The Memory of the Polls: 2019 and Polls That Will Stick Around (Also Undersung Heroes)

Note: This is going to be an article referenced many times in the coming years for the rules it outlines, so everything in italics is going to disappear after a couple of weeks.

There's so much good stuff coming up in 2019 that I spent part of today just trying to figure out where to start. I sent some company off yesterday and jumped right into one of my side gigs. And this weekend I'm going to start in on this backlog of awesome.

But first, it's already Jan. 10th and we need to get started on things like the year-end wrap up and our polls for 2019. (Seriously, I'm kind of wondering HOW I'm going to get all this done with only a 3-or-4-times-a-week update schedule.)

Before we move forth to our 2019 polls and a whole new dimension of our polling here at Writing About Writing, let me thank everyone for participating in an incredible year of diverse polls. 2018 was an amazing run of great polls that didn't include all the same cis het white guys that dominate most every poll of the type, and I got a lot of ammunition for my To Be Read list. And I only had to ban a couple hundred people, so it was pretty awesome. 

Sticky Polls
Once upon a time we did our polls and that was that. You could dig through the archives and look them up or wait for them to come around again.

NOT ANYMORE!

In 2019, we're going to combine the fact that we now have a decent-sized audience with the fact that you can really only run so many polls before you end up back where you started or trying to crack a whip to eke out a few more nominations on some woefully esoteric niche.

So we're going to start properly archiving the results of our polls.

Starting in 2019, there will be a menu. There will be a link to each the polls after they are done. Folks can see each of the old polls and who won, and even get an idea of when a particular poll niche might come around again. And when we do come around to a poll topic after a while (as seems to happen every couple of years with the popular topics), after a comparison, the new results will replace the old ones at the "top" of the menu, but with a link to the past iterations so the changes can be noted.

Undersung Heroes

I will also offer up a place in our nomination from now on for undersung heroes. I find that many books or series nominated are done so not because they're the genre's "best," but because someone really wants to give a shout out to a book that they feel hasn't gotten enough positive attention. While nomination pages are often huge recommendation lists already, I'd like to start making that an organized part of the results of each poll.

As in, "Here are the poll results and here is the list of undersung books or series that folks have recommended you check out if you haven't already." This is to try and keep the polls themselves down between eight and twelve titles that folks agree are "best," and limit some of the nominations folks make just to try to get a bit of limelight shining on something no one seems to have heard of.

Here's the catch. A nomination for the poll will either get the necessary seconds or won't and if it doesn't, that's that. I assume most folks have heard of it, but it's not a contender for the best and it's not "undersung." An "Undersung Hero" will go on the list at the end of the poll, but won't count as a nomination and won't go on the poll.

And my worst new rule relating to this is that I will still only deal with two titles. You can write two nominations. Two Undersung Heroes or one of each, but I'll ignore everything after your second title.

Won't Someone Think of the Straight White Males (Mailbox)

Diversity polls make me feel bad.

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer a couple each week.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous. Full disclosure––this is a composite of five different letters received since I started doing A Year of Diverse Polls.]


C writes:

I just want to say, as a straight white male who is trying to aspire to write, I can no longer abide your page and your "diverse polls." I understand the intention of them, and on one side I think it's great to promote diversity. On the other side, however, it makes me feel like shit. I feel like I'll never get anywhere with writing, and I shouldn't even try because I'm the wrong race, gender, and sexuality.  

I'm not a racist but why can't we just read books and lift them up based on whether they are good enough and not get into all the identity politics?

I just feel like everyone should be supported, and find it impossible to stick around because all I see are the diversity polls, mocking me. I know you probably won't care, but I'm done with your page. [Note: I added the links above.]

My reply:

I almost just answered this with, "Yeah? How does that feel?" and called it a day, but I suspect the folks who most need to hear it would be the least likely to GET it (in a not-the-reason-Mr-Burton-was-put-on-Earth-sort-of-way), so I'll unpack it a bit more.

C, did you INTEND this to look like performance art? I mean....literally and explicitly lifting your feelings up to the importance of diversity itself? Jesus Buttlicking Christ! I had a Creative Writing teacher who would have yelled at me for lack of realism if I'd ever had a character say something like that. ("No one's going to just SAY that, Brecheen! They'll say they love diversity, but you have to show through their actions that their feelings are more important.")

C, I'm only going to say this half a zillion more times, so listen up. You're not the "wrong" race, gender, sexuality. You are the top of the social hierarchy. You will overperform in the results of your efforts no matter what the quality of your writing is, and (as can be clearly seen from a casual look at any bookstore shelf) mediocrity will not prevent you from having a comfortable career.

People who are not like you––not white, not male, not straight, not cis––will have to work much harder to achieve the same success. The more not like you they are, the harder they will have to work to achieve the same bellwethers.

This is to say nothing of if you're good at writing, in which case you will be hailed as brilliant while other writers of comparable and even greater skill will struggle to find legitimacy, platforms, and recognition if they aren't straight white men like you. These days, naked bigotry is in the White House and marching on the streets, daring anyone to do anything about it. You realize some of these people buy books, vote in the Hugos, +1 or like posts, and are even gatekeepers, right? Right?

(Right?)

This is not to say that being a cishet white male guarantees a career (it doesn't), but the whole rest of the world is going to lift you up through mechanisms unconscious and deliberate over the folks who aren't like you. Overperformance doesn't mean it's impossible to fail, just like setting the difficulty on a video game to easy doesn't mean you'll never die. It just means things will be EASIER for you.

So for ONE year, ONE blog (that barely anyone even reads) will have a set of polls that tries to adjust for that massive "background radiation of everpresent inequality." By running some polls for everyone who isn't advantaged by the deep seated (and sometimes shockingly surface) attitudes of a repugnant and revolting cultural acceptance of every bigotry, I try to make a readership that OFTEN remarks that they "didn't even know some of the names on this list" aware that other writers exist.

I will say this, C. I believe you. Even though the diversity polls are between 1-2% of the posts I put up on my Writing About Writing page (consisting of perhaps six posts in a month where I put up 10-15 things a day), they will be like a mark on a movie theater screen––"all [you] see."

Or rather, all you notice.

See, that's the trick of modern white supremacy (and male supremacy and hetero supremacy). At least the kind that isn't marching in liberal cities to try and pick a fight. Most people don't run around hatefully bigoting. They just ignore every. SINGLE. double standard that benefits them. But then they come out swinging when anyone or anything tries to level the playing field even the tiniest bit.

Because that wouldn't be FAIR, and now, all of a sudden, that matters an awful lot.

The point of having a poll like this is that when you were the beneficiary of unfairness, it didn't make you uncomfortable. You didn't feel "like shit." And not once did you threaten to take your ball and go home or sanctimoniously lecture about not "supporting everyone." So for one year, I hope people examine that unconscious bias they have and do some introspection about the world they usually never bother to question.

However, C, you take care of yourself and have a nice life. Self care IS important. I wouldn't want some attempt at diversity to hurt your feels. But we're not going to elevate your feelings to the point of being just as important as representation here.

Just be glad you only ever had to weather the RESPONSE to bigotry instead of the bigotry itself because if having to see yourself not represented in a single year of polls makes you feel like shit, the acute realities of genuine bigotry with institutional power differentials to back it up and actual harm would have absolutely gone Dr. Marr on your crystalline ass. #27yearoldpopculturereferenceFTW

And as always, if you announce your departure like I'm United Airlines, you will find that the door locks behind you.

A Year of Diverse Polls

ETA NOTE: I link this post in every version of calls for nominations and calls to vote and results for the given polls. Yet every time, someone who clearly hasn't read it jumps into the comments on my Facebook page to talk about how they would never let an author's whatever affect their love of a book. (Yes, of course you don't. That is exactly the point. Read on.) Let this added edit serve as a clearly marked disclaimer and warning that such comments will be cheerfully deleted and if its progenitor brings any "you liberals/you SJWs and your" or "THIS is the real racism" crap to the table as well, the cheerfulness will extend to their banning. 

Please consider there is an entire menu of articles here called Social Justice Bard. If you think using "SJW" as a pejorative on FB is going to get you *anything* but banned from my page, please allow me to divest you of your misunderstanding. 

I have a big announcement for our next twelve months (or so) of polls. This post is going to be half announcement and half rules that I can link back to each subsequent poll.

For the next twelve months and change, Writing About Writing will be running polls in the spirit of K.T. Bradford's challenge to stop reading cishet white dudes for a year. Every. Single. Poll. we run here for the next year will have an overarching rule of no cishet white dudes.

Recently I reran this post and our very last poll (about women and gender variant folks of color), and one of the most common bits of....feedback (yes, let's use that nice, steril word) I got was that people don't know and/or care who an author is when picking a book up. They just buy stacks and stacks of "good books" and somehow against all statistical odds their shelves fill with cishet white dudes. Magically.

The point of this exercise is that maybe it's time to think about these things. Maybe the publishing industry is so whitewashed because folks with reasonably good intentions will perpetuate the agendas of folks with absolutely shitstain horrible intentions if the former don't make an active, conscious effort to work against the latter. Maybe cishet white guys have a lot of unearned advantages in publishing (and everywhere else) and leveling the playing field just the tiniest bit will lift up everyone else and if it hurts any of them, it will really only be the mediocre ones.

Besides, it sounds like you all could use some fucking recommendations if you literally can't think of a book by a person of color OR a woman OR someone under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella that would be worth reading. So for the next year, we're going to do all our greatest hits–just without the cis het white dudes.

Here are the guidelines for our next year of polls that I will link with each new poll:

1) I'm not here to gate keep identity. If someone has talked about their race as non-white (in more than a "I'm 1/8th Cherokee" kind of way) or their sexuality in a meaningful way, they're in. They don't have to be living a particular life for us to believe them. (For example, I'm not here for any bi-erasure because someone has a traditional looking marriage.) On the other hand, James Franco....not so much.

2) Passing privilege is a very real and extremely complex and fraught phenomenon where people trade erasure of their identity against the experience of oppression in our society. (I pass as a cishet white dude even though only one of those things is arguably true [and even that I would caveat to anyone close enough to listen to the buy-me-lunch version]. However, I wouldn't be muscling to get onto these polls either as I know my life mostly operates as if I am a cishet white dude.) Let's all admit right now that we don't know (and can't know) all about every biographical detail of every author. We will stick to what we know and what these writers share openly with the world and remember that the spirit of this whole endeavor isn't to be "technically correct" but to encourage ourselves to read outside our normal comfort zone of voices.

3) Similarly "whiteness" can said to be a complex and fraught phenomenon with a moving umbrella of who "counts" and who doesn't. White hispanics, for example have a very complicated relationship with whiteness and it's not so simple as just ethnicity, just skin color, or just nationality. Historically, for example, Jews have very much been OUTSIDE of whiteness, in the last generation or so they tentatively been within whiteness, and are beginning to get pushed towards the edges again by the Nazis, white supremacists, and other members of the extreme right. I don't claim I haven't been raised and treated as white even if my mother's mother's maiden name was Rosencrantz. My point isn't to exclude any one group that is starting to lose their white privilege in the last couple of years to rising bigotry, but many authors (say, for example Neil Gaiman) have enjoyed much of white privilege for most of their career.

4) I know this will likely lead to a lot of polls with cis het dudes of color or cis white women or cis white men who identify as queer.  And folks from these groups sometimes focus on their own experiences with marginalization while being a little insensitive to others'. However in keeping with the spirit of Bradford's challenge, we're only ousting the cishet white dudes this time.

Best Classic Sci-Fi Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

What is the best science fiction book or series written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQIA+ community that is over 20 years old? 

Please consult this post if you have any questions about the limitations of this poll or the reasons why we're running another nine months of such polls.

The classics!  Some of the literature upon which the entire genre rests, and some of the best to stand the test of time. While it is harder as we look back to find offerings that were not written by the usual line up of white dudes, they are out there. Our year of diverse polls will cover all the most popular polls we've ever done here at WAW (but with a single limitation), and while we just finished up dystopia and modern science fiction, now we're doing classic science fiction and like all our polls, this one will be made up completely of audience generated nominations.

The Rules:

1. Please note the diversity requirements above.
2. Nominations must be copyrighted no earlier than 1997 (twenty years). Any series with books after that cannot be nominated as a full series (but individual books still may be). 
3. As always, I leave the niggling over "Science Fiction" to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like Pern is science fiction, I'm not going to argue. (Though you might need to "show your work" to get anyone to second your nomination.) I'll only throw them out if they get super ridiculous. 
4. You may nominate two (2) books or series. If you nominate three or more, my eyes narrow like that meme with Fry and I boil over––a cauldron of unmitigated rage. But more importantly for you, I will NOT take any nominations beyond the second that you suggest. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well.)
5. You may (and absolutely should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. So stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll. Seriously, nothing that doesn't at least have ONE second will ever make it onto one of our polls.
6. Please put your nominations here. I will take nominations only as comments on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+.)
7. You are nominating WRITTEN SCIENCE FICTION, not their movie portrayals. CGI may make A Wrinkle in Time pretty fun to look at, but if you find the books to be a little contrived, you shouldn't nominate it.
8. No more endless elimination rounds. I will ONLY take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at most run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one second. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...)

Best Modern SciFi Not Written by a Cishet White Man (Nominations needed!)

What is the very best science fiction written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community written in the last 20 years? 

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls, and as such it can't includes authors who are cishet white men. Please adjust your nominations accordingly.

Also for my FACEBOOK followers:

If you didn't read that explanation and/or don't read this and insist on adding some sanctimonious comment to WAW's Facebook Page about how you're so enlightened that you only judge art by its quality or how this is the real bigotry or "what would you think if I said no [marginalized group]; how would you like it then?" (or basically any of those boilerplate, paint-by-numbers Chadclone points), do so at your own peril. (Also true if you did read that stuff and dropped the same old arguments anyway.) I'll be erasing comments and showing the more obnoxious commenters the door. There are ten months to go and the answers are literally a click away.

Since we did a similar fantasy poll just a while ago with a lot of dovetail, we're going to skip on to our next popular topic (but with the diverse polls rules)–modern science fiction. Please note that I'm tightening up the "modern" for this as Sci-fi tends to be impacted. (Twenty years instead of 25.)

The Rules:

1. Please note the diversity requirements above.
2. Nominations must be copyrighted no later than 1998 (twenty years). Any series with books before that cannot be nominated as a full series (but individual books still can be). 
3. As always, I leave the niggling over "Science Fiction" to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like Pern is science fiction, I'm not going to argue. (Though you might need to "show your work" to get anyone to second your nomination.) I'll only throw them out if they get super ridiculous. 
4. You may nominate two (2) books or series. If you nominate three or more my eyes glaze over and I seethe with primordial rage. But more importantly for you, I will NOT take any nominations beyond the second that you suggest. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well.)
5. You may (and absolutely should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. So stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll.
6. Please put your nominations here. I will take nominations only as comments on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+.)
7. You are nominating WRITTEN SCIENCE FICTION, not their movie portrayals. CGI may make Sleeping Giants pretty fun to look at, but if you find the books to be a little contrived, you shouldn't nominate it.
8. No more endless elimination rounds. I will take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at MOST run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...)

Best Genre Fiction That Isn't SF/F/Horror Not by a Cis Het White Man (Nominations Needed)

[I'm officially making the poll now, so no more nominations.]

What is the best genre fiction that isn't science fiction, horror, or fantasy by a woman, POC, or member of the LGBTQIA+ community. We need your nominations!  

This is the last poll we will run in our Year of Diverse Polls. Please check out this link if you have any questions about the limitations. Understanding the defining lines of (and liminal spaces between) between overarching genres will also be important in this poll, so please read carefully.

For our last Diverse Poll, having covered all the polls folks really get into and seeing a desire for some of the unconventional stuff in my friends' suggestions, I turn to genre fiction--BUT NOT THE STUFF WE'VE ALREADY DONE.  No HORROR. No SCIENCE FICTION. No FANTASY. But other than that, any genre fiction is fair game up to and including the touchy feely shit that "literary fiction" is trying to convince you ISN'T genre (like magical realism). I will, however, put the kibosh on futurism since that showed up in sci-fi polls already.

Examples include, but aren't limited to:
Alternate history
Crime/detective 
Historical fiction
Humor
Magical realism
Meta fiction
Mystery 
Mythopoeia 
Noir
Romance
Suspense/thriller
Western  
And since I've made the case several times that literary fiction IS a genre complete with stylized conventions and tropes, it would be first rate hypocrisy of me not to allow it.


The Rules:

1. Please note the diversity requirements above. 
2. As always, I leave the niggling over the definition of genres to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like Little House on the Prairie is a western, I'll furrow my brow, but accept it. 
3. You may nominate two (2) books or series. If you nominate three or more I will NOT take any nominations beyond the second that you suggest. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well, and will only take the first two.)
4. You may (and absolutely should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. Also stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll. I imagine with such a broad poll, the nominations will cover a lot of ground and are absolutely going to need your seconds.
5. Put your nominations here. I will take nominations only as comments and only on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+ will be considered nominations.) If you can't comment for some reason because of Blogger, send me an email (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) stating exactly that, and I will personally put your comment up. I am not likely to see a comment on social media even if it says you were unable to leave a comment here. 
6. You are nominating WRITTEN genre fiction, not their movie portrayals. If you thought the new Murder on the Orient Express was a great flick, but you didn't really care for Agatha Christie, then that shouldn't be your nomination.
7. This is probably well known by vets of this blog by now, but there will be no more endless elimination rounds. I will take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at MOST run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...) The competition on THIS poll is going to be FIERCE so please come back and second, third, fourth, and twenty-fifth everything you want to see go on to the poll. You may have to get your friends involved. Buy them a pizza. Make it real. 

Last Call for Votes––What is the BEST Genre Fiction (Non-SF/F/Horror) Not By a Cishet White Guy

What is the BEST Genre Fiction (Non-SF/F/Horror) written by a woman, a person of color, or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community?  

Please follow this link if you're wondering why this poll has some particular limitations. This is the last of our diverse polls.

Your very super lastly last chance to vote on this poll before the results go up this weekend. We have to get on to our new year of polls that will start 2019.

Everyone gets three [3] votes, but as there is no way to "rank" votes, you should use as few as you can stand.

The poll itself is in the lower left at the bottom of the side menus.

If you're on mobile you can scroll ALLLLLL the way to the bottom and click on"webpage view" to see the side menus and get to the polls.

Best Dystopia [Diversity Poll] (Last Call for Seconds and Nominations)

What is the best (worst?) dystopia written by a woman or a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community? 

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls, and as such it can't includes authors who are cishet white men. Please adjust your nominations accordingly.

I am excited to run polls that don't just celebrate the same 20-30 white guys over and over, but only you can really see those polls succeed.

We totally need more nominations!

Be sure and drop the comment ON THE ORIGINAL POST, or it will get lost in the crossfire. That's also where you'll find the rules if you're confused about anything. There was a time when I could really go round and gather up all the breadcrumb nominations from all the various social media and posts, but things are way too busy these days.

Seconds are also needed. (And thirds. And fourths.) Remember that I will no longer be doing endless quarterfinal and elimination rounds. I will find a number somewhere between 8 and 22 of the most "seconded" titles. And there will either be two quick semifinal rounds or just the final round. I know that three and beyond aren't actually "seconds" but I'll still be taking the most.

So drop a nomination or two and second everything you want to see on the poll.

Poll Results––What is the BEST Genre Fiction (Non-SF/F/Horror) Not By a Cishet White Guy

The results are in! Best Genre Fiction written by a woman or person of color or member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

From your nominations and seconds to the final results. I would have liked that knot in the middle to spread out a bit, but we have to move on to our 2019 polls.

Also get ready for a huge change we're going to make going forward here at Writing About Writing from all the polls we've done so far!

Thank you all for participating in our year of diverse polls.

Best Classic Sci-Fi Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

What is the very best science fiction written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community from before 1998? 

Our latest poll is live!

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls. Any questions about the limitations to the poll are answered there. Like all of our polls, it was assembled from your nominations. Discounting a few that didn't follow directions, almost everyone that got a second made the final round. While there weren't a lot of seconds, there were enough to work with.

The actual poll is on the left hand side at the bottom, beneath the "About The Author" section. Mobile viewers will have to go to the very bottom of their page and switch to "Webview" in order to access the poll.

Everyone will get three (3) votes.

There is no way to rank votes, so please consider that every vote beyond the first "dilutes" the power of your initial vote and use as few as you can stand to use.

This poll will be up for a couple of weeks. You can vote once a week. Since I can't stop shenanigans, I encourage as much of it as possible. Vote early, vote often.

Best Y.A. Book (or Series) 2000-Present Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

Note: Nominations closed! Poll to go up on 8/24/18

What is the very best Y.A. fiction (book or series) written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community in the last 18 years?  

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls. Please check this page out if you have questions about the narrowed focus.

As we continue with the most popular polls we've ever done here at Writing About Writing (but without the cis het white guys) we will have to break one of the most popular categories ever up into chunks by time in order to keep it from getting unruly. So if the date of copyright is 1999 or before, it'll be the next poll.

[I'm trying to jump back into things, but it may be a bit of a ramp up to our full fledged, kick ass posting schedule, especially on the "on camera" side of the blog. Not only are there about ten "admin" posts that need posting (everything from our 2018 Best Of menu, that now has enough entries to create, to a shout out to the first 6 month's patron muses), but I have probably 40-50 hours of editing work and menu clean up that needs to be done as well and a bunch of emails that require my attention. And jury duty hit this week if you can believe that shit. I probably won't get called, and I'll never make a jury if I do get called because A) I seem to understand the burden of proof that "reasonable doubt" entails and B) I tell them openly that I think the modern criminal justice system upholds white supremacy––no prosecutor would ever let me within a country mile of their juries, but it might still be several hours out of writing time since I am currently pet sitting almost two hours drive from where I would have to report. And to top it all off, I'm still healing from my hospital stay. I can only write for a little while before sitting up really starts to be uncomfortable and I need to lie back down. That little fucker must have really torn up some shit on its way through. I'm really terrible at convalescing and I hate it, but even I know not to mess around with getting enough rest after landing in the hospital.]

The Rules:

1. Please note the diversity requirements above. 
2. As always, I leave the niggling over "YA" to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like Water for Elephants is young adult, I will furrow my brow, make an "Erm?" noise, and shrug. (Though you may need to show your work in order to get the seconds you'll need to make the poll.) I'll only throw them out if they get super ridiculous. 
3. You may nominate two (2) books or series. If you nominate three or more I become a megalomaniacal gatekeeper on a cheap power trip. But more importantly for you, I will NOT take any nominations beyond the second that you suggest. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well, and will only take the first two.)
4. You may (and absolutely should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. Also stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll. This one is going to have fierce competition.
5. Put your nominations here. I will take nominations only as comments and only on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+ will be considered nominations.) If you can't comment for some reason because of Blogger, send me an email (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) stating exactly that, and I will personally put your comment up. I am not likely to see a comment on social media even if it says you were unable to leave a comment here. 
6. You are nominating WRITTEN young adult fiction, not their movie portrayals. If you thought Jennifer Lawrence was awesome in The Hunger Games movies, but you didn't really care for the books, then that shouldn't be your nomination.
7. This is probably well known by vets of this blog by now, but there will be no more endless elimination rounds. I will take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at MOST run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...) The competition on THIS poll is going to be FIERCE so please come back and second, third, fourth, and twenty-fifth everything you want to see go on to the poll.

Best Non SF/F/Horror Book (or series) Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

What is the best genre book (or series) [not Sci Fi/Fantasy/or Horror] written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Please follow this link if you're wondering why this poll has some particular limitations.

This post should have gone up yesterday, but I didn't get in until late. (One of my partners and her husband took me to see a performance of Tuck Everlasting, and we were all a bit famished when we got back to Berkeley/Oakland. I didn't tumble back into my place until midnight and then I just kept right on tumbling straight into bed.) When it's late on the west coast (of North America) there's almost no point in putting up a post. 85% of my followers are still in the U.S. and I can actually see the difference if I post after they've gone to bed.

We've only got a few days left and this is the VERY LAST of our year of diverse polls.

Everyone gets three [3] votes, but as there is no way to "rank" votes, you should use as few as you can stand.

The poll itself is in the lower left at the bottom of the side menus.

If you're on mobile you can scroll ALLLLLL the way to the bottom and click on"webpage view" to see the side menus and get to the polls.

August's Best 2018

Day three here in Ann Arbor on my Writer Retreat/Train Vacation, and my host and I sort of realized simultaneously that we were going to need to schedule a bit more time for me to be writing. Fortunately, I do still have one bit of end-of-month/new-month business to knock out, so there's one more day of jazz hands to fall back on.

So without further ado, here are best three non-poll articles that will go on to untold fame in The Best of W.A.W.

Also the Best of the Year by Month has now been updated


Hospitalized Part of the reason August was a little rough. Kidney stones suck y'all. Don't stay thirsty, my friends. Hydrate the shit out of yourself.

Won't Someone Think of the Straight White Males? (Mailbox) Every single time I post one of the polls from a year of diverse polls, the comment section reminds me of exactly why it's still necessary. This time, spectacularly so.

10 Addendums to Write Every Day (The Article Some of You Have Been Waiting Your Whole Lives For) What if I told you that you don't actually have to write every single day?

Best Dystopia [Diverse] (Nominations Needed)

What is the best (worst?) dystopia (not written by a cishet white man)?

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls, and as such it can't includes authors who are cishet white men. Please adjust your nominations accordingly.

The world is in ruins. Or maybe it's not in ruins but there's just something a little off. Or maybe it's perfect, but the price is the torturous misery of a single innocent child. Or maybe there's some ham handed analog for racism that's going on between the white kids' strange methods of dividing themselves up by SAT vocabulary words. In any case it's a dystopia, and it is doing its literary work to hold up a twisted mirror to our own society.

The Rules:

1- As always, I leave the niggling to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like J.K. Rowling writes dystopia, I'm not going to argue. (Though you might need to "show your work" to get anyone to second your nomination.) If you think Pern is a dystopia, nominate it. I won't be enforcing any rules about it being future Earth or anything.

2- Since dystopias are a setting, they can be for a single book, a series, or several series.

3- You may nominate two (2) dystopias. Two is the number of nominations. Neither one nor three shall ye nominate. And four is right out. I will NOT take any dystopias beyond the second that you suggest. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well.)

3- You may (and should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. So stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll.

4- Please put your nominations here. I will take dystopias nominated only as comments on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+.)

5- You are nominating WRITTEN DYSTOPIAS, not their movie portrayals. CGI is making the Insurgent movies pretty fun to look at, but if you find the books to be a little contrived, you shouldn't nominate them.

6- No more endless elimination rounds. I will take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at MOST run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...)

Reminder: Nominations Needed (Best horror not by a cis het white man)

What is the very best horror book (or possibly series?) written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community? 


This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls. Please check this page out if you have questions about the narrowed focus.

If it doesn't get nominated and seconded (and maybe thirded) it won't end up on our poll. Please go to the original post for rules and to drop your nomination. Come nominate your faves.

Best Modern SciFi Not Written by a Cishet White Man (Last Call for Nominations!)

What is the very best science fiction written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community written in the last 20 years?

Despite big news going on over at Patreon behind the scenes, we have to get this poll up and running, so take your last opportunity to nominate titles or second the ones that are there.

The poll is going up tomorrow.

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls, and as such it can't includes authors who are cishet white men. Please adjust your nominations accordingly. Also please check out that post before leaving any shitty comments here or on social media that wildly miss the point and which I will cheerfully remove.

All the rules are here. 

That is ALSO the place to leave any new nominations or seconds. PLEASE do not leave them here. I need them all in one place. Please remember to second even if a title already has a second. I am no longer doing several elimination rounds–at most I will do a single semifinal round. Therefore a number of titles between eight and twenty with the MOST seconds will go on to the poll.

Best Young Adult Novel (or Series) Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

What is the very best young adult book (or series) written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community? 

Our latest poll is live!  Come vote!

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls. If you have any questions about the limitations of the poll, just follow the link.

The magic number was at least three seconds for a nomination to go on to the poll. We got dozens of nominations, lots with one or two "seconds"but in order to keep from having unwieldy numbers of run-off rounds, I had to limit it. And booooy howdy are there a lot of good titles on this poll.

The actual poll is on the left hand side at the bottom, beneath the "About The Author" section. Mobile viewers will have to go aaaaaaall to the very bottom of their page and switch to "Webview" in order to access the poll.

Everyone will get three (3) votes.

There is no way to rank votes, so please consider that every vote beyond the first "dilutes" the power of your initial vote and use as few as you can stand to use.

This poll will be up for a couple of weeks. You can vote once a week. Since I can't stop shenanigans, I encourage as much of it as possible. Vote early, vote often.

Best Dystopia Written by a Non Cishet White Man (Results)

What is the best dystopia book or series written by someone other than a cishet white man? 

Remember to go here if you don't understand why we're doing a year of diverse polls.

I missed my flight.

Some of it's on me. Well...I mean all of it's on me for not doing what they always tell you to do, which is to give yourself all this fucking extra time "just in case."

I'm not so much a "just in case" type. I'm more of an "OH SHINY Oh that's really cool and I bet if I were to-- OH FUCK IS THAT THE TIME??? FUUUUUUCK!" type.

Then I sat around and waited for a BART train. Then I sait around and waited IN a BART train, feeling that fleeting feeling of hope drain with every announcement of "We will be moving shortly." This caused me to JUST miss the airport connection. And when I got into the security line, they were having a bit of a day. I mean it wasn't TERRIBAD, and the line wasn't long, but they were understaffed and it took too much time.

I heard them call my flight. Then my name. And I hadn't even taken my shoes off yet....

The later flight I got bumped to was not direct, and the airport where I waited for two hours did not have functioning wifi. (They said they did, but it wasn't working.) The wifi on the flight is glacially slow, and Vera's battery seems to be in the middle of the Mortal Coil Shuffle™due to age. It's losing two or three percent per minute and I'm pretty sure that number is soft because she doesn't want me to worry. ("No it's okay, boss. You go ahead and download another picture. I'm........fuh....fine.") She's been flashing me a 20% thumbs up lately right before powering down, so I don't trust anything lower than 50%

So today has had a lot of bumps (since the stop over was in Denver, many of them were literal). I would have loved to see something break the tie for second place, but I don't have a lot of emceeing or energy to drag this out another couple of days and do a double post in me. Besides, we need to move on to our next poll.  Keep in mind our diversity requirements but think science fiction.....

Congrats to the winners and thank you everyone who participated.

Text results below

The Handmaid's Tale- M Atwood 97 22%
The Hunger Games- S. Collins 57 12.93%
The Giver- L. Lowry 57 12.93%
Broken Earth Trilogy- N.K. Jemisin 41 9.3%
Never Let Me Go- K. Ishiguro 39 8.84%
Parable of the Sower (Earthseed)- O. Butler 31 7.03%
Oryx and Crake- M. Atwood 27 6.12%
Xenogenesis- O. Butler 26 5.9%
Station Eleven- E. Mandel 24 5.44%
1Q84- H. Murakami 16 3.63%
Newsflesh- S McGuire 14 3.17%

The Fifth Sacred Thing- Starhawk 12 2.72%

REMINDER: Seconds Needed (Best YA not by a Cishet White Man 2000-Present)

What is the very best YA book or series written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community from 2000-the present?   

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls. Please check this page out if you have questions about the narrowed focus.

So we're headed into a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants spot here. Starting tomorrow I'm going to be talking a lot about Worldcon 76 since a perfect storm of factors means I actually get to go. I plan to go, and write a little about what I see each day. Then on Monday this poll is going live.

And it's absolutely going to need seconds. (And thirds...and fourths.) Remember, I no longer run quarterfinals and elimination rounds. I will at most run ONE semifinal round. So I will pick between 8-22 of the titles with the most "seconds." 

Please go to the original post for rules, to check out what's there for seconding, and to drop your nomination. The poll will go live on Monday.

Best Horror Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

What is the very best horror written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community? 

Our latest poll is live!  Come vote!

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls. If you have any questions about the limitations of the poll, just follow the link.

Our poll was pulled from your nominations, and though I'm Spock-eyebrowing a couple of clearly speculative or science fiction titles, I mostly just tally up the nominations. And since I'm on vacation and not feeling super great, I'm just going to put it up and try to get two wound up kids to bed.

The actual poll is on the left hand side at the bottom, beneath the "About The Author" section. Mobile viewers will have to go aaaaaaall to the very bottom of their page and switch to "Webview" in order to access the poll.

Since we have quite a few titles, everyone will get four (4) votes.

There is no way to rank votes, so please consider that every vote beyond the first "dilutes" the power of your initial vote and use as few as you can stand to use.

This poll will be up for a couple of weeks. You can vote once a week. Since I can't stop shenanigans, I encourage as much of it as possible. Vote early, vote often.