Hamdelilah has 389 books to read…

I recieved this wonderful notification a day or two ago:

Sally and Joel

On behalf of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand Inc. we write to advise that you have been successful in getting onto the final ballot for the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards in the category of  Best Professional Publication  for Deputy Dan and the Mysterious Midnight Marauder.

The voting for the awards will occur at Conscription, to be held over Queen’s Birthday Weekend in Auckland.

I’ve looked at the SSFANZ website and this is what they say about the awards:

Voting on the Sir Julius Vogel Awards takes place before and at the National Science Fiction convention each year. You are eligible to vote if you are a member of SFFANZ, OR a member of the National Science Fiction convention that year. You are only entitled to one vote, even if you belong to both.

I dropped back an e-mail asking how absentee votes may be registered and I will let everyone know as the information comes back to me. I hope that all of you who are members or attending, and who loved the book, will send in a vote for us!

/shameless plug! 🙂

Today started with a slight sinking feeling. I had odd writing related dreams that made me feel questioning about what I was doing. This is a state I don’t normally tolerate whatever shrinking feeling may flit through. Thankfully, the first thing I had to do at my desk was look at the City Library site to find out when my borrowed books are due. I couldn’t.  But what the site did spit up was a list of Deputy Dan copies held by the Christchurch Public Libraries – no fewer than  eleven copies! Nearly all of them were out this morning being read. Being reminded that there are kids out there enjoying my story made me feel lifted, and completed, and freed from my moment of writer’s neurosis.

This was to be the step I trod all day. I went into Drexels, writing in hand to do at breakfast, and Roslyn came over. She confessed, and I  hope she won’t mind me relating, that she had been crying the whole day before.   I asked why and she told me it was just a mood up and down. Conversation shifted on and I started to talk about the eel I had watched in the shallows of the Avon by Mill Island. Roslyn suddenly interjected, telling me ”I think its about finding courage to do what you’re doing” (Roslyn is an amazing young singer). I told her about my moment this morning and that I’d been thinking about those things too, that it was funny how events conspired to encourage you, and that it was important to never let anything stop you if you are driven to follow your muse. I told her the wise words of two friends as she was called away – that courage is inside if you look for it within – and that she must never give up. She left smiling and I think both of us felt lit up by the conversation.

I went to have my car checked and one of the car salesmen of Christchurch Honda approached me and asked me to get and sign a copy of Deputy Dan for him. Then I went to the library to return those borrowings. I found a laminated copy of Deputy Dan front and centre there, and took it up, asking how I could get that form of lamination. I wanted to make my reading copy tougher. The librarian, Marianne, certainly didn’t realise I was the author when she told me how popular that book is. Cue the author dying of thrilled on the library floor. Well, ok, not on the floor or dying but it felt like that in a good way.  Marianne helped me organise getting the book plasticised by the Library bindery and if you ever want a book covered the binders (found in their burrow at the back of the Linwood Council Centre block) are genius. Its well worth the $6-8 they charge for the service. Thanks to them and Marianne.

Eventually, via many errands I won’t relate,  I got home to an e-mail from the good persons running the Sir Julius Vogel Awards this year. They asked me if I would be prepared to accept Deputy Dan’s nomination for ”Best production/publication.” Of course, I not only would be prepared to accept, I am utterly delighted. Thank you to any one reading this who nominated Deputy Dan.

So: a day of affirmation, of positive feedback, of having the universe practically yodel at me to keep doing what I am doing. I feel incredibly grateful and my stock of courage is all topped up.

Today I have written four hundred words on the current chapter of  “Somewhere Else.” It only has twenty-four hours of action left to write.  My pen is to hand.