Back on pilgrimage

 

Good news, fellow humans! My short story A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places, which appeared last year in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, is a finalist for the WSFA Small Press Award for short fiction.

I am seriously chuffed about this for a number of reasons. One, you know how everyone always says it's an honor just to be a finalist? You know why they say that? Because it is in fact an honor just to be a finalist. So many wonderful stories come out in this field every year that--well, you've seen my yearly recommendation lists. They're quite long. Winnowing them to any smaller group? Amazing, thank you, could easily have been a number of other highly qualified stories by wonderful writers, I am literally just glad to be on the team and hope I can help the ball club. Er, programming staff.

But here's another reason: if you've read that story--which you can do! please do! it's free, and it turns out people like it!--you will immediately see that it is a story about a disabled person. That disabled person is not me, does not have my family or my career or anything like that. But it is my disability. I put my own disability into this story. I gave someone with my disability a story in which they do not have to be "fixed" to be the hero. And...this is not a disability-focused award. This is just an award for genre short fiction. So I particularly appreciate that the people who were selecting stories looked a story with a disabled protagonist whose disability is inherent to the story without being the problem that needs solving and said, yeah, we appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate you too.