Category: Nebula Awards

awards, conventions, Nebula Awards, the dog

Nebula Award Conference 2023

M.E. Garber

I’m “back” from a weekend attending the virtual component of SFWA’s Nebula Award Conference. It was a great time, filled with meeting new people, rekindling old relationships, and enjoying the company of other SFF writers–those who just “get” my time of weird. I had so many great conversations in the breakout rooms, and wonderful insights listening to the panelists, and to the other audience members’ comments in the livechat feature of the online panels, too.

Congratulations to the winners (who can be found here or here at File 770), and the new award recipients (Octavia Butler for the new Infinity Award–hurray!!) and especially to our new Grandmaster, Robin McKinley! And you can still watch the livestream of the ceremony over on YouTube here. And let me remind you that if you missed out, you can still buy a membership to the Awards Conference and gain access to the full spread of panel recordings, and watch those panels at your leisure over the next year! You’ll also be able to participate in other Nebula-member activities throughout the year, including the Weekly Writing Dates hosted by a variety of interesting and wonderful authors (including some timed specifically for parts of the world outside the US), Romancing SFF Monthly Meetups, and many other “Connecting Flights” of interesting programming throughout the year. Look HERE under “Upcoming Airship Events” for upcoming events and to sign up.

Now that I’m back on Eastern Time (well, almost. I’m still a bit tired and out of sorts today, after living a full weekend on Pacific Time), I’m back at the “normal” writing routine. In addition, today I played catch-up on all the chores that fell by the wayside, including reading work for my crit group this upcoming weekend, and playing “submission Tetris” with my short fiction. Whew. Oh, and of course, time was spent spoiling the dog, who hated the fact he had only ONE human at his beck and call for the length of the weekend. Poor spoiled thing!

Requisite picture of the dog, looking regal in his “Mona Lisa” pose–two different backgrounds, and showing a slight, indefinable smile around his tennis ball.

Tomorrow I get to return to the plotting and wrestling into shape of the a new novel–one dealing with crows, and magic, home and belonging (or not), family and obligation (or not). And who knows what else, since I’m not done with this part yet!

Speaking of which, I need to get back at it. Happy Monday to you all!

awards, conventions, Nebula Awards

Nebula Awards Recap

M.E. Garber

The Nebula Awards Conference weekend was a blast! I got to meet new people, put faces and voices (!) to names and still pictures, and hang out with some familiar friends–and watch as John Wiswell, one of my Viable Paradise classmates, won the award for Best Short Story with his story (published at Diabolical Plots), “Open House on Haunted Hill.” Go ahead and read it. I’ll still be here, and you won’t regret it. So first of all, a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to John!

I also volunteered a bit, and got to help people enter the Hopkinson Suite, many for the first time. I really enjoyed my volunteering time, and was very fortunate that no laser bats found the Airship during my watches! Things went a lot smoother this year, since the people behind the scenes had last year’s ongoing re-boots as a “don’t do this” training exercise. And many of the good things remained–the Airship role-play embraced through Slack, Cuddles the dragon at the ceremony, and the continuation of increasing BIPOC faces both in attendance, on panels, and receiving awards.

In my house, things went a bit sideways when (because the conference was run on Pacific Time in honor of its supposing to be held in person in LA) I just set my office clock to PT and referred to all times in PT to my husband so as not to mess up and miss my volunteer time slots. But my husband kept referring to ET, where we live–and lunch came at some truly strange times, let me tell you.

And how about that photo? That’s what happens when the universe leaks in through your Airship porthole!

I know this is a wayyyyyyy too short a summary of three days, but I’m still tired, still trying to get back to “regular life” in the wake of the conference chaos, and honestly, unless you were there, you won’t want to relive it with me. Just know it was fun and I hope I see you there next year.

Speaking of which…it’s still not too late to join the 2021 Nebula Conference! All the panels were recorded, and can be viewed from now through March 2022 when you have a membership. In addition, there will be ongoing Co-Writing Dates throughout the year, where you attend through Zoom, write for a period of time, then break to chat or get advice, then write some more. More words through peer pressure–but only with a membership. And you don’t have to be a SFWA member for any of this. If you just want to watch the awards ceremony, you can do that, too, right here.