I drove home from the airport this afternoon after a week at a convention and visiting family, flopped onto the couch with my phone, opened up Facebook and saw a post listing the World Fantasy Award shortlist. To my astonishment and delight, there was my name in the short fiction category! (Some awards give the nominees a heads up before the list comes out, but the WFA does not.)

I’ve never been nominated for a World Fantasy Award before, and this is the first award nomination for this story.

The nomination is for “The Morning House“, a story about a caregiver for a family member with Lewy Body Dementia. It is not autobiographical, but it draws on my own experience as a caregiver for someone with that disease, and it is very close to my heart. I was so honoured when Podcastle gave it a home. Podcastle has published five of my stories over the last eight years, and I’ve listened to it for longer than that. I want to thank editors Eleanor R. Wood and Shingai Njeri Kagunda, narrator Kaitlyn Zivanovich, host Matt Dovey, and producer Devin Martin for bringing this story to listeners.

I’m so honoured to share the category with Eugen Bacon, Tananarive Due, Kat Howard and Suzan Palumbo. I can’t even express how much I admire the work of all these writers.

I also want to give a special shout-out to the nomination in the anthology category of Trouble the Waters: Tales From the Deep Blue, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan and Troy L. Wiggins and published by Third Man Books. That anthology includes my medieval canal-monster story “Lilies and Claws”, now reprinted as the new prologue to my reissued novel, The Chatelaine, so it’s also close to my heart — and it’s just a marvellous anthology.

Thank you to to the judges, administrators and voters, and congratulations to all the nominees. The awards will be presented in late October at the World Fantasy Convention.