This November, at the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal, Canada, I am to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.
That's a sentence I never expected to type.
Honored alongside me witll be Howard Waldrop, a celebrated short story author in our genre. While it doesn't surprise me at all that Waldrop is being honored, I'm still shocked that I am.
This award has been given out yearly since 1975, and in recent years, is given to two people, often one an author and the other someone who has made signficiant contribultions to the fantasy genre. The award is voted on by members of the previous World Fantasy Conventions. While the winners of the other World Fantasy awards for that year are not announced in advance, those honored with a Lifetime Achievement award are announced with the nominees for the other awards.
So it was that I received a phone call from Gordon Van Gelder, to let me know that the honor was being annoiunced. I was virtually speechless.
The list of previous honorees includes so many of my writing heroes that it feels very odd to announce that I am stepping up into that company.
Covid and other factors allowing, I hope to attend the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal in November.
And I am still a bit lost for words to talk about this. So I will stop here.