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So...Hugo award! Also, Guacamole
13 years ago
In case you didn't hear the hollering from Chicago last Sunday night, here's what went down.
Last spring, Ursula Vernon was nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of "Best Graphic Story" for her comic Digger, which is free online (www.diggercomic.com) and which we (Sofawolf Press) sell in print form (swp.im/shop/digger). So we all headed to Worldcon / Chicon7 over the Labor Day weekend for the convention and the awards ceremony on Sunday night.
Worldcon is a LONG con. We staffed the dealer's room for 5 days (Thursday through Monday), which is as long as San Diego Comic Con -- but with only about as many attendees as Anthrocon. This is very much a SF/F readers' and writers' con -- there was very little for the big media companies like you see at SDCC, very little cosplay, but an awful lot of people passionate about books and short stories. It was fun, even though we had an uphill battle convincing people to look at graphic stories or furry content in general, other than Ursula's stuff, which was >90% of our sales the whole con. We're not complaining, though! We met a lot of interesting people and sold enough product to cover the table, electricity, travel and hotel stay with perhaps a little left over after the bills are paid.
Anyhow, Sunday night was the big night, and we suffered through standing in the back of the ballroom through the ceremony because our dinner went late and we were lucky just to get in. John Scalzi was a great presenter -- keeping things light and fun and moving along. There was apparently a glitch in the live Ustream of the ceremonies due to the (approved and totally fair-use) clips from TV and movie nominees being broadcast, which got the stream pulled by copyright-bots. Much drama over that that we heard about after the fact. The stream cut out just before Neil Gaiman's acceptance for The Doctor's Wife, George R.R. Martin for Game of Thrones (Season 1)...and then the presentation of Best Graphic Story.
We were incredibly excited and nervous. We'd had hopes, hearing many people tell us over the course of the weekend that they'd voted for Digger, but we dared not hope TOO much, having already lost out on two Eisner's. So when the announcement came that Digger had won, a great whoop rose from all of us at the back of the room, startling greatly the people just in front of us, and then the great adrenaline rush as the reality sunk in that Digger had won, Ursula had won...and we by proxy had also kinda sort won too.
I needed something to do, so I pulled out my cell phone and started recording as Ursula approached the stage. I never thought it would be anything other than a shaky, blurry, barely-audible recording for my own benefit. I raised my phone high and held it as steady as I could while Ursula began her amusing and brilliantly executed acceptance speech. She was awesome, she did not drop her award, I got it all...and the remainder of the awards were a bit of a blur. We went up, watched her stand for what seemed an uncomfortable amount of time getting photos taken, then were glad that we got to mingle with her and Kevin while they tried to come to grips with everything. I found the posting of the voting results -- Digger had won handily, getting 2x the number of votes as the next contestant (Fables). I showed them to Ursula, which she seemed to appreciate, but may not have actually remembered after the fact.
Brer and I did not make it to the parties afterwards -- tickets were limited, I had picked up con crud, and we had a hike, then a 35 min. train ride back to our hotel. But we heard about it later. Completely packed, too loud to hear. We're ultimately content in not having gone, even though we missed out on the Guacamole Incident.
Ursula has posted a wonderful summary of her experience, which includes full details of her Nacho Bar Death Match with Neil Gaiman: http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1508804.html
Video of her speech can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLfxHxLiyxo
Last spring, Ursula Vernon was nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of "Best Graphic Story" for her comic Digger, which is free online (www.diggercomic.com) and which we (Sofawolf Press) sell in print form (swp.im/shop/digger). So we all headed to Worldcon / Chicon7 over the Labor Day weekend for the convention and the awards ceremony on Sunday night.
Worldcon is a LONG con. We staffed the dealer's room for 5 days (Thursday through Monday), which is as long as San Diego Comic Con -- but with only about as many attendees as Anthrocon. This is very much a SF/F readers' and writers' con -- there was very little for the big media companies like you see at SDCC, very little cosplay, but an awful lot of people passionate about books and short stories. It was fun, even though we had an uphill battle convincing people to look at graphic stories or furry content in general, other than Ursula's stuff, which was >90% of our sales the whole con. We're not complaining, though! We met a lot of interesting people and sold enough product to cover the table, electricity, travel and hotel stay with perhaps a little left over after the bills are paid.
Anyhow, Sunday night was the big night, and we suffered through standing in the back of the ballroom through the ceremony because our dinner went late and we were lucky just to get in. John Scalzi was a great presenter -- keeping things light and fun and moving along. There was apparently a glitch in the live Ustream of the ceremonies due to the (approved and totally fair-use) clips from TV and movie nominees being broadcast, which got the stream pulled by copyright-bots. Much drama over that that we heard about after the fact. The stream cut out just before Neil Gaiman's acceptance for The Doctor's Wife, George R.R. Martin for Game of Thrones (Season 1)...and then the presentation of Best Graphic Story.
We were incredibly excited and nervous. We'd had hopes, hearing many people tell us over the course of the weekend that they'd voted for Digger, but we dared not hope TOO much, having already lost out on two Eisner's. So when the announcement came that Digger had won, a great whoop rose from all of us at the back of the room, startling greatly the people just in front of us, and then the great adrenaline rush as the reality sunk in that Digger had won, Ursula had won...and we by proxy had also kinda sort won too.
I needed something to do, so I pulled out my cell phone and started recording as Ursula approached the stage. I never thought it would be anything other than a shaky, blurry, barely-audible recording for my own benefit. I raised my phone high and held it as steady as I could while Ursula began her amusing and brilliantly executed acceptance speech. She was awesome, she did not drop her award, I got it all...and the remainder of the awards were a bit of a blur. We went up, watched her stand for what seemed an uncomfortable amount of time getting photos taken, then were glad that we got to mingle with her and Kevin while they tried to come to grips with everything. I found the posting of the voting results -- Digger had won handily, getting 2x the number of votes as the next contestant (Fables). I showed them to Ursula, which she seemed to appreciate, but may not have actually remembered after the fact.
Brer and I did not make it to the parties afterwards -- tickets were limited, I had picked up con crud, and we had a hike, then a 35 min. train ride back to our hotel. But we heard about it later. Completely packed, too loud to hear. We're ultimately content in not having gone, even though we missed out on the Guacamole Incident.
Ursula has posted a wonderful summary of her experience, which includes full details of her Nacho Bar Death Match with Neil Gaiman: http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1508804.html
Video of her speech can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLfxHxLiyxo
Alopex
~alopex
OP
Would you believe that this thought did cross my mind? "I wonder how much it would cost to hire the Taiwanese animators to replicate the guacamole incident?"
