Tuesday, September 24, 2013

I Married a Hugo Winner (and Other Things My Wife Can Now Say)

Okay, so. I have been lax lately. Not lax about doing writerly stuff, because I've been keeping crazy busy. Lax on blogging about all the writerly stuff. And the non-writerly stuff, like getting married.

Yes, I got married. On September 14, my girlfriend of six years, Angie, tied the knot with me during a small, quiet ceremony on the roof of our apartment building. It was beautiful and she is beautiful, and our wedding is by far the most important thing to happen to my since I blogged last. Heck, maybe even my whole life and stuff.

But there's something else pretty important that happened to me this month. On September 1, during the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, I won a Hugo Award.

I didn't do it alone. As the highest honor in the realm of science fiction and fantasy, the Hugo is reserved for really badass writers, artists, podcasters, and so forth. They also give them to editors, and that's what I won for -- as part of the 2012 editorial team of Clarkesworld Magazine. I won alongside publisher Neil Clarke and cohorts Sean Wallace and Kate Baker, with whom I served last year as Clarkesworld's nonfiction editor. The Hugo ceremony was amazing, although nowhere near as amazing as my wedding ceremony, I should hasten to point out.

What else? Oh, right. I started teaching a science fiction and fantasy curriculum at Lighthouse Writers Workshop here in Denver. I am truly lucky to be able to foist my warped taste on others, and to help guide them toward their goals as SF/F writers. Fingers crossed, this curriculum will thrive, and there will be a new place for aspiring genre writers in the Denver area to convene, workshop, and grow.

Lots of other incredible stuff has been happening here in the wide world of Heller, which is neither particularly wide nor particularly much of a world. More like the narrow cell in which I pace, laptop dangling from the ceiling by some cruel torturer, my sole source of both torment and commune with the universe. But I won't bore you with all that.

I'm much too happy at the moment. Happy, and just a bit lax.