They do the awards on Sunday night, so you spend most of the con pretty much a nervous wreck. I was a tower of calm all year, I wasn’t worrying about it, I knew I wasn’t going to win it—I was against Fables! Four time nominee Shlock Mercenary! Stephen King’s son!—I was just looking forward to the bit where they read your name out and you get to go to the Loser’s Party and hang out with people you’ve admired for years.
Then I got to the con, and people started telling me how much they loved it and that they totally voted for it. Random strangers told me they voted for it. People I had never met in my life told me they voted for it. And this horrible little voice started saying hey. hey. Hey, lady. Hey, you might win. Hey.
I ignored it as long as I could, because hope is DEATH. If I expected to lose, I wouldn’t be crushed.
And people kept telling me they voted for it. And you can’t grab them and say “Oh god, don’t tell me that!” because they are kind people doing a kind thing, and it’s all your neuroses at work, nothing to do with them. (I can honestly say that I was saying ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated,” with no irony whatsoever, and when I thanked people for voting, I meant every word. It was just the back of my brain going ohgodohgodmaybewehaveashotohgod…)
(Side note: One really gratifying part of this experience was that Worldcon is very much an old-school literary con. Graphic story is not exactly the sci-fi ghetto, but it’s definitely got a lot of single-wide trailers and dogs chained out in the yard. The number of people who came up to me and said “I don’t do comics, but I looked at the ones in the Hugo voters packet and tried to keep an open mind,” was very heartening. I think we are making progress on this.)
By late Saturday, I’d lost the fight, and was thinking “You know, it’s possible I might actually….no! Stop thinking that way!” and turning on Kevin at odd moments and going “Tell me I’m not going to win!”
Saturday night I laid in bed and visualized the announcements with other people’s names in them, over and over, in a kind of primitive aversion therapy. “And the winner is…Locke & Key!” “And the winner is…Fables!” I was actually kinda hoping it would be Schlock Mercenary, because Howard Tayler is the nicest man in webcomics and we spent much of the con trading vaguely panicky, vaguely encouraging, “I want to win, but if I lose, I hope it’s to you,” comments and hugging a lot. (Seriously, the man is a class act.)
“Self-selecting sample,” I muttered into my coffee. “People aren’t going to come up to you and say “Yeah, I totally voted for Fables.” (Although a few people reportedly went up to Howard and said “Yeah, I love your stuff but I voted for Digger.” Still feel a little guilty about that.)
I should mention at this point that I was rooming with Mur Lafferty, up for a Campbell award. (Lily Yu got it, and I gotta say she is totally deserving and a brilliant author, and I’m glad she won it if Mur didn’t. We had coffee and sat together at the awards, and she is just profoundly awesome and also so young that you kinda want to shoot her out of a cannon for being nominated for a Hugo, a Campbell, and a Nebula at 22. Lily! If you’re reading this, keep in touch!)
So anyway, I’m rooming with Mur, and by Sunday morning, we are both just wrecked. My brain had been lulled into thinking that it was fifty-fifty—me or Howard—since I hadn’t met any other nominees in the category and had decided they didn’t really exist. I wandered around the con feeling like I was in the dentist’s waiting room, waiting to hear if I got a root canal or a pony.
Sofawolf, all four of ‘em, were marvelous during this. I spent a lot of time at their table signing and they distracted me nicely and listened to my whining and made soothing noises. I love those guys. A number of other past Hugo winners (and losers) were also very kind to me, Connie Willis and Phil Foglio especially. My mom called to say that her Buddhist group was chanting for me. Um. Thanks, Mom.
Sunday afternoon, Mur and I have no appetite, Kevin is wondering if he’s going to throw up (I think he was more nervous than I was, actually) and we finally all have smoothies because we have to eat something or drop dead. I start running through the reactions of every person I had met at the con who already knew who the winners were. Had they made eye contact? Was that one conversation about using the art in the newsletter significant? They would never admit anything, but I wondered if cutting one of them open and reading their entrails would be frowned upon.
We have a rehearsal. They show you the stairs and do a quick dry run—go up here, someone will take your arm, walk to here, take the Hugo, stand on this mark, turn to Scalzi (the toastmaster) hand him the Hugo if you think you’re going to drop it, go to the podium, give your acceptance speech, wait for applause, turn, take the Hugo, go to the curtains, there will be people right there, they’ll take your arms (and the Hugo as needed) and walk you down stairs or ramp, here are chairs, here is water, here are tissues, sit as long as you need, take Hugo, return to seat.
It was all choreographed very well and seemed based on the principle that Hugo winners are in serious danger of falling down, throwing up, fainting, or weeping uncontrollably. (Much like warnings on labels, every single one of those is probably because Someone Has Tried It Already.) Do not drop the Hugo. The base this year is made of stained glass, by the awesome Deb Kosiba (who made a fabulous stained glass phalloi based on one of my paintings, and gave me a Danny Dragonbreath decal that graces my car to this day.) It will shatter if dropped. DON’T DROP THE HUGO.
Kevin bought Mur and I chocolates. They were delicious. We got dressed. Mur’s husband Jim arrived. The four of us stood around in the room going “You look fabulous! Do I look okay?” I checked my mascara approximately eighty-five times to see if it was smearing, and finally just took most of it off.
We went to the before party. Elizabeth Bear introduced Kevin to Neil Gaiman. Kevin will recover at some point in the next month, I believe. Then I wandered over, in search of crabcakes, and she introduced me.
MR. GAIMAN: Ah. Nice to meet you, hope you win and all that shit.
ME: Thank you, it’s an honor just to be nominated and all that shit.
MR. GAIMAN: Exactly.