Ketchup

For you cultureless heathens who don't already know, Philip K. Dick was a prolific science fiction writer who saw little commercial success in his lifetime but has since become Hollywood's love muffin, his novels forming the basis of movies such as "Blade Runner," "Total Recall," "Next," and "Minority Report." Most of his novels were paperback originals. The PKD is a juried award with a twenty-five year history, presented annually to the best science fiction paperback original, which leads us to Plague War. Wednesday morning, when I got online, I had several emails that War had been shortlisted.

Previous winners include several of my favorite writers, such as William Gibson, Robert Charles Wilson, and Richard K. Morgan. Wow. It’s really, really nice to feel like I must be doing something right — you know, despite the lady who fed Plague Year to her dog, took pictures of it, and sent them to me. Nice!

As you can imagine, we’re very excited. My family. My editors. My agents. Heck, I got congratulatory emails from my publishers in Europe, who must skim the sf news sites with their evening drinks.

Even better, I'm sort of competing with myself. I’m on the ballot 1.14 times, which must be unusual. One of the other five contenders is Pyr Books' Fast Forward 2, which includes my short story "Long Eyes" along with thirteen other pieces, hence the .14, although maybe it should be .15 with another sliver cut out for Lou Anders, the mastermind behind the anthology.

Looks like a tough crowd this year. The envelope, please... Oh, wait. It won't be opened until April 10th at Norwescon!

Labels: Philip K. Dick Award finalist, Plague War

But I look like this. Again. I’m sorry to have fallen off the map. It was Christmas. It was New Year’s. I had a 570 page manuscript that needed to become 480 or my publisher would freak. Mind Plague is at 495 right now in third draft. The fire is out. Life is good. I plan to hit it again next week and get that baby slim and mean. This is going to be the best Plague novel yet — bigger, scarier, with planes chases, gunfights, sex, betrayals, freaky new nanotech, politics, and worse — sometimes all in the same scene at once! Whoa, Nelly.

In the meantime, it’s been a good week. I wrote “The End,” which always gratifying. I also found out that Plague War has been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award. That’s rare for a sequel and so doubly exciting. More on this soon.

In the meantime, I only had two New Year’s resolutions. One is to get more exercise. The other is semi-retire this blog. I hear thousands of people screaming “Nooooo!” Uh, do I? No. Unless a surprisingly large crowd suddenly delurks and hollers for more Deep Thoughts With Jeff, I’m not sure I see the point. I appreciate the banter with you guys who’ve been hanging around. My original intent was to put six months into Ketchup and then reassess the matter. Clearly, I just don’t have time for it.

Having said that, I’ll also post more on this subject asap. For the moment, I just wanted to establish that, yes, I still live!!!!

Labels: Philip K. Dick Award finalist, Plague War, the writing life