"Conditional Love" available free online!

2011-03-03T22:24:25+00:00

Spurred on by more experienced nominees, I have posted my Nebula-nominated short story “Conditional Love” on my author site. You can read it online here or download it in PDF or ePub file format to read on the screen (or printout) of your choice. Many thanks to my co-protagonist Ryan for making this happen quickly and beautifully!

My story is by far the latest of the nominated short stories to appear online, so please pass the link on!

I hope you enjoy my story. Here’s how it starts:

Conditional Love
The new patient was five or six years old, male, Caucasian, John Doe as usual. Grace checked the vitals his bed sensors were feeding her board and concluded he was asleep. She eased the door of 408 open and stepped in.

The boy’s head was tilted on his pillow, brown curls cluttering his forehead. Sleep had flushed his cheeks so he looked younger than the estimate. He seemed healthy, with no visible deformities, and if he had been opted for looks, it had worked—Grace would have described him as “cherubic.” He wouldn’t have been dumped if nothing was wrong, so Grace found herself stepping softly, unwilling to disturb him and discover psychological conditions.

“Don’t worry about waking him, he sleeps pretty deep.”

…Read the rest!

Huge news: my first Nebula Nomination!

2011-02-22T07:03:25+00:00

I am overjoyed to be able to announce that “Conditional Love” has been nominated for a 2010 Nebula Award in the short story category!

This is an immense honor. I’ve daydreamed about being up for a Nebula, but I hadn’t expected to get there so soon. Now I get to daydream about celebrating and meeting people at the Nebula Awards Banquet in May, which is a very near future. Much nearer than flying cars!

“Conditional Love” was first published by Asimov’s Science Fiction and will soon be available as a free pdf from their website. ~~I’ll post again when that is up,~~ [I have posted my story on my author site in several formats! -FAS, 3/3/11] but if you’d like to listen to the story, narrated by Mur Lafferty, on Escape Pod, that is already available!

The Short Story category is a big one this year, with seven nominees (there are five in each Nebula category unless there are ties in the number of nominations):

“Arvies” by Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed, 8/10)
“How Interesting: A Tiny Man” by Harlan Ellison (Realms of Fantasy, 2/10)
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson (Tor.com, 1/17/10)
“I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” by Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed, 6/10)
“The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar (Apex, 11/10)
“Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith (anthology))
“Conditional Love” by Felicity Shoulders (Asimov’s, 1/10)

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first nomination for Amal El-Mohtar and Vylar Kaftan as well as for me!

I hope you’ll take a look at the full list of nominees. Congratulations to all the nominees, including my fellow Portland-area writers Mary Robinette Kowal, M.K. Hobson (both nominated for their first novels!)

I am so happy that it’s been very hard to keep the news under wraps until the press release. I’ve been running through huge numbers of exclamation marks — don’t be surprised if there’s a regional shortage — and smiling, even early in the morning, for days. A marvelous surprise, and, with apologies to the replica pulse rifle, the best birthday present ever. Who could mind turning 30 when she knew about this?

Posts tagged with "nomination" - Faerye Net

"Conditional Love" available free online!

Huge news: my first Nebula Nomination!