Author Archive

I am now officially a Nebula Award winner!

So, a couple of weeks ago the official SFWA Twitter account posted this:

My immediate reaction was a snarky grin and I prepared to tweet a gentle correction. Everyone knows that the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy is not a Nebula. It said so in the Nebula Rules at the time I won the award (“14.a. The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book, established in 2006, is awarded in tandem with the Nebula Awards. This award is not a Nebula, but shall follow all Nebula rules and procedures except as follows.”) Except that I am a pedant, and I wanted to check my sources before tweeting.

So I checked the current Nebula Rules. And that phrase is no longer there. (“15.1. The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book, established in 2006, is awarded in tandem with the Nebula Awards. This award shall follow all Nebula rules and procedures except as follows.”) However, other phrases in the rules, such as “The winners of the Nebula Awards, Bradbury Award, and Andre Norton Award shall be announced at an annual Nebula Awards ceremony” implied that the distinction still exists.

Suddenly I was Schroedinger’s Award Winner. Was I a Nebula winner or not? That depended on whether the change was deliberate and whether it applied retroactively. Not that it really mattered, of course. The award trophy is the same, and it means exactly as much or as little as it did before. But, for me, it would be huge if I could call myself a Hugo- and Nebula-winning writer. I always wanted to, and I had been disappointed to discover after winning the Norton that I couldn’t. But now I could. Or could I?

So I wrote to the Nebula Award Commissioner for an official ruling. It took a week, but here it is:

From: Nebula Award Commissioner <nac@sfwa.org>
Date: Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 1:50 PM
Subject: Congratulation
To: David D. Levine <david@daviddlevine.com>

David,
Just got confirmation back from the higher ups at SFWA.
Congratulations, you ARE a Nebula Award winning author.

Jim Hosek
Nebula Award Commissioner
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

There it is, in black and white. (On my screen, anyway.) I am now a Nebula Award Winning Author! And so are Sam J. Miller, Fran Wilde, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Nalo Hopkinson, E.C. Myers, Delia Sherman, Terry Pratchett, Cat Valente, Ysabeau S. Wilce, J. K. Rowling, Justine Larbalestier, and Holly Black. Congratulations to them!

David’s Index for 2018

Novel words written: 19,905
Short fiction words written: 34,859
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 29,064
Blog words written: 3,145
Total words written: 86,973

New stories written: 1

Short fiction submissions sent: 1
Responses received: 1
Rejections: 0
Acceptances: 1 (pro)
Other sales: 3 (1 reprint, 1 translation, 1 media)

Short stories published: 2 (reprint)

Award nominations: 0

Novels completed: 0
Novel submissions: 0
Novels published: 1

Happy new year!

What I published in 2018

I published one thing this year: Arabella the Traitor Of Mars, the conclusion of the Adventures of Arabella Ashby trilogy. It hasn’t gotten a lot of critical attention, but many people have told me they think it’s the best of the three.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the “Adventures of Arabella Ashby” series is eligible for the Best Series Hugo.

Well, I had surgery after all.

We were hoping that wouldn’t be necessary, but it turned out that it was. We waited for four days for the blockage to clear by itself, but on Monday it became obvious that the tentative positive signs we had seen on Sunday were in fact only tentative. So I went right into surgery at 9:30am Monday.

I do not remember the procedure at all. The last thing I remember was the anesthesiologist telling me he was going to give me something to calm me down. In the recovery room they told me the blockage was caused by a single band of scar tissue, so it was about as uncomplicated as could be. There’s no explanation where that scar tissue came from, though. And my guts were pretty angry from the blockage, so it’ll be at least several days until I can eat.

Right now my pain is pretty well managed at a level 4-5 on a scale of 10. We have to wait for my intestines to start working again before I can go home, but I hope to start walking around today and that should help that happen. I’m still in room 833 at Providence Portland Medical Center on NE Glisan.

Thank you all for your kind words and good wishes. Orycon is iffy but we’ll see.