Life is all perspective.

That lesson got driven home this weekend, when I attended my first Nebula Awards weekend as a pro­fes­sional writer. The Nebs are pretty much the Oscars for the Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­tasy writing com­mu­nity, and are hosted annu­ally by the Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­tasy Writers of America (SFWA).

With Laura Anne Gilman, John Scalzi and Rena Hawkins

It’s a lot like you’d imagine: ball gowns, tuxedos, the Hilton ball­room, those obnox­ious little car­rots they put on your plate to ensure you don’t forget you’re eating haute cui­sine. It’s the event that gives the lie to the fan­nish cons where we wear cos­tumes or t-shirts with ironic say­ings (like a pic­ture of the galaxy with a little arrow reading YOU ARE HERE). At the Nebs, the nerds clean up, and we clean up damn well.

The Nebs are full of SFWA vets. I was a guest at the Ace/Roc table (Ace and Roc are Penguin-Putnam’s two sci­ence fic­tion and fan­tasy imprints. My upcoming book CONTROL POINT will be on one of them, prob­ably Ace) and sat beside Jack McDe­vitt and across from Joe Haldeman. Michael Whelan was there, as were Paolo Baci­u­galupi, John Scalzi, Lee Mar­tin­dale, Connie Willis, Michael Swan­wick, Bud Sparhawk, Stan Schmidt and those are just the names I’m pulling from the top of my head. It was a ver­i­table who’s-who of the biggest names in the genre.

And, as I said, they’re vets. For many of them, full time life in SF/F lit­er­a­ture is a twenty years under the bridge already. Nebs-Schmebs. This is just another day.

Like I said, per­spec­tive. That wasn’t how it was for me.

You’ve got to remember that I’ve been reading and admiring these people since I was a kid. The Neb­ulas, and the scene around them, has always been my Asgard. Walking through those hotel doors was like ascending Mount Olympus.

I had this great real­iza­tion as Michael Dirda was making his keynote speech. He went on for some time, thanking the many writers who had labored so hard to create works that gave him and SF/F fans all over the world so much plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion, and he expressed delight at the fact that they would con­tinue for years to come.

With Catherine Asaro

And my heart sang, because I real­ized he was talking about me. Now I get the chance to have some nerdy kid pick up my book and get sucked into a world that will lead him down the garden path to comic-book addic­tion, hours sunk into role-playing games, blowing his weekly allowance on mass-market paper­backs. I finally get a chance to step into this genre that has shaped my life from its ear­liest days and pay it back for every­thing it’s ever done for me.

Per­spec­tive.

I got to sit down with Paolo Baci­galupi and talk at length about his ground­breaking novel, The Windup Girl. I got to go out to dinner with Ginjer Buchanan, Ace/Roc’s Editor-in-Chief and talk about her road in the pub­lishing industry. I got to hold Harlan Ellison’s award for Best Short Story. I got to knock back scotches with Laura Anne Gilman, who has fif­teen novels to her tale. I got to pose for a pic­ture with Catherine Asaro (who I have been in des­perate puppy love with since I read The Last Hawk). People whose work I had been admiring, whose careers I have been fol­lowing my entire life. And it almost seemed like some of them were actu­ally taking me seriously.

I know I’ll get over myself. I know this bloom will fade and the hard real­i­ties of work and money and the tur­moil in the pub­lishing industry will set in. I know that next year likely won’t be like this. I won’t be the new kid on the block forever.

But for now? I am high as a f&$king kite, and I am deter­mined to enjoy it for at least another day before I get back in the dirt and start pushing.