This past weekend marks my best experience at the Nebula Awards, ever! And I say this despite getting food poisoning on Thursday night, and my wife coming down with some kind of mid-con crud on Saturday night. Much praise is due to Peggy Rae Sapienza (and her all-star band of volunteers) for making this event such a success!
It was also the first time I’ve been at the Nebulas since I started my small press, Paper Golem, and indeed I spent much of my time this weekend in Publisher mode.
Because of this, not only did I attend the awards banquet on Saturday (traditionally, I’d slip in after the meal and hover in the back to catch the speeches and award presentations), I actually had a table. The idea for this came from having one of the novellas from Alembical 2 up for a Nebula Award, and hosting the author, J. Kathleen Cheney, at the table. Along with her and her husband, Matt, and me and my wife, Valerie, we were also joined by my co-editor on several Paper Golem books, Arthur (Buck) Dorrance, longtime writing-group member and YA author Cathy Petrini, Tom Doyle (who is slated to be the next author to get a collection from Paper Golem), and his guest, Beth. Presumably because we had a nominee at the table, we were situated in the front row of tables. That was just fine.
The meal itself was unimpressive (sorry, I can’t call it a “banquet” when dessert is a crappy little fruit plate), but the company was stellar, and the speeches and presentations very enjoyable. Alas, J. Cheney did not win, but I know she was very proud to be counted among the incredible writers who were her competition.
Among the winners was Eric James Stone, for his novelette “That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made,” which coincidentally is included in the collection of Eric’s that “officially” goes on sale from Paper Golem in September (but which we had copies of on-hand for the mass signing earlier in the day).
Speaking of the mass signing, in addition to Eric’s new book, I’d also brought down copies of Paper Golem’s first anthology, Prime Codex (and there were many members of the Codex community present to snap them up), as well as both volumes from of Alembical, and our first single-author collection by Cat Rambo for the Book Depot that was organized by Kathy Morrow (and again, thank you, Kathy!). I got to sign bunches of these, as well as copies of my own works, Buffalito Destiny, Sweet Potato Pie, and Buffalito Contingency.
In addition to having two Paper Golem authors up for awards this weekend, I also spent a great deal of time talking with potential authors of the small press, reminding some and encouraging others to finish or submit works for the current short story anthology, Cucurbital 2. Throughout the weekend I cold often be heard intoning my mantra of “turtle, watermelon, sexworker.” And when I wasn’t doing that, I was often found chatting with still other authors about potential projects they might consider for Paper Golem, both novella submissions for future volumes in the Alembical series, as well as single-author collections.
So, that’s it from the publisher-side of things. An excellent weekend, that made me feel vindicated to have started a small press and to be giving something back to this great and talented community. Tomorrow, I’ll talk a bit about my experiences with the various workshops I attended, but those were much more about the writer-side of the weekend.
Tags: Conventions, Publishing
Jamie Todd Rubin picked up a copy of Eric James Stone’s book for me and got it signed, and he said I should have it in my mail tomorrow…
Thank you for having advance copies available!
05.24.11 at 9:18 am
He mentioned that to me, and I asked him to send along my best wishes to you, Nomi, and the kids.
It’s a wonderful book and I think you’ll get much pleasure from reading it.
05.24.11 at 10:19 am