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So, I’m a pretty serious introvert. Generally, online is fabulous because I get to interact with people–because I do like being with people!–without being drained by it. Concentrated real-world interactions are wonderful, but exhausting. When I come home from a con, for instance, I generally want to crawl under my bed and just stay there and not talk to anyone for a couple of days. And I’ll have had a wonderful time and really enjoyed being with everyone. It’s just tiring. Unlike online.
Or so I thought. I’ve been a lot more engaged online lately than I used to, and I think my assumption that I could socialize that way without setting off my introvert reaction was a faulty one. I’ve been letting emails pile up in my box, and I’ve been a bit…frayed, I guess. Some of it is likely that I just spent two weeks with everyone home all the time and none of my usual house-to-myself time. And some of it is probably just the year I’ve had, which has been an amazing and wonderful year, but perhaps, rather like a convention that I’ve enjoyed tremendously, I need to recover from, just a bit.
So I think I’m going to try to take the next couple weeks off from social media. If I owe you an email, I will do my best to get back to you soon. But I’m going to try staying away from Twitter and blogs for a while.
Before I go. Everyone is all about the “what I’ve published this year that’s eligible for awards” thing, which actually I think is good because as I said last post, I’m lucky to remember what I read this week, let alone when anything was published or what category it ought to go into. So I’m glad to be reminded. I don’t see any point in doing that for myself, because I really only had one thing published this year and anyone reading this already knows about it.
So instead I’m going to mention a few things that I do remember reading, mostly because it was very, very recent or else consistent over the last year or so.
I would like to bring your attention to Sofia Samatar’s novel A Stranger in Olondria, which I just read last week and which is fabulous.
I rarely say what I’m nominating, for any of the awards I’m eligible to nominate and vote for. But I’m going to say up front that this year I intend to nominate Zen Cho and Benjanun Sriduangkaew for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer (NOT A HUGO AWARD). I was extremely pleased to see Zen on the ballot last year. I cannot claim impartiality–both of them have been published at GigaNotoSaurus.
But then, I published those stories because I loved them, and I think both writers do wonderful work. So check them out, if you haven’t already. In particular, check out Benjanun’s “Silent Bridge, Pale Cascade” which ran at Clarkesworld recently.
I saw mention somewhere that perhaps Sofia Samatar was also eligible for the Campbell, and you know, like I said, A Stranger in Olondria was pretty freaking fabulous.
Strange Horizons also had a nice roundup of things their contributors liked this year. Not all of which came out last year, but hey.
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EDITED TO ADD: I should have checked the list–it looks like last year was Zen’s second year of eligibility, and so there’s no point my nominating her this year. Well, read her stuff anyway.