Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Connie Willis, our newest SFWA Grand Master

Yes, I am very behind on my blogging, my email, you name it. Just posting a quick note to say I am alive and I will be posting some new posts as soon as I catch up on sleep. This weekend I was at the Nebulas and got to see Connie Willis made a Grand Master. Now Connie is a wonderful, generous person. At this awards weekend, when she is the most honored guest, it was hard for us to find time meet up and spend any time together. Nearly all of our meals were booked, so we just decided to meet in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday - the day of the Awards banquet - and we sat and talked for over two hours.

Connie was my Clarion West instructor, and no one I know teaches better than she does (which is no insult at all to any of the rest of my fantastic teachers). In the course of just a few minutes' conversation, she'll say things that I digest over the next few hours and days, so you can imagine how a two our conversation was like drinking from a firehose from the font of knowledge. I'll be sorting through and picking apart what she said for months. We had a great conversation about books, plotting, and specifically romances because the book she is working on right now has a romance storyline in it.

At the Awards Banquet, she was fantastic, giving an acceptance speech that brought everyone to their feet in a big standing ovation. And yes, I did get to see her Grand Master Award. It looks very much like a Nebula - and for the uninitiated, a Nebula is a block of lucite with spherical planets made from I don't know what and glitter galaxies suspended in it. Connie is our fourth female Grand Master and one of the youngest. She has most definitely earned it, though, having won more Hugos and Nebulas than any other author, with stories that are classics.

I can sense my consciousness slipping though. I need to crash. Hope what I wrote was coherent!

6 comments:

  1. So glad you got to go! I would have given a lot to be there, too, and you are right: any time spent with Connie is a gift to be reopened and savored again and again. It made my day to read this!

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    1. HI Betty! It would have been wonderful to see you too, but I hope to make it back to a Williamson Lectureship before too long. I was definitely thinking of you this weekend. Remember that one year we had three Grand Masters at the Lectureship? Now it's technically four, and that has GOT to be a record of some kind.

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  2. Sounds like you had a great time at the Nebulas and especially with Connie Willis. Can't help being a tiny bit envious ...

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    1. It was a great time! I also met Nancy Fulda and mentioned you to her. She's LDS, married to a German, living in northern Germany. I'll introduce you to each other via email here when I dig out her address from my luggage. Her story, Movement, was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula this year.

      Also, can I borrow your brain very briefly? If it's all right, I'm going to gift you the German version of my short story, Polar Shift. I don't need you to read every word and give me detailed feedback on the translation, but can you skim it to make sure Amazon did not butcher any of the special characters? I want to test this before I publicize the German editions of my short stories that are coming out this upcoming week (yay!)

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    2. I should mention that the translator is out of town for the long weekend. Which I understand you may be too!

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  3. You mentioned me to Nancy Fulda? Wow! I read her story, Movement, and was completely blown away! And I've just read Godshift now, and ... wow! As she herself wrote, it's mind-shattering!

    And, uh, yeah, you can borrow what's left of my brain. I've already replied to your e-mail. Don't worry, we are boring people and never go away for the weekend, no matter how long. ;-)

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