I am amazed. Agog. Thrilled.

My weird law wizard religion justice books are finalists for the first ever Hugo Award for Best Series. The Craft Sequence has, thanks to your sharing it, reading it, shouting about it, gaming in it, drawing fan art of it, and shoving it in the hands of your friends and relations, been nominated for a Hugo. Thank you all. I wouldn’t be here without your efforts, your joy, your enthusiasm. Books are hard to write—there are so many chances to doubt yourself, alone with your keyboard. But every time I heard from someone excited about this world and these characters, I remembered that I don’t write because I have some twisted need to sit alone at a keyboard (though I do, often). I write because I like telling stories, and having them read.

I’m writing this on the road in Ottawa, where I have the singular joy of participating in this moment alongside my good friend the fantastic writer and poet Amal El-Mohtar, who it turns out is also nominated for the 2017 Hugo Awards—in this case for Best Short Story Hugo for her (really really great) tale “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” which you can read here. (Or in the Starlit Wood anthology.) This is an utter coincidence! I’d been planning a trip up north for months, I’m reading tonight at the Chi Series, I’m talking to a class on Wednesday… and it turns out that somewhere in this mix we have a lot of celebrating to do.

Thank you all! Your support means so much. I first found out about the Hugo Award from a Roger Zelazny paperback—the book that really hooked me on science fiction and fantasy as a literary genre. My sense of the award and what it meant developed with my sense of science fiction and what it could do, and vice versa. It’s wild and wonderful and strange to come tangent to it in this way.

If your friends are wondering what all the fuss is about, well, Tor has a convenient electronic omnibus edition of the Sequence for them to try!

But for now, take it easy. Enjoy the moment. We’ve all earned it.