Things from the internet, in no particular order.

1. The SFWA 2010 Nebula awards nominees have been announced over here. Oh my god. So many worthy people this year. I won't lie, the past few years I have been all, "Oh, Nebula Awards, I am disappoint". But this year? It's on. In the Best Novel category both Nnedi Okorafor and N.K. Jemisin. I am so torn. Can't they both win in a tie of awesomeness? Also, many congrats to Shweta Narayan as well on being nominated for the novella category.

2. Three Days of Fey has begun over on shveta_writes starting with Karen Lord who wrote Redemption in Indigo (which I have got to get a copy of now that I've read this interview) and the other two interviewees will be Karen Healey and Karen Mahoney.

3. A slightly older (in internet time) link - from thingswithwings on "how to defend against accusations of hating queers" about how subtext isn't enough, and how such things as J.K. Rowling proclaiming Dumbledore is gay without bothering to write anything in the books that says he's gay doesn't do a damn thing to bring more (and better) representation of queer folks in fiction. I think it's worth a read or a re-read, because it's something that I think that a lot of authors and readers, especially those who are not queer, may not get.

3b. My brain seems to feel like the above link is related to this post about separating authors from from their work by tablesaw, especially when it comes to divorcing readers from the reading as it is put in the post.

I think my brain may consider these two things related because for an author to say, outside of their writing, that a character is queer without actually writing it is to basically say that a reader who looks at that book and doesn't see a queer character (because it's not actually written in the damn book) is being told that what the author intended or later thought of is more important than what they actually read - which is a lack of representation of people like them.

3c. All of this is much better explored by kaigou in this entry grist for one's own mill which deals with authorial intention, fanfiction, entitlement, and reader vs. author. Also some thoughts on the discussions about illegal e-book downloading and filesharing that were going on a few weeks back, which I'm going to continue to hold my tongue on and do more reading about lest I should unwittingly remove my pants and wave my pale, lardulous buttocks at the internet at large.

4. kaneko wants to know your writing tips and tricks and I need all of y'all who are awesome writers on my f-list (and there are about a metric ton of you) to go over there and share so I can copy your homework and then try to figure out how you did it.

5. con_or_bust is open and bidding is going on until March 6th. You should definitely go over there and check it out. Like a lot of folks, Wiscon isn't precisely the most perfect con in my opinion, but it's a feminist science fiction convention and as a feminist (albeit a caucasian one), I believe that feminism and feminist spaces ought to be as radically inclusive of ALL WOMEN as possible. And that definitely means doing what we can to make sure that not just white affluent folks get to go.

And in more selfish terms: oh my god, the shiny things there available. If you've got some cash to spend, there's some serious goodness here to be had. My personal favorite thing? A Copy of Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories plus gorgeous artwork by Shweta Narayan.


ETA: HTML fixed. I swear you mess up one fucking thing...*grumble grumble*