What SFWA Offers Me

We just launched a very cool new effort. Here’s the release:

Crowdfunded self-publishing has emerged as a viable and increasingly popular path to creative and financial success for writers, and we continue to develop new initiatives to assist our members in their crowdfunding efforts. Now we are looking to expand our outreach beyond our own membership, to support the field at large.

Beginning in January, SFWA will be making small, targeted pledges to worthy Kickstarter projects projects by non-members, designating them a “SFWA Star Project.” Projects will be selected by the Self Publishing Committee, coordinated by volunteer Rob Balder. Selections will be based on the project’s resonance with SFWA’s exempt purposes, and special preference will be given to book-publishing projects in the appropriate genres.

Funds for these pledges will come from the SFWA Givers Fund, from a $1000 pool approved by the Grants Committee in December. When a pledge results in receiving a donor reward such as a signed book, these items will be auctioned off at fundraising events, to help replenish the Givers Fund.

The first two Star Projects are: Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu by Jonathan Green, and Blacktastic: A Podcast of Black Scifi and Fantasy Stories.

As the landscape continues to change, we face the organizational challenge of finding new ways to inform, support, promote and defend writers of fantasy and science fiction. We hope that this kind of outreach and recognition will not only benefit writers, but also help raise awareness of SFWA’s core mission among independent professionals and their readers.

Over the past few years, I’ve been helping with the effort to open SFWA doors to professional writers publishing outside the traditional structure, to the point where we are the only writers organization (I believe) to accept crowdfunded publications as membership qualifying material. The Star Project effort ties in nicely with that and it’s gratifying to see SFWA continue to expand to match the changing needs of professional F&SF writers.

Rob Balder, who initially proposed the project, has been very patient with the way the wheels at SFWA grind exceedingly and tiresomely slowly at times. Speaking of which, I just got the mail this morning confirming our NetGalley account — we’ll be making that available to members who want to use the NetGalley system to put up books for review. That’s also been in the works a while and part of the slowdown has been my own chaotic inbox and a couple of pieces of mail getting lost in there.

Towards the end of next month, you’ll see yet another very cool project unveiled and available to SFWA members. (I am terrible with secrets and throttling back the urge to spill the beans, but I want it to have maximum impact. But so cool, and so far above the original vision that I have HUZZAH written multiple times in my notes for the demo. Are you intrigued? 😉 You should be.)

At the beginning of next month, I’ll be at Kevin J. Anderson’s Superstars seminars as a guest — looking forward to meeting everyone there.

Oh! And one more change while I’m thinking about it. Cynthia Ward is moving her excellent Market Report from the SFWA Bulletin to the SFWA blog, which I think will solve a couple of issues and also make it available on the website.

I got back late last night, after a trip back that included a lost reservation, my luggage being overweight (how could that be? oh, look at all those books) so I had to repack a bit at the counter under the check-in agent’s impatient gaze, and the poor kid beside me throwing up steadily all the way from PIT to IAD. It’s always weird, the day after travel, because one feels as though you’ve been simultaneously on vacation and yet working harder than most days.

I cannot begin to enumerate all the ways that weekend was wonderful. It was a great joy to see months and months of planning finally bear fruit and now we can relax for at least a couple days before thinking about next year. The programming was, in my opinion, outstanding. My only quarrel would be that there was so much good stuff that I could not get to every panel I wanted to, and that I could not spend enough time with the fabulous SFWA events team of Kate Baker, Terra LeMay, and Steven H Silver, who are responsible for everything that was wonderful.

One of the challenges for the Programming Team, led by Mary Robinette Kowal, was making sure the programming had something for all writers, whether they were tradpub, small press, indie, or hybrid. There were so many terrific, in-depth panels, including a wealth of shadow programming additions and office hours with writers and other publishing professionals. It made me think back to a Nebula from several years when I was on a lackadaisical panel about writers block that was, I think, so much less useful than it could have been and realize just how far the Nebula Conference has come from the days of “let’s all get together in a hotel and hand out the awards and then drink a lot.”

Sarah Pinsker did a great job with the mentoring program, which matched up literally dozens of folks for mentoring sessions that were, for a number of folks, a major highlight of the con. I am sure many of the relationships formed there will last long after this weekend; I know I picked up two of my mentee’s books and am looking forward to reading them.

The book depot structure, so adeptly administered by Sean Wallace, meant that everyone had a chance to have their books there. That had been an issue for a number of the indies last year and it was gratifying to see that problem addressed. I apologize for being one of the people who brought a stack of books in at the last minute; Sean was very patient with the number of us who did so.

I will not claim everything was perfect; I think I’m one of the people most acquainted with every behind-the-scene misstep and/or perceived slight that needed smoothing over. But so many of the small touches were stellar. The centerpieces on the banquet tables were charming robots assembled from vintage materials by artist Don L. Jones. There were plenty of chances for networking with partners and finding new and interesting opportunities. The gender-neutral bathroom was there, and usable, and in a place where people could find it. The Volunteer Breakfast on Sunday was lovely; we had a great turn-out and people liked the appreciation certificates and special SFWA temporary tattoos. (I still have a lot of these and am happy to mail them to SFWAns.) Toastmaster Kjell Lindgren was charming and smart and loves SF as much as any of us; he even showed us the books that drew him on his lifepath.

Speaking of reading, the swag bags were STUFFED with great stuff; I was making a number of happy noises while unpacking mine. I also enjoyed pointing people at the excess tables towards books that I knew were terrific, like Sarah Kuhn’s The Heroine Complex or Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Spirit Binders books.

I got to wear several of my more high-end thrift store finds from this year, and also learned how to pack garments that consist mainly of chainmail-like layers of sequins. I also learned that such things really end up being heavy when you accumulate a few in one suitcase. My banquet dress was a big hit; I’ve never been asked before “who were you wearing?”, which amuses me and may underscore the lengths to which I will go in SFWA’s service.

I did indeed announce that SFWA will be giving out a game-writing Nebula. Not an award with a separate name, like the Andre Norton or Ray Bradbury Award, but a Nebula. Why? Because game-writing deserves to be right up there in the ranks, not treated like a special case (no disrespect is intended there to either of the named awards). If you’re a gamewriter interested in providing feedback on how SFWA can help/serve gamewriters — or better yet, if you’re interested in helping make that happen by volunteering — I’d love to hear from you, and you can find my contact information here.

Next year’s Nebulas will again be in Pittsburgh and at the same hotel. Overall, they did a pretty solid job (with a few overwhelmed restaurant bobbles) and I know the manager and the events team sat down together on Sunday and went over everything that went wrong and how we can avoid them next year, down to details like marking the ramp’s edges with white tape so next time no one trips and has a bad fall over that invisible edge.

The business meeting on Saturday went smoothly; I don’t think there were any real surprises for anyone. The officer election results were announced; thank you and welcome to incoming officers Curtis Chen, Andy Duncan, Jeffe Kennedy, and John P. Murphy, with special thanks again to Erin M. Hartshorn for agreeing to take up M.C.A. Hogarth’s sparkly war axe. The most contentious discussion was a member who felt that some members might prefer to write letters to the editor in the e-newsletter The Singularity in order to communicate with fellow members than use the discussion forums; the agreement was made that should anyone wish to write such a letter, we will include it in The Singularity. Afterwards we had a panel in the same room about all the stuff SFWA offers writers; the challenge was that we didn’t have enough time to cover it all.

I don’t often get to surprise Steven H Silver, and yet Kate and I managed to keep the fact that Walter Day had made one of his awesome trading cards for him secret until the banquet. Walter’s trading cards are so nifty; he’s up to over 200 of them now and they were one of the nifty features of the swag bags. He also presented Jane Yolen with a special blown-up version of her new one. Jane gave a lovely speech, finishing with her Sally Field moment, and just generally was awesome and generous with her time all throughout the weekend.

The Super Nebula Showcase HumbleBundle has one day to go. So far it has raised more money for the SFWA Givers Fund, which administers grants to promote F&SF writing, than the Fund gave out last year. If you haven’t checked it out — there’s an awful lot of good reading in there.

Liz Argall did an adorable cartoon about the weekend, and another based on my closing words, which I hope she’ll post at some point, but I will reiterate them. It was so lovely to see you all. You are my people and I appreciate the trust you’ve given me. I’ll keep trying to steer things in a reasonable direction, but you’re the ones powering the ship. Thank you.

Many thanks to the Future Affairs Administration for live tweeting the Nebulas — they had over 4.5 million page views, which is awesome. I hope to be in Chengdu this winter to meet some of those viewers.

I am sure I have left out so much, and I suspect I’ll be updating this post throughout the next couple days as things occur to me, but I wanted to get a post up so peeps who weren’t there got to see some of the pictures. Here’s a few more.