Hugo Award nomination!

In ridiculously flattering and amazing news, last week I found out that I've been nominated for a Hugo Award as Best Fan Writer! I hadn't even considered the concept of being nominated for a Hugo, otherwise I at least might have mentioned earlier that I'm eligible. Apparently you need about 50 nominations to be shortlisted in the Fan Writer category, which doesn't seem enormously likely for something as obscure as a costume design/movie review blog. But it doesn't hurt to mention it just in case, right?

Re: eligibility, any of my amateur/unpaid writing counts, whether it's on this blog or on Tumblr or elsewhere. You can check out my masterlist here, but it's a little out of date so here are some of my sci-fi and fantasy posts!

• The Marvel tag for all Marvel-related costume design posts, movie reviews, and Agents of SHIELD recaps.
• Thor: The Dark World posts: Heroes & Villains, and Female characters & representation.
• The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 1: SHIELD. Part 2: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Bruce Banner. Part 3: Steve Rogers, Captain America. Part 4: Black Widow and Hawkeye.
• Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's new "Fantastic Beasts" movie, and wizarding fashion in 1920s New York.
• Stargate: Watch it. Love It. Learn educational info about real "Egyptian" "archaeology".
• The costumes of X-Men: First Class.
• The costumes of Pacific Rim.
• Mako Mori and the Hero's Journey.
• The Alien series tag, including The costumes of Alien, Costume design and the crew of the Prometheus, and Prometheus: Proof that epic sci-fi doesn't belong in the Alien franchise.
• The Teen Wolf tag for all Teen Wolf recaps, beginning with Teen Wolf 101: A guide to the eighth wonder of our world. 
• The Doctor Who tag. 
• The Star Trek tag, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a costume design nightmare and Star Trek's original 1965 pilot episode: The Cage. 
• Only Lovers Left Alive -- already the best vampire movie of 2014.
• The Fifth Estate: Don't. Just, don't.
• Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story. and Snow White & The Huntsman: The prince doesn't get the girl; the girl gets the kingdom.
• Capitol Couture in The Hunger Games. 
• Dressing For The Apocalypse: a guide to post-apocalyptic movie fashion.
• Person of Interest: The man in the suit.  

I read up on the Fan Writer category the other day, and the list of previous shortlisted writers is kinda daunting. Most of them are either professional sci-fi authors or people who edit or write traditional fanzines. One author/fanzine editor was shortlisted in the Fan Writer category 31 years in a row, and has won 28 Hugo Awards total in various categories.  

Apparently there's been some kerfuffle over whether it's impolite or unfair for writers to self-publicise during awards season, partly because of the way women are discouraged from talking about their own achievements. Amal El-Mohtar wrote a really good post about this, highlighting the way female writers are often overlooked because they don't feel able to mention that they're eligible for awards. This spurred me on to actually let people know that I'd been nominated, rather than just quietly going "OMG" to myself.

Here's how Hugo nominations work:

• Only members of the World Science Fiction Society can submit nominations.
• This means either people who bought tickets for WorldCon 2013, 2014 or 2015, or people who have a supporting membership to the Society. A supporting membership is £25 and you get copies of all the books and short stories that are nominated this year.
• In order to nominate, you HAVE to buy a WorldCon ticket or supporting membership by the end of January 31st! Which is, uh, today. But you have until March 31st to actually turn in your Hugo nominations ballot!
• You sign up and nominate people at the website for this year's World Science Fiction Convention, which will be held in London. There's another explainer post here.

I have no idea if any of you guys are Worldcon attendees/supporting members, but if you are, please consider me on your nomination ballot! :) Either way, I'm incredibly grateful to the people who have nominated me already. And for everyone else: my next post will most likely be about Supernatural, because I'm currently in the process of catching up with the last three seasons, and it's proving to be very interesting viewing.