“Siren Beat” (novelette)
“Prosperine When it Sizzles,” New Ceres Nights (short story)
“Like Us,” Shiny (short story)

And that, because I’ve been a one-publisher woman for short fiction for the last couple of years (aka lazy) completely covers me as far as Hugo eligibility goes.

It would be awesome to see some Australian names on the Hugo ballot this year since there are a lot more of us eligible to nominate than most years – which should at least in theory mean that more people who read Aussie fiction are eligible to nominate! I’m ridiculously excited about getting to nominate, and keep going back as I think of new good ones to put in there.

My favourite Australian-written spec fic stories of the year were:

Paul Haines, “Wives,” x6 (novella)
Margo Lanagan, “Ferryman,” Firebirds Soaring (short story)
Peter M. Ball, “On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War Machines of the Merfolk,” Strange Horizons (short story)

and I also really liked:

Peter M. Ball, Horn, Twelfth Planet Press (novella)
Deborah Biancotti “This Time, Longing,” A Book of Endings (short story)
Thoraiya Dyer, “The Widow’s Seven Candles,” New Ceres Nights (novelette)
Dirk Flinthart, “Debutante,” New Ceres Nights (short story)
Trent Jamieson, “Iron Temple,” x6 (novella)
Margo Lanagan, “Sea-Hearts,” x6 (novella)
Cat Sparks, “Seventeen,” Masques (short story I think?)

Peter M Ball is also eligible for the John W. Campbell Award

You can see my whole list of great short stories published worldwide in 2009 over at Last Short Story, and the combined recommended reading list of all the Last Short Story readers here. If you have some reading to catch up with before you nominate, you might get some good ideas of where to start over at those lists.

What favourite stories of the year, Australian or otherwise, would you like to see on the Hugo ballot?

Anyway, today is nicer, and tomorrow we are being invaded by Flintharts and welcoming GJ back for her last stay before she jets home. So time for a little summing up of my reading in 2009.

I read 115 books, which fell just shy of my target of 10 a month. I can live with it. I could possibly have squeezed in another 5 if I had talked to GJ less during her visit, but what would be the point of that?

I genuinely loved roughly half of what I read, which goes to show how well I’m doing at selecting for my current tastes and interests – I filter what I read pretty highly, and my limited reading time adds another filter which is my short attention span for books I’m not completely into. I’ve talked about most of the books I liked best throughout the year, but here they are again. I’m including spec fic YA under the SF and Fantasy categories, so the YA category itself is a general one.

As with the previous year, the majority of what I’m reading is YA, and the majority of the spec fic I read is fantasy. I read more non fic this year, largely chosen because of favourite blogs. I enjoyed it a lot and plan to read more in 2010. Other than that I have no particular reading goals for next year – but I would like to crack 120.

NON-FICTION
The Vorkosigan Companion – Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers (eds)
The Wiscon Chronicles I, II, III – L. Timmel Duchamp, Eileen Gunn, Liz Henry (eds)
Writing the Other: A Practical Approach – Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward
Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere – Kate Harding & Marianne Kirby
Beyond Heaving Bosoms: the Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels – Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan
Booklife – Jeff VanderMeer

FANTASY
The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
The Mirador – Sarah Monette
Corambis – Sarah Monette
City of Glass – Cassandra Clare
Horn – Peter M Ball
Wicked Lovely – Melissa Marr
The Demon’s Lexicon – Sarah Rees Brennan
Lavinia – Ursula K LeGuin
Princess Ben – Catherine Gilbert Murdoch
Eyes Like Stars – Lisa Mantchev
Rampant – Diana Peterfreund
Unseen Academicals – Terry Pratchett

SCIENCE FICTION & STEAMPUNK
Worldshaker – Richard Harland
Dull Boy – Sarah Cross
Eclipse 3 – Jonathan Strahan (ed)
New Ceres Nights – Alisa Krasnostein & Tehani Wessely (eds)
The New Space Opera II – Jonathan Strahan & Gardner Dozois (eds)
Leviathan – Scott Westerfeld

GENERAL YA
Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty – Jody Gehrman
Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings, Perfect Fifths – Megan McCafferty
An Abundance of Katherines – John Green
Dairy Queen, The Off Season, Front & Center – Catherine Gilbert Murdock
L8er, G8er; Kissing Kate; Peace, Love and Baby Ducks – Lauren Myracle
My Most Excellent Year – Steve Kruger
Tap and Gown – Diana Peterfreund
Little Bird – Penni Russon
Big Fat Manifesto – Susan Vaught
The It Girl series – Cecily Von Ziegesar
What Supergirl Did Next – Thalia Kalkipsakis
Liar – Justine Larbalestier
Derby Girl – Shauna Cross

HORROR
Slights – Kaaron Warren

2000 – The first year of my doctoral studies. Wrote a new version of ‘Cafe Girl’ (later Cafe la Femme) with an Arts Tasmania grant. Went to Swancon for the first time, and discovered while there that my publisher didn’t like the 3rd Mocklore book. Spent a large part of this trip coming up with a proposal for an alternative 3rd book, but too little too late.

2001 – This was my year of short stories, in which I submitted over 100 pieces through the year, teaching myself to write in different genres, and resting the novel part of my brain. It was also the first ROR in Montville – I brought a YA novel (Green – something, I forget) I had written in a hurry to be part of the gang. Margo brought along the ms of Black Juice and we totally told her that she would get a World Fantasy Award for “Singing My Sister Down.” Thanks to a uni scholarship,  aifin and I went overseas together for the first time, spending a month in Rome, passing through Paris and spending Christmas in London.

2002 – Our trip concluded with visits to Nottingham, York and Surrey, as we spend time with my cousin Marianne and her family. ASIM launched at Convergence in Melbourne, along with AustrAlien Absurdities (which Chuck McKenzie and I had been working on for the past two years) and Agog. This con is generally heralded as the one where the post-Worldcon energy started producing actual stuff. I met Tehani and several ASIMites for the first time. (Ben? Was this the first time we met for reals?) I wrote the 3rd Mocklore novel for the sake of completion, knowing it wouldn’t find a publisher.

2003 – Became Chair & co–convenor of Thylacon 2005 and worked on that for the next two years. Attended my second Swancon, much more fun than the first because I knew many more people. ROR at Varuna, with Trent added to the mix – I brought Drak Magic (Mocklore #3) to be workshopped. Edited issue #9 of ASIM.

2004 – Pregnant with ‘Button’. Went to Conflux (with a condensed ROR beforehand), and to Brisbane to teach at EnVision for a week. Worked on Power and Majesty (book 1 of the Creature Court) until putting it on pause to complete thesis before my supervisor left the uni and my baby was born. Didn’t get back to novel for some time. Thesis was not finished in time either. Failed driving test for the first time. We started our Thursday night tradition with C.  godiyeva and her family moved back to Tasmania. The ABC repeated old Doctor Who throughout the year, making me happy that the music my baby would hear most often in the womb was the theme music.

2005 – Raeli was born and we started learning the hardest, most rewarding job in the known universe. I joined LJ, apparently within a day of getting home from hospital. I also bonded with Finchy’s laptop so closely that it became my laptop… I missed that year’s ROR because it was only a few weeks after having Raeli. Failed driving test for the second time. We upgraded  aifin‘s unit to a house that was very much ours. I ran Thylacon with a 5 month old baby strapped to my chest. As the con madness finally ebbed, I got to know  girliejones online and started writing for ASiF!  godiyeva had Oscar and Thursday night dinners became Thursday night horde. New Doctor Who was launched! Yes, this was a big deal.

2006 – Finally, at the beginning of the year, went back to Power & Majesty with the intent of finishing it for the following year’s ROR workshop and declared myself a novelist again. With my mother, I took over the Deepings Dolls business and launched Pendlerook Designs. Hosted a Tasmanian ROR, with Dirk Flinthart joining the group – I had a version of Power & Majesty workshopped.  aifin and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. I edited ASIM #22, and briefly wrote Kids Dish, a food blog about cooking for kids, for a dodgy website that was supposed to pay me. I withdrew from ASIM as a member of the collective, and joined Ben & GJ at Shiny. Thesis was finally completed and submitted, after drama with the head of department (and replacement supervisor) who decided it wasn’t up to scratch for a doctorate and should be submitted as a masters instead. With support of the Dean of Students, I submitted it against the wishes of my head of school – one of the most confronting things I have ever had to do.

2007 – Completed requested changes from my examiners and graduated as a Doctor of Classics. Seacastle published by ABC Books – my first children’s novel! Raeli wore a mermaid costume to both the Hobart and Melbourne launch (the latter of which was gracefully pulled together by Rowena!). Exhibited my first quilt in a show – a crazy quilt titled ‘Augusta Valentine.’ Joined the Last Short Story project. Took Raeli to the Melbourne con, and met GJ & Random Alex in person for the first time. Published Drak Magic via LJ ( mocklore, for the 8 or so people still waiting for the 3rd Mocklore novel. Started playing online RP and met Kaia, Jenn &  zeft, among others. Signed with Pulp Fiction Press to publish Cafe La Femme and a sequel. Finished writing new parts of Power and Majesty and posted the first chapter on M’s website, where it attracted the interest of my future agent, Anni.

2008 – I turned 30. Became a godmother to Felix, another of the hordelings. Stepped down from Shiny. Exhibited two quilts – Raeli’s mermaid quilt and the Glamma Garden quilt. I wrote 3 Janes for my Arts Tasmania grant and Siren Beat for M’s anthology. Kaia and I wrote our collaborative “Blueberry” novel in a couple of months. As a side effect of this, I became an Arsenal supporter and started following Premier League. I did NaNoWriMo for the first time, using it to write the Cafe La Femme sequel. Became pregnant with ‘Little Kick’. The Creature Court trilogy sold to HarperCollins Voyager and I officially signed with Anni Haig-Smith as my agent. I quit teaching creative writing at Adult Ed (night classes). Year of no cons (sad!) but  looneymoth finally made it back to live in Hobart. Received my first Aurealis Award nomination for “Fleshy.”

2009 – Raeli started kindergarten. I got my driving license. Mostly, I worked on Creature Court books for Voyager. My first Aurealis Awards ceremony, and my last ROR for a while – two trips to Brisbane! This one was back to Montville, full circle, and I brought my most recent version of P&M along for final feedback. Exhibited my charm quilt. Joined Twitter. Two AA nominations. And, oh yes, Jem joined the family.

Here with commentary is the wishlist I set out for 2009 a year ago:

*get my driver’s licence
Achieved in March, after great suffering and stress (and failing in January and February). My honey was a rock through this utterly torturous process and I broke at least one more driving instructor in the process. I am particularly grateful to  godiyeva who helped me bridge the gap between Raeli starting school & me finally getting my license by “carpooling” with me for the school run, and letting me practice at the same time. Nine months on, I still love my car and the independence of driving, and still do not take it for granted. Driving out last week to pick  girliejones from the airport made me feel ridiculously grown up.

*go to my first Aurealis Awards ceremony
This was just the most fun ever. I was nearly three months pregnant when I left and I knew that this (and ROR, two months later) would be one of my only chances to do the pro writer abroad thing without consideration of baby baby baby. I got to play the grown up again, picking myself up from the airport, catching a train to the city to meet my Pulp Fiction Press editor Diane and go to high tea, and then again catching a taxi out to the apartments where  girliejones and I were staying. It was a lovely weekend of talking and thinking like a writer, meeting new friends and connecting with old ones.

*start logging the books I read in a spreadsheet again
It might not seem like much, but while the time I took off from logging my reading worked to take some of the Must Read pressure off, I did miss the record. I read 115 books this year, and I doubt that’s going to change between now and midnight. I really wanted to make 120 but – not a bad tally, considering.

*see my daughter start kindergarten
This was a big one. Watching Raeli blossom at school has completely justified all the work it took to get her through the early entry process. She has enjoyed her two days of school a week so much that she became quite snobbish about going to daycare on the other days. She particularly loves music class. Seeing her become more confident on the play equipment, make friends, and advance from knowing her alphabet to being able to read has been beyond awesome.

*revise and submit French Vanilla to Pulp Fiction Press
Done in January and February, submitted on time.

*complete two novels of the Creature Court trilogy.
The first one was done a while ago; the deadline for the second has been extended until Feb 19 because of that pesky baby thing. I should be working on it Right Now, oh yes I should.

*workshop a wheelbarrowful of novels for ROR before March.
Done, and ROR itself was an amazing time, my last hurrah to be an independent body for a long time. Getting to have long talks with my RoRette peeps was marvellous, and it really helped to get my head together about revising the first book of the Creature Court.

*do Nanowrimo (cos I LOVES it)
This one was touch and go for a while, as I flitted back and forth between thinking this was the most indulgent thing I could possibly do in the middle of major publishing deadlines, and justifying it creatively. Ultimately I do think it was the right choice to do it, as I managed to get down 50K of book 3 which gives me a huge head start next year, and gives me more confidence about what book2 has to look like. I also got to bond with some great writers during that month, and it looks like it will segue into a real writing group. The downside is that I promptly collapsed at the end of NaNo, and wasn’t able to do much productive between that and the Christmas-end-of-year madness. I have a lot of catching up to do between here and Feb 19. Ask me then if it really was worth it.

*read regularly & blog regularly for Last Short Story
I feel like this was one of my big successes for the year – taking the attitude that I would only read the material I really felt I would like, rather than the material I thought I should read, I managed to actually read more stories than any other member of the group (admittedly I started the year less burned out than  girliejones or  benpayne, and  random_alex spent several months on a bike) and I am really proud of my list as well as our group list of the best stories of the year. Reading and assessing the best short fiction of the year is one of my great pleasures and I have a sense of satisfaction from being able to read so widely. I do love reviewing, when it complements my other work rather than being a timesink or source of guilt for not doing enough. I think I got the balance right this year.

*write some actual reviews for ASif
As with Last Short Story, I think I got the balance right this year. As you can see, I published six reviews at ASif, though I wrote many more on my blog. I found that the secret was to stop accepting review copies (of the six only the Jones was one I received a complimentary copy of) and just write reviews of work that I liked enough to justify it.  girliejones has rather firmly eyed the last few guilt-inducing tomes on my to-read shelf that I fear I may never get to, and reminded me that actually I don’t have to review them – I can just give the books back. Oh the relief! It also means I can concentrate more on reviewing books that I really feel should be reviewed (especially by a female reviewer in some cases) and ignore the rest. After being snooty about people who only write positive reviews for so many years, I have become one of those people – largely because I simply am not willing to finish a book that I don’t like any more.

*[item embargoed]
I stared at this one for a while, wondering what it actually was. Heh. I was just on the two month mark of my pregnancy when I made the list, and it wasn’t public knowledge. Everything I could possibly have put on a wishlist about my baby came to pass. Jem is a very cool addition to our family, and now that the hardest part is over, I look forward to all the awesomeness that is to come. I particularly love the fact that, after lamenting how many of my favourite names I have wasted on mere fictional characters (and RPing did for a LOT of my favourites), and after largely controlling the list that eventually produced Raeli’s full name – it wasn’t me who named this one at all.  aifin came up with Jemima, and Raeli chose Violet. Both are perfect.

*cook many delicious things out of my cherry cake and ginger beer book
Ha, this would be the book I read immediately before making the list? I think I made two things, if that. But I still love it, and will be cooking from it for many years to come. Also I am totally instituting the ‘nursery tea’ tradition next year, to deal with our bedtime timing struggles, my inability to actually put a cooked meal on the table by 6pm, and Raeli’s irritating food preferences which means she shares so few meals with us. She wants simple food arranged simply? That doesn’t have to be a problem. That is, after all, why nursery tea was invented in the first place (I imagine).

*have a quilt made for the quilt show
Yes, I managed this one! My beloved kite charm quilt, which I worked on, on and off, for three years. It currently lives in our ‘guest room’.

*create a ‘to read’ list of classic children’s literature and make good inroads on it
Eh, I started this one but apart from discovering a deep abiding love for the Chalet School books (sure to be an expensive addiction as the library does not have more than 3 or so!) I lost interest pretty fast.

Overall, I’m pleased with the results, which goes to show I did well at constructing the list as well as managing the items. There were a few lovely surprises along the way, not least the fact that I ended up having a book out this year thanks to the powerhouse that is  girliejones and Twelfth Planet Press, and I managed to score two shortlistednesses (apparently we can’t say nominations) in the Aurealis Awards, which is a big step forward from last year’s one nomination and all the other years’ no nominations. I finished watching Battlestar Galactica with friends, I discovered podcasts, I took a baby to the cinema and lived…

All things considered, I don’t have anything to complain about this year. Apart from the fact that Jem has recently developed a new happy noise that makes her sound like either a banshee or a Drashig, and cuts through my heart exactly like the sad noises.

Roll on 2010! I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one.