So as some of you may know, Digger got nominated for a Hugo award this year, thanks to a whole lot of seriously awesome people who cast nominating ballots, entirely without me knowing it was even eligible. This was very, very nice of them.

“But Ursula!” you say. “The only thing better than a Hugo nomination is an actual Hugo award! How do I vote for Digger? Can I vote for Digger?”

I’m so glad you asked. Because yes, O reader, you CAN vote for Digger if you so desire—Hugos are a…well, not exactly democratic process, more of a republic, really, because it costs money.

In order to vote for the Hugos, you have to get a supporting membership at Worldcon 2012 (or have had one for 2011, or something complicated like that.) This costs you $50 and you get to vote in the Hugos.

Now, if that was all you got, I would say “Dude, ‘Hugo-nominated’ still has the word ‘Hugo’ in it, I don’t need to win that bad, fifty bucks is a lot of money, if it’s burning a hole in your pocket, please donate it to preserve jumping slug habitat or something.”

However, you actually get a lot for the money, because they give you the Hugo Voter Packet. And this includes e-book copies of a whole bunch of the nominees, (including the whole damn run of Digger, in PDF form, as assembled by my enormously talented publisher Jeff) so it works out to a lot of books that are currently in hardcover, a slew of novellas and short stories, some comics—in short, a lot more than $50 worth of content.

Which means that I can say, without feeling too much guilt, “Hey, you can vote for Digger if you want to spend $50 and it’s actually really worth it, because you get copies of some of the very best speculative fiction of the year for the money.”

So, that’s how you vote for Digger if you are so inclined.

If you can’t afford to, please feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever, it does not make you any less dedicated a fan, I am just as happy to have you reading as anybody else, and there were many years when I couldn’t have spent fifty CENTS to vote on something, let alone fifty bucks, so believe me, I understand completely and please, please, don’t apologize.

And if you can afford to, then thank you very much, and if you’re not interested in the voter packet, then hey, how ’bout those jumping slugs, huh?