So the world fantasy award nominees were announced a few days back.  If you don’t already know who is on the ballot, you can find out here.

Overall it’s a ballot I endorse (because, of course, World Fantasy has been holding its breath waiting for my tick of approval).  As you might guess, I’m especially pleased to see Rob Shearman nominated for best novella for an absolute corker of a story and it’s also wonderful to that Lisa Hannett has been nominated for best collection.  I think I espouse my love for Bluegrass Symphony pretty clearly in this episode of Writer and The Critic.

Also exciting is the nomination of artist Kathleen Jennings.  Not only is Kathleen a lovely, wonderful person but she’s also an amazing artist.  I mean how gorgeous is the newly released cover for Midnight and Moonshine?  (You should all pre-order a copy by the way, I’ll be pre-ordering mine).

If I’m disappointed it’s that the novel list only features one female author – Jo Walton for Among Others – when it could easily have featured a number of female writers.  Top of the list for me would be Catherynne M. Valente for Deathless which I thought was a remarkable book and which, in my humble, is massive hole in this years best novel ballot.

Still, there’s plenty of good stuff on the ballot.  In short story alone we have three astonishing pieces that could easily win the award – the Liu, the Yu and the Fowler.  And there’s a couple of interesting choices as well, like Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman and Mrs Midnight and Other Stories by Reggie Oliver, that I’ve never heard of and am interested to check out.

So bring on the awards in October.  If only I could make it to World Fantasy…