Hey, all! It’s the time of year again when nominations have opened for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. To nominate for the Nebula Awards, you need to be a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. To nominate for the Hugo Awards this year, you need to be a member of the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, Washington, or be a member of the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City or have been a member of the 2014 Worldcon in London (some of you became London Worldcon members when The Wheel of Time was on the ballot last year).

It has become traditional in the field for writers like myself to provide a list of which works of theirs are eligible, so that people who are interested in nominating can look into them and give them consideration. As always, it is better to nominate a work because you love it in particular, rather than because of your general preference for a specific author. (Except in certain cases where the creator is instead the focus of the award, such as is the case with the Campbell Award.) The Hugo Awards have only the strength, and prestige, we give them. Please consider my works below, but nominate them only if you sincerely think they are among the best works you read last year.

That said, I do have a particular request this year. Although all of the stories in Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology are indeed eligible on their own in the fiction categories (and I’m certain each writer would love them to be considered on that merit), we at Writing Excuses (Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and I) consider the main purpose of the anthology to be an aid to aspiring writers.

In past years, we’ve been nominated as a podcast for a Hugo Award in the Best Related Work category, and we won that award in 2013. This year, we would ask potential nominators to consider Shadows Beneath in this category instead of the podcast. We are very proud of the anthology, and think it does things that no writing textbook has before attempted. If you are eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, we will happily send you a copy for review. Please drop me an email through my website, and we will get one to you ASAP.

Now, on to the list:

Brandon Sanderson’s Award-Eligible Works for the 2014–2015 Season

Best Novel (Hugo or Nebula)

• Words of Radiance (Tor/Gollancz)

Best Novella (Hugo or Nebula)

• Sixth of the Dusk (From Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology)
• Legion: Skin Deep (Subterranean Press)

Best Related Work (Hugo Only)

• Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology (Dragonsteel Entertainment)
  (Note, if you are eligible to nominate, please feel free to request a review copy through my email contact form here.)

As an aside, if you don’t have at least a supporting membership for Worldcon, you should totally consider getting one (currently $40). With a supporting membership, you get voting rights on the Hugo Awards, and will be sent ebook copies of most (if not all) of the nominated books and stories (last year, the publisher of three of the novels decided not to include them in the packet). To nominate, you must have your membership by January 31st (or be a member of the 2014 or 2016 Worldcons by that date). To vote on the final ballot, you must be a member of the 2015 Worldcon only, by the voting deadline (sometime in July).

I’m going to be attending Worldcon this year in Spokane. I visited there for a different convention a few years back, and was impressed by how well the committee—many of whom are working on Worldcon this year—ran the convention. It should be a great time, and it’s one of the most chill ways I know of to hang out with authors. Worldcon is not like a comic con; there’s no frantic air of merchandising or enormous crowds. (Though I do enjoy comic cons.) Worldcon is about interacting with fellow fans and with writers. You can nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards with just a supporting membership, but to attend the convention requires an attending membership.

Hope to see many of you there!

Brandon