Deanna Hoak

SFWA just released the final ballot for the 2009 Nebula Awards, and there is an enormous amount of good fiction on it. I was lucky enough to get to copyedit three of the nominees this year: two of the novels (China Miéville’s The City & The City and Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker) and a novelette (Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Gambler,” from Pyr’s Fast Forward 2 anthology, edited by Lou Anders).

And I have many friends I didn’t copyedit who have novels and stories on the ballot as well. I’m excited for all of them. :)

I was telling China Miéville teasingly that I felt like “the pipeline of awesome” with this year’s Nebula ballot (which phrase I stole from author Blake Charlton, who described me that way earlier this month when I told him what all I’d been working on), and he responded, “You totally are! You’re the funnel that en-awesomes the merely good!” China’s just being sweet–the books are awesome when I see them, and I just make sure they’re polished to their most beautiful before they head out to the world–but it was fun to hear anyway. :)