Locus Recommended Reads

I’m thrilled (and stunned) to announce that the 2010 list of Locus Recommended Reads include both short stories I published last year: “Errant” (in Kiss Me Deadly) and “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” (in Zombies vs. Unicorns).

These are my first two published short stories. (They are officially in the “novelette” category.) I loved writing them so much that I contracted to write three more this year, and I’m totally feeling the pressure now.

I had been told that “Errant” would appear on this list. That “Care and Feeding…” did as well was a total surprise to me, and one that has be bouncing around my house (the baby is looking at me like I’m a crazy person, and Rio thinks it’s playtime).

Both books are still available for purchase, of course, and in March, “Care and Feeding…” will appear in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Five.

A few folks have been really kind to write to me and tell me that they’ve suggested one or both of these stories for various other bits of recognition — thank you so much (thank you also to Aurora of the YASFF blog). A few others have asked how one goes about doing that, but I don’t know much about it. I do know that both the Nebula and the Hugo nomination periods are open. Both stories are “novelettes” according to the guidelines. Ascendant is a novel. Rampant, my first work of fantasy or science fiction, was published less than two years ago (the SSG novels were not SF), in the Campbell arena. If you feel that any of these works merit recognition, please feel free to recommend them. I write these stories to entertain you, so to know that you were entertained or moved by them is incredibly moving to me.

Also, if you are in the mood to nominate an anthology in the anthology categories, I’m rooting hardcore for ZvU, because Justine and Holly did an incredible job with it.