Unusually this year’s Hugo Best Novel short list included three books that I had nominated. That, of course, means that two of my favorites missed out, and it will be no surprise to anyone that one of those sadly overlooked works is Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. I am trusting the World Fantasy judges not to be so careless.

Meanwhile Guy tells me that he will be talking to the world next Tuesday (May 3rd). Well, perhaps not the entire world, but a large chunk of it. He’s experimenting with a new online chat system called One Room, which sounds a bit like CoverItLive but is specifically designed for one-to-many mass chats (and by many they claim to mean “thousands”). I shall be interested to see how it works, and indeed how many people Guy gets for this world-wide event.

If you would like to participate, the sign-up form is here. You can also register a question in advance. The timing is 2:00pm Eastern, which is 11:00am West Coast and 7:00pm UK. I have a meeting in Bristol during the day, but I should be back in time to be online for this. Hopefully I can also get Guy to tell me what it is like from the author’s point of view.