John Scalzi has just put up a post about this year’s Hugos. In it he says:

What about Best Fan Writer? I hear you ask. I’ll make it simple: don’t nominate me this year. There are lots of excellent writers out there deserving of this award who have not won it, and I think right now the best thing for this particular award is to have the love spread around for a while, and to have the science fiction community recognize both eligible newer writers and some writers for whom recognition in this category is long overdue. I’ve won it; I’m good, thanks. Give it to someone new.

So, presumably less controversy over that one this year.

I shall miss John’s presence in the race. I don’t think I have a hope in hell of beating him, but his presence gave the category a much higher profile. Also there’s not so much kudos in winning a prize for being the Best Fan Writer Who Isn’t John Scalzi. I guess I’ll just have to write a best selling novel so I can compete with him again.

There will, of course, be people asking why I don’t retire from the category as well. There’s not much that I can say in my defense because I would like to win it, but I can note that I bumped Emerald City out of Fanzine and into Semiprozine after I’d won Fanzine. And I haven’t yet won Fan Writer. Also if I did retire I’d get just as much flak from people saying “who does she think she is, that she assumes she’s bound to get nominated?” Which would be quite reasonable because there are a lot of good people out there. Hopefully, as John says, we’ll see some fresh faces.