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News

Six Wakes Nominated For The Nebula Award. Seriously.

I’m completely dumbfounded, baffled, and so honored to announce that my little murder clone book, Six Wakes, is nominated for The Nebula Award.

Yeah. I know.

To compare to the movie industry, the Hugo Awards are like the Peoples’ Choice Awards, voted on by the fans attending Worldcon. The Nebulas are the Oscars: voted on by members of the professional organization of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

I never thought I would get a Nebula nomination. I mean I felt it was so far out of my league that I didn’t even want it; it wasn’t worth the mental energy to desire it. It’s like wishing you could own the moon. So when the nomination came I was floored.

It’s in the same category as some amazing books by some amazing authors. It is such an honor to be even considered among them.

For the record, in the novel category, six out of seven books were written by women, and two of seven (that I know of) written by people of color.

And check out Fonda Lee, Sarah Pinsker, and Vina Jie-Min Prasad, who are each on the ballot twice! That’s hardcore!

I’ll be attending Nebula weekend in Pittsburgh in May. I’ll be the one walking around looking stunned.

I have several friends on the other ballots, and I’m SO HAPPY and proud of them. Here’s the whole ballot. (Biggest conflict I have is the fact that “Get Out” AND “The Good Place” are nominated for the Ray Bradbury Award! I honestly don’t know how I will vote there.)

2017 Nebula/Bradbury/Norton Award Finalists

Novel

Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor)

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss (Saga)

Spoonbenders, Daryl Gregory (Knopf; riverrun)

The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty (Orbit US)

Jade City, Fonda Lee (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Autonomous, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK 2018)

 

Novella

River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)

Passing Strange, Ellen Klages (Tor.com Publishing)

“And Then There Were (N-One)”, Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 3-4/17)

Barry’s Deal, Lawrence M. Schoen (NobleFusion Press)

All Systems Red, Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)

The Black Tides of Heaven, JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)

 

Novelette

“Dirty Old Town”, Richard Bowes (F&SF 5-6/17)

“Weaponized Math”, Jonathan P. Brazee (The Expanding Universe, Vol. 3)

“Wind Will Rove”, Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s 9-10/17)

“A Series of Steaks”, Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld 1/17)

“A Human Stain”, Kelly Robson (Tor.com 1/4/17)

“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time”, K.M. Szpara (Uncanny 5-6/17)

 

Short Story

“Fandom for Robots”, Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny 9-10/17)

“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM”, Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex 8/17)

“Utopia, LOL?”, Jamie Wahls (Strange Horizons 6/5/17)

“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand”, Fran Wilde (Uncanny 9-10/17)

“The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard)”, Matthew Kressel (Tor.com 3/15/17)

“Carnival Nine”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 5/11/17)

 

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Get Out (Written by Jordan Peele)

The Good Place: “Michael’s Gambit” (Written by Michael Schur)

Logan (Screenplay by Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green)

The Shape of Water (Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Written by Rian Johnson)

Wonder Woman (Screenplay by Allan Heinberg)

 

The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book

Exo, Fonda Lee (Scholastic Press)

Weave a Circle Round, Kari Maaren (Tor)

The Art of Starving, Sam J. Miller (HarperTeen)

Want, Cindy Pon (Simon Pulse)

News

Patreon done F’d up real good

Because it’s swirling all around me, I assume everyone has heard of the mind-boggling change to the Patreon fee structure. But since some of my followers just got the news I had a Netflix option (which has since run out; they had it for three years), I will spell it out for you.

  • Before: You pledge $1. You pay a dollar. Patreon takes a fee (apparently it varied anywhere from 12-20%). I get the rest.
  • Now: You pledge $1. You pay $1.38. Patreon takes a fee, I get the rest. (The math: where Y is your pledge, (Y x 2.9%) + $.35.)

Patreon is trying to sell it as the creator gets more money and we all want that, right? Under the new structure, creators take home 95% of the money. But they passed the fees on to you.

Well, 38 cents isn’t really a big deal, right? You can barely park in a city for 15 min on that. But here’s the catch: that’s 38 cents per person you support with $1.

Many people like to spread their support around, throwing $1 pledges at several creators. Before, if they supported 10 creators, they paid $10. Now they are charged a fee for every pledge, so they will pledge a total of $10 and pay nearly $14.

Now it’s starting to look kind of sketchy. OK. Really sketchy.

Choosing to increase your fees, or ask for more money, is a frightening job for creators. We are often on limited budgets, and are humbled and amazed that someone wants to give us even a dollar. And for me at least, the one dollar supporters add up. I make not-insignificant money from those dollars.

The result of this? My canceled pledges for the last day:

Screen Shot of Patreon Support loss
This is very minor compared to a lot of people’s.

Supporters are leaving. I have lost a few, and many more have reduced their pledges. I know creators who have lost dozens. I don’t blame the supporters at all; I support many people and am going to have to look at my own pledges and decide how I want to spend my money based on my fee increases.

So what do we do? Let Patreon know we’re unhappy, that’s for sure. But I’m looking into other options. Currently, you can support me via PayPal Me and Buy Me a Coffee These are less than ideal solutions since they aren’t based monthly and a reward structure is MUCH harder to handle. But if you feel the need to leave Patreon but still want to support, you can. There are other crowdfunding sites I’ll be researching today, so I’ll keep you informed.

Thank you for all the support you give me.

 

 

Books, Meta, News, Podcasts, Projects

Site Housekeeping

I was on vacation last week and missed posting the latest ISBW. So there will be a new Ditch Diggers later today, ISBW later this week, and ISBW next Monday to make sure we’re caught up. Then a live DD the following Monday cause I’m seeing Matt in person soon.

And I’m cooking up something cool for the live DD at WorldCon! And I will NOT mess up the recording this time! Cross my heart and all that.

I am working on a redesign to my site (OK, Pablo Defendini is working on the redesign, I’m just watching) and in cleaning some things up, I have broken others (mainly the Ditch Diggers site). This will be fixed when the new site launches.

Simpsons- old man yells at cloudSpeaking of things that I broke: many of you have told me that the Ditch Diggers feed isn’t updating, and I’m sorry about that. I have gone into iTunes and put a new feed for ITunes to grab, and it should be fixed within 24 hours or so.

<— Aside- BACK IN MY DAY fixing your feed within iTunes was nigh-impossible. Once you told iTunes what your feed was, you were stuck. I wasn’t too optimistic about this fix, but then found out iTunes has changed in the past 10 years. Who would have thought?

So the Ditch Diggers feed should be fixed shortly. Crossing fingers.

HEY did you know that you can win a copy of Bookburners from Goodreads? It’s true! Enter the giveaway here to win the glorious doorstop of a book with stories by me, Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, and Brian Francis Slattery.

I hate to toot my own horn, but who’s gonna toot it if I don’t? Last week Six Wakes got awesome coverage in Popular Mechanics! They listed Six Wakes as one of the best SF books of 2017 (so far). Seriously.

News

I’m Back at Escape Pod – and More

Escape Pod

Escape Pod
Escape Pod

I’ve been bad about announcing this, but it went public two weeks ago that I have rejoined the editorial staff of Escape Pod! We put Mothership Zeta on hiatus and then the new editor Divya Breed invited me join her as she took the helm of EP.

I love podcast fiction and I’ve always loved EP, so I happily stayed with the Escape Artists family in another role. I’ve been working on the backend (stories, decision making, etc) for a few months now, but we just announced it to the public. Today will feature my first host spot.

It’s great to be back at the longest running short fiction podcast. We have some big plans for the future, including planning for the big episode 600.

Nebula Weekend

So many of my friends are off at the Nebulas this weekend, and I hope they have a great time. I’ll be watching the awards ceremony on Saturday night – I know too many nominees not to. It’s a tough year, which is a good thing for science fiction.

The Nebulas are our industry awards, voted on only by members of SFWA. They often mirror the Hugo Award ballot, but not always (especially in the past few years.) This year they’re fairly close, actually. Sadly, the Nebulas don’t award comics or podcasts, but there is an award for movies: The Bradbury.

And, as Ursula Vernon let me hold hers once, I can attest that one can use the statue as a very effective blunt weapon. So if the revolution comes on Nebula night, I’d hide behind a winner if I were you.

Official Cover for I Should Be Writing

My editor sent me more details about the I Should Be Writing book, which is slated for release August 8. The final cover just came out, and it’s a beauty. You can totally preorder it, you know.

I Should Be Writing cover
I Should Be Writing cover
News

Appearance! Flyleaf Books with Cory Doctorow!

HEY- if you are in the Triangle area, I will be appearing at Flyleaf Books this Friday night! Cory Doctorow will be coming through on his book tour for his new book Walkaway, and I am joining him for a conversation about the book. I hope to see you there!

From Flyleaf Books:

Fri 5/5, 7pm – 8pm
Cory Doctorow discusses his new novel Walkaway in conversation with Mur Lafferty. Walkaway is Cory Doctorow’s first adult novel in eight years: an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death.

Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza—known to his friends as Hubert, Etc—was too old to be at that Communist party.

But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be—except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society—and walk away.

After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter—from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.

Event date:
Friday, May 5, 2017 – 7:00pm
Event address:
752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514

News, Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #37: Listener Request & HUGO HUGO HUGO

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:17 — 46.8MB)

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS

Show Notes:

  • Mur and Matt come to you live from the mud room of Morgan Freeman’s trophy solarium (because they haven’t earned the right to go inside yet).
  • Ditch Diggers has been nominated for a Hugo Award! You did it! Mur and Matt will go up against the likes of The Coode Street Podcast and Tea & Jeopardy in Helsinki for Best Fancast (even though we’re all professionals. Because there’s only one podcast category)! Thank you to all Ditch Diggers listeners who supported the show and don’t forget to vote for Mur and Matt for the Hugo itself!
  • It’s listener’s choice! Mur and Matt select questions from their listeners to address in detail as the topic of the show.
  • First up, for those who write many kinds of things, which writing medium/format to focus on when you being pursuing freelance writing as a serious job. Blogging? Books? Screenwriting? Should you focus on one thing or two things or all of them?
  • Secondly, Mur and Matt talk about writing prep, everything from outlining to creating playlists. What’s necessary for the task ahead and how much is too much?
  • Regular Twitter and email Q&A.

Here are all the Hugo finalists, with the most important category first! (Bold categories have guest-hosted Ditch Diggers!) (more…)

News

Make that HUGO NOMINATED Ditch Diggers!

The news is out, it’s very exciting, so exciting we may vomit.

Ditch Diggers got nominated for BEST FANCAST Hugo Award!

I have been sitting on this news for two weeks, freaking out quietly. I didn’t really believe it, and since I’m writing this on Monday I am secretly* worrying that in the next 24 hours something will happen to take it away from us. It happens, after all.

Matt and I are very proud of what we’ve turned Ditch Diggers into, and we are so grateful for the nomination. I’ll be representing us in Finland at WorldCon 75, and we’ll be working hard to keep the awesome content coming in the meantime!

*I know, I’m blogging so it’s not so secret…

Books, News, Projects

Japanese Cover of The Shambling Guide to New York City

This just in! I received the art for the Japanese translation of The Shambling Guide to New York City, and it’s amazing. I love how the city and Morgen are highlighted on the cover.

When I scaled it down, the fuchsia border color changed (I don’t have a good image editing program on the laptop) so here’s a link to the larger version  so you can see the color and detail.

Japanese Cover for Shambling Guide to NYC
Japanese Cover for Shambling Guide to NYC
Books, Books, Consuming media, News, Projects

Books to read! And Six Wakes press!

Today is the launch day for The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley and Idle Ingredients by Matt Wallace. You should run and get both now.

I’m not endorsing them because they’re talented, which they are, or because they’re my friends, which they also are. But I’m bringing them up because I thought you might want some books to read after Six Wakes and Bookburners.

Kameron and I both wrote very female-heavy space opera books, and they’re coming out close to each other. So if you like Six Wakes you will probably like The Stars Are Legion.

And Matt’s Sin Du Jour novella series (of which Idle Ingredients is #4)  is like The Shambling Guides with catering, so if you like my stuff, you will like Matt’s. Start with Envy of Angels if you’re new to the series.

So really, reader, I’m doing this for you.

You’re welcome!

New press about Six Wakes I just had to share! This is from the Barnes and Noble blog:

Lafferty fearlessly follows the moral, ethical, and practical implications of this questionably idyllic future. How does quasi-immortality change what it means to be human? If our bodies are disposable, are we then our minds? And what if that mind is just a copy? It’s all very much grounded in the juicy mystery elements, but there are larger ideas behind it all.

And a part I particularly appreciate about the character of Dr. Joanna Glass:

[Joanna] raises questions about notions of perfection, and makes a powerfully rare, if understated, anti-ableist statement.

This was important to me, because even though the hacking that would “fix” Joanna’s genetically abnormal legs is illegal, it would be pretty easy for someone with her wealth and privilege to have it done. She chooses not to.

Venom out of costume: actress Teal Sherer

I was inspired, in part, by the character of Venom in Felicia Day’s gaming series “The Guild.” A horrible nihilist in the rival guild, she has a rare moment of frank, non-antagonistic vulnerability when she wonders aloud why she can’t have a wheelchair in the game like she has in real life, because she wants her avatar to fully represent her. (Pedantic Vork tries to explain how the ADA hasn’t really reached dungeons so it would be hard for her to move around, and then her character kills his.)

Also the the main character in John Scalzi’s Lock In, Chris, makes the same statement as people take sides in a debate about whether their “locked in” status should be cured. The locked in community has created a unique and rich alternate online lifestyle, and they would have to give that up if they were cured.

Those two stories had me thinking about pop culture’s usual view of disability, especially concerning science fiction and its desire to “fix” everything with futuristic technology. So I tried to address it in this book.


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