(Ugh. OK, yeah, that was bad. I blame the lack of coffee.)
In the category of “All my friends are shilling their Nebula-eligible shorts so I’ll do it too!” for a thousand, Alex:
I had two short stories and two reprints published during the eligible period. The reprints aren’t eligible, and of the two, there’s only one short that I consider Nebula-worthy: “Non-Zero Probabilities”, which was published in Clarkesworld in September 2009 (Issue #36). If you don’t remember that one, it’s the one that io9’s Charlie Jane Anders seemed to like, and which I read at Bluestockings* this summer past, and which started off like this:
In the mornings, Adele girds herself for the trip to work as a warrior for battle. First she prays, both to the Christian god of her Irish ancestors and to the orishas of her African ancestors — the latter she is less familiar with, but getting to know. Then she takes a bath with herbs, including dried chickory and allspice, from a mixture given to her by the woman at the local botanica. (She doesn’t know Spanish well, but she’s getting to know that too. Today’s word is suerte.) Then, smelling vaguely of coffee and pumpkin pie, she layers on armor: the Saint Christopher medal her mother sent her, for protection on journeys. The hair-clasp she was wearing when she broke up with Larry, which she regards as the best decision of her life. On especially dangerous days, she wears the panties in which she experienced her first self-induced orgasm post-Larry. They’re a bit ragged after too many commercial laundromat washings, but still more or less sound. (She washes them by hand now, with Woollite, and lays them flat to dry.)
I’m hard on myself re short stories. It’s rare that I’m proud of my own work here… but this is one of the ones I’m proud of. So if you’ve got voting rights in SFWA, go read it, decide if you like it, and consider it for a nom, please.
(I really wish “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints” was available, even though I sold it early in the year [and wrote it last year, but it sat in another mag’s slushpile for several months], but that one’s not coming out from Postscripts until next summer. Postscripts is an anthology-format quarterly, print, high quality; they’ve got a deep backlog of fiction to publish before they get to me, and judging by the lone copy I’ve seen, it’s all damn good fiction. Alas, that story won’t be eligible for a Neb next year anyway, since Postscripts is a UK publication. But I’m even prouder of it.)
*For those who don’t remember the Bluestockings event, here’s a reminder:
“Non-Probabilities Zero” is a rocking good story.