It’s been suggest to me that I should do a post outlining the books I’ve done during the 2000s. I think it’s a great idea, so I’m noodling away at it. For what it’s worth, during the 2000s I edited or co-edited thirty six books, twenty four of which have been published to date. Given that the first of those came out in March 2004 and the most recent in October 2009, I’m going to count that as having been busy. I also co-edited a special issue of a magazine (due soon), and wrote for, argued about, copyedited and/or reviews-edited 120 issues of Locus. Busy indeed!

The Hugo Awards Committee of Aussiecon 4: The 68th World Science Fiction Convention has opened nominations for the 2009 Hugo Awards. I would strongly encourage everyone who is eligible to nominate for the Awards.  This has nothing to do with my own eligibility. The awards are more meaningful, more representative if everyone who can get involved does.  I’ll certainly be nominating, and hope you will too.

Now, a number of people have posted about their own eligibility for the Hugos.  This year I was incredibly and genuinely honored to be nominated for Best Editor – Short Form. It was the highlight of my professional year.

I am eligible in the same category this year.  I’m very proud of the work I’ve had published in 2009, and am sincerely grateful to all of the authors who made me look good during the year.  This is my 2009 in books:

I’ll post a list of the contents of both Eclipse Three and The New Space Opera 2,  both of which feature original stories by some wonderful writers who I think deserve your consideration in the Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story categories, shortly.

I also co-edited twelve issues of Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field.  As Reviews Editor, I edited the reviews section of the magazine.

Well, that’s about all the pimpage I can do.  As I said above, nominating me isn’t the important thing. Nominating is, though.  Please do so if you can.

Today is New Year’s Day. I was awoken early by Marianne, who has had a wretched case of bronchitis.  It was around 7am, not long after my NYE bedtime.  I then dove into breakfast, laundry and kid wrangling, though I did sneek a nap.  We planted the flowers, tomatoes and basil, and hopefully the patio is going to come to life a little. Empty pots or pots filled with dead plants aren’t too awesome.

After lunch Sophie and I went to see The Princess and the Frog, while Jessica went to her grandmother’s house.  The movie was sweet, though I do wonder if I missed any racial faux pas in the story, and marked a welcome return to handdrawn animation from the Mouse House.  The nicest part, though, was sitting quietly watching the film while  Sophie snuggled in close. A perfect Dad n daughter moment.

Ok. Just so we’re clear.  People in science fiction are always banging on about how we get no respect and are always seen as being some kind of poor second cousin to literary fiction (or so it seems to me).  And yet, Time Magazine just published their list of Best  TV, Movies, Books and Theatre of the Decade, and it’s full of genre stuff. I reproduce the Books list by way of example:

Books
1.    Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
2.    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004), by Susanna Clarke
3.    The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
4.    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), by Junot Diaz
5.    The Known World (2003), by Edward P. Jones
6.    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), by J.K. Rowling
7.    Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
8.    Lush Life (2008), by Richard Price
9.    Then We Came to the End (2007), by Joshua Ferris
10.    American Gods (2001), by Neil Gaiman

Congrats, btw, to Susanna, Junot and Neil!

Oh, kids, I move slowly sometimes. I do. Two weeks before the 2005 World Fantasy Convention – a wonderful, wonderful event held in Madison, Wisconsin, that  I look back on with great fondness – I sat down and worked up some ideas for anthology pitches.  I came up with eleven separate ideas, mostly based around simple themes with what I hoped were snappy titles.  Four were ideas for young adult books, one for a major reprint anthology, and six were for novella anthologies.

I think because I was prepared and went to Madison intending to sell a book, I had no success at all. There’s nothing quite so effective as seeming a little desperate to make sure that you don’t succeed, and sometimes preparation makes you desperate.  As it happened, one of those ideas – listed simply as ‘Big Dumb Objects/Alien artifacts’ for Andy – did sell a bit later. It went on to become my completed but still-unpublished book, Godlike Machines. I also note, with no small irony given the eventual success of some other books, that I pitched an anthology of zombie stories to no avail. I guess I was too early.

Anyway, every now and then I’d pull up the list of ideas and see what I could work on.  I nearly did an anthology of YA ghost stories, and one or two others got discussed, but the one I kept coming back to was Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron.  It was to be an anthology of fantasy stories featuring witches, and it was aimed at young adult readers. Somewhere along the way I’m pretty sure I discussed co-editing the book with Justine Larbalestier, but that didn’t work out (through no fault of hers, I should stress).   I definitely remember discussing it at several conventions, and then again with my agent Howard Morhaim a few times.  I know we discussed it in Denver, Calgary, Montreal and, most recently, in San Jose.

Probably after Denver the idea really began to seem important. I realised it was a book I wanted to do for my daughters, Jessica and Sophie. They’re nine and eight respectively, and are getting to the age where they might appreciate such a book, and I’d love to work on a book they could enjoy.  Around April I wrote to some that writers I know and asked them to be involved. The idea pushed forward, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to sit down to write a proposal. I don’t like writing proposals, though I do know how to when I have to.

When I got  home from the San Jose World Fantasy – this was the first week of November 2009 – and, while I was laid low with the flu, I applied myself and, in about an hour, knocked out a proposal.  I went over it the following morning to make sure it was written in English and on November 12th – 1,484 days after I’d first noted the idea down – I emailed the proposal to my agent Howard Morhaim with a note saying I wanted it to go out to publishers urgently (I think the ‘urgently’ was because I felt guilty for having sat on the idea for so long).

Howard then proceeded to work his magic, sending the proposal on to a bunch of wonderful people (several who I genuinely hope to work with in coming years), and after some discussion and back-and-forth we reached agreement on December 17th with Jim Thomas from Random House to publish Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron in North America. While we will continue to work on selling the book to the rest of the World, right now I’m just thrilled and delighted that this book is happening and incredibly excited to be working with Jim and the team at Random (I’ve heard wonderful things about them).   This is the biggest single deal I’ve ever been part of, and I think the final book (coming to you sometime in 2012) will be the best book I’ve ever done. 

Why did it take so long? I don’t know. The idea will be seven years old when the book is published, almost as old as The New Space Opera was when it came out. I think the wait will be worth it though, and I’d like to very publicly thank my fabulous agent Howard Morhaim (and the indefatigable Katie) for all of their work on the deal. Exciting times!!!