Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Campbell Eligible Zombies

I'm in my 2nd year of eligibility for a Campbell Award, but I can't say I feel like a new writer, at all.

I felt like a new writer last year. This year, I feel like a dead writer. I am a ghost, watching my first novel, after all the reviews have happened and all the fanfare dies away and the ticker tape has to be swept up by someone and I'm the only one standing around and I, the dead writer, fade into obscurity via google alerts - pings that reach beyond the grave, to my iPhone, while I'm sweeping up the mess in the empty store.

My eBook - a ghost in the machine - hanging on and hanging on... I've got this short fiction that takes so long to sell and so long to see in print after it has sold, so much so that often I forget exactly what the story is until I see it again, and then I wonder where it came from, where I was going with it, and who I was when I wrote it because it feels so far away from me right now. I'm disconnected from all the things that make me eligible. I'm standing on a hill, looking down at all the little houses in time of fiction. I don't know where the next houses are coming from, mostly, only that I've crossed over that hill and I won't be coming back.

I'm eligible for a Campbell for another year - my 2nd year of eligibility - but I don't feel eligible. I feel like I should be getting something posthumous.

Is there a Zombie Campbell Award, for writers who have undead careers?

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