Look at this: I've been shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. Or rather, In Great Waters has. Isn't that amazing?

Wow. I feel like I should say something articulate about this, but between being astonished and being scheduled for an induction tomorrow (I am, for the benefit of newcomers - hello and welcome - nearly 42 weeks pregnant right now), I fear I might just babble. I'll stick to saying a big thank you to all the people involved in getting me on that shortlist, and good luck to all the other shortlistees!


And also, since I've already had one journalist contact me - the excellent Alison Flood of the Guardian - I feel I should mention that to any other journalists that, while I'll try to keep an eye on my e-mail, I might be a bit hard to get the usual amount of copy out of over the next, um, however long it takes to deal with a birth and then a newborn baby. So in the interests of being helpful, a few posts that might be relevant: Why I write made-up beasties, On writing using archaic language, The problems of Secondbookitis, A description of the little demon that I identified while writing the book, The embarrassing truth about what a scatty writer I am,

... and a couple of posts that happened during the process: the time I invited my readers to help me work out what might go wrong with the premise, and the competition where readers got to guess what the book's first sentence might be (and the results here).