Well, thank you once again, everyone, both for your nominations, and for all the messages of good will that have been coming my way. It is always a great honor to be nominated (and a great relief to discover that I’m not yet a has been).

Thank you also to John Scalzi for standing aside this year, and for encouraging people to take an interest in the fan categories.

Congratulations, obviously to all of my fellow nominees. I’ll be having more thoughts on the ballot later, but one thing that is obvious is that Best Novel is going to be one heck of a fight this year.

But talking of fellow nominees, despite John’s exhortations to people to get some new names into the fan categories, the ballot has a very familiar look to it. I’m now part of that “same old, same old” thing. People are going to start asking, why don’t I step aside? Well, there’s a very simple reason for that.

I want to beat Dave.

Look, he’s a wonderful writer, and a good friend. I really admire his work. But, dammit, I keep finishing second to him. Even the Hugo I did win probably wouldn’t have happened if Dave hadn’t chosen to move Ansible into the semiprozine category. Often I haven’t lost by much – sometimes fewer than a dozen votes – but I’ve always lost. If this were boxing people would be shaking their heads and wondering about my sanity.

So, probably I will get beaten again. But it is always a huge honor to be nominated. And while Dave is still there as a target, I’ll keep trying.

More later. In the meantime I’m going shopping. I need a new dress…