffee table and write alone with my laptop, sometimes for an entire afternoon. I probably did two-thirds of my writing in my room, and a third in the public writing area in the Lounge, which was a nice occasional change of pace.

In addition to writing a third of a novel, I also got a lot of great photos of both the people and the scenery– after breaking my own personal record for writing fiction in one day on Thursday (about 7200 words), on Friday I went for a 4-mile hike on what turned out to be our one sunny day, taking pictures of mushrooms and waterfalls, then watching a fantastic sunset over the lake. We were also lucky enough to get some clear nights, with some of the best views of the night sky that I’ve seen in years.

The best part, though, was the people– the group meals, the conversations, the Saturday night party, sharing photos, and bouncing ideas off each other. I’m planning to head back to the Rainforest next year.

Here’s a slideshow of pics from the weekend!

Story up at Lakeside Circus (and Happy New Year!)

A couple months ago, I announced that I had sold a story to Lakeside Circus. That story is available on their website now, and can be read here: Natalie

I’ll have a New Year’s post coming in the next few days, and possibly a recap of my month-long December trip to the East Coast as well. It was a fun trip, and 2014 is looking exceptionally promising. In the meantime, hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year!

A Few Notes on Published Stories

Best Regards, Waylines Magazine

Waylines Magazine is holding a Reader’s Choice Poll for Best Story of the Year, and Best Regards, which was published earlier this month, is in the running. If you read my story and enjoyed it, please consider dropping by to cast your vote.

Natalie, Lakeside Circus

Issue One of Lakeside Circus is out, which contains my science fiction short story Natalie. The only way to read it at the moment is to subscribe, but over the next couple months the stories will gradually be released to the website one at a time. I don’t know yet when Natalie will be available on the web, but I’ll let you know when it’s up.

And that’s about it for now. Sometime soon I’ll post a more substantial blog entry; on Wednesday I’ll be heading back to the East Coast for a few weeks to see friends and family, and needless to say I am very much looking forward to that.

I hope everyone had a great and delicious Thanksgiving!

New Story Up at Waylines!

Issue 6 of Waylines Magazine is out, and I’m pleased to announce that I have a story in it! The title is Best Regards, and it’s more than a little bit inspired by the day job I’ve held the past couple of years. For anyone who’s ever worked in I.T. (particularly Support of any kind), this one’s for you.

There’s also an interview with me and the other Issue 6 authors, so check that out as well. The interview only contains about half of what they asked me; I believe the rest will be in the digital download edition, available November 30. But you can read the story and a good portion of the interview right now at the Waylines website. Check it out here.

New Story Appearing in “Lakeside Circus”

I’m happy to announce that one of my short stories will be appearing in the debut issue of Lakeside Circus. Lakeside Circus is a new quarterly magazine, edited by Carrie Cuinn, and in its first issue will have 42 pieces spanning flash fiction, poetry, and short stories. My own story, titled “Natalie,” falls in the flash fiction category, and I’m quite pleased with how it came out. It’s a science fiction story, about a geologist who finds herself involved in a particularly unusual way with a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

The magazine will be released on November 29th; subscribers will receive it via e-mail, and will also receive .epub and .mobi versions (suitable for various e-readers). After that, the stories will gradually appear on the website over the next three months, one every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don’t know yet when my story will appear on the website (when that changes, I’ll update my “Stories” page accordingly), but in the meantime, you can receive my story and lots of others by subscribing to Lakeside Circus– I believe an annual subscription works out to $20 for around 200,000 words (about 800 pages) of original genre fiction. In addition, folks who subscribe by November 15th will receive the first issue of the magazine a week early, on November 22.

Right now they’re a semi-pro magazine, but their goal is to raise enough money through subscriptions to become a pro magazine. Moreover, I have a huge amount of like and respect for the editor, Carrie Cuinn, who’s repeatedly put herself on the front lines of the fight to make all of science fiction & fantasy field more socially aware, and more inclusive to less privileged folks. So beyond selfish reasons, I’d love to see this latest venture work out, and a new, forward-thinking pro magazine take root in the field.

Anyway, that’s my plug for my story, and for Lakeside Circus. Check ’em out for yourself.

Science Fiction in San Antonio

LoneStarCon 3, the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention (aka WorldCon), took place in San Antonio over Labor Day weekend. I’d been looking forward to this con even more than usual– it’s been my first since Norwescon over five months ago, plus, it was a welcome relief from a long vacationless slog at work. I needed a break, so I flew down to San Antonio to meet authors, hang out into the wee hours with friends, and just generally have an awesome time being a geek. My roommate was the inimitable Folly Blaine, and we stayed on the 26th floor of the Marriott Riverwalk, overlooking a gorgeous view of San Antonio.

I arrived late Thursday (technically early Friday) in San Antonio, stepping out into the nighttime air which was still every bit as warm as Seattle in the midst of a hot summer afternoon. Luckily, most buildings were air conditioned down to temperatures so cold you could leave milk out without worrying about spoilage. So between staying inside and occasionally darting outside long enough to thaw, I was able to maintain something approaching comfort.

This was also the first con in which I got to use my new camera (a Canon EOS 7D, instead of my old Canon Rebel T1i). I did photography during and after the Masquerade, and during the Hugo Ceremony. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my long lens with me during the ceremony, but I did manage to find the Hugo Photo room afterward and got some good pics of the winners (i.e. the Writing Excuses crew, seen left). The set up in the room wasn’t very good– the blue photo backdrop in particular was rather useless, as you can see in the photos, and the room was so small and the photographers were crammed so close to the winners that I really needed a wider-angle lens. (I had thought I was being clever by kneeling in front of the crowd of photographers, but it turns out I was too close. Ah, well. Luckily I managed to get some good pictures while generally avoiding the dreaded Up-The-Nose Shot.)

The full Flickr set with all my pics is here. If you’re in any of these pics and would like me to send you the full-size original (or would like me to take the photo down, for whatever reason) get in touch with me via any of the methods on the Contacts tab and let me know. If you’d like to reproduce any pics on your blog, personal, or author site, you’re welcome to, all I ask is that you credit me for the photo and link back to the original Flickr page.

As far as the con programming itself, it was okay. I’ve learned what I do and don’t like on panels, and while there were quite a few that I enjoyed (like the Mad Science panel, seen here), I stayed way the hell away from anything that even had a whiff of Things were so much better in the old days, or What’s wrong with things today?

WorldCon is steeped in its own arcane tradition– as noted earlier, it’s been going for over 70 years, and it occasionally feels like a relic of an earlier time. Today there is at least one annual con in every major city and state; WorldCon dates back to a time where cons were less frequent, travel was more expensive, and there was a need for a major con which switched cities every year. (If this sounds familiar, it might be because I said the same thing about Westercon last year.) Now, there may still very well be a need for a travelling con: WorldCon is inexorably linked to the Hugo Awards, and it’s nice that those are given out in a different city every year, so lots of different folks have an opportunity to come see them. It’s nice to have a reason for folks from around the world to travel to one city and hang out, and it’s nice that that city changes. It would be nice if that city was in North America less often, to make it even more of a “WorldCon”– but it’s usually in North America. This year, Helsinki, Finland lost the bid for the 2015 WorldCon to Spokane, Washington.

So all in all, WorldCon does occasionally feel a bit conservative and stodgy, and that’s reflected in both the politics and the programming. There’s a distinct hint of yearning for “the golden age” of sci-fi, that things were better back in the glory days of fandom: in my frank opinion, that line of thinking is bullshit. Times change; it’s the nature of progress. Science fiction and geek culture is, in fact, healthier than ever, as evidenced by the huge number of conventions across the world, not to mention the huge success of science fiction and fantasy films at the box office (The Avengers, now the second-highest grossing movie in the history of ever, won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Long Form Presentation this year– my friend Patrick Swenson is seen here, guarding the Hugo in Joss Whedon’s absence.)

Sure, fandom has had its share of conflicts lately, but those conflicts are by and large fights to make fandom more inclusive: friendlier to women, and people of color, and queer and LGBT folks. I think huge strides have been made in this area, and it’s a fight that will continue– in the meantime, anyone that yearns for the olden days gets little more than an eyeroll from me. Welcome to progress, folks. It ain’t always pretty and it ain’t always easy, but it is– I firmly believe– inevitable.

A brief example of WorldCon stodginess worth mentioning is in its seeming reluctance to acknowledge Young Adult fiction as an actual thing. Despite what naysayers would have you believe (“young people these days are only interested in TV and video games”) books geared toward teens and young adults are thriving. So far, though, WorldCon has refused to acknowledge it with a Hugo category, despite increasing pressure from the membership. Hopefully that will change within the next few years, but whereas I think healthy, growing aspects of the industry should be encouraged as much as possible, WorldCon is fundamentally a small-c conservative place. Maybe that’s a good thing, in some ways. But in an era of rapid change, it can also make it seem slow, dinosaur-like, and more than occasionally a bit petulant as well.

It seems like every year after WorldCon lots of people post blog entries and tweets fretting about how WorldCon membership is getting older, that attendance numbers are declining, etc. But frankly, I’m not worried, nor do I plan to spend a lot of time worrying about it. It seems to me that fandom is fine, just different in the eyes of the younger generation. It’s evolving; it’s less exclusive, and more popular, and enjoying a heyday. I hope that WorldCon is able to keep up with fandom, but ultimately I suspect fandom is going to drag WorldCon into the future, not vice versa– or perhaps WorldCon will fade away and sci-fi/fantasy fandom will continue, different but motivated by the same geekiness at heart, the same love of asking ‘what if’ and speculating on the answers.

But larger questions aside, I enjoyed myself at LoneStarCon, and many thanks to the volunteers who worked their butts off putting on the con. My only regret is that many friends were so busy that I didn’t get to hang out with folks much outside of late nights at the bar. The con was also fairly spread out, and I found myself going long hours, even most of entire days, without running into a single person I knew. As a result, I had some occasional issues with depression– I’m also in the midst of switching meds, which didn’t help– but I’m pleased to say that the end, the good times outweighed my own personal neuroses.

And of course, congratulations to all my friends and personal heroes who won Hugo Awards! The Hugos were the icing on top of a tasty WorldCon cake. And even if the cake did occasionally seem in danger of going stale, I have every confidence that things will be fine. With folks like the group below leading the way in Science Fiction & Fantasy, why on Earth (or off Earth) wouldn’t I be?

(P.S. Major props to Paul Cornell for his hosting of the Hugo Awards, and his shoutout to the SF&F activists– some in this picture, but many others less well-known or working entirely behind-the-scenes– who are helping to make sure that the field truly is welcoming and relevant to all.)