John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

OK, this ballot is really screwed up because of the twisted changing nature of publishing and the slowness of the industry and the awards to adapt to change.

I am going to be giving my top ranking to someone based partially on things she did years ago and this award is supposed to honor new writers. Several in this field have been serving long apprentices in branches where their works don't count. Really, the SFWA (the professional organization for authors of science fiction, fantasy and related genres) membership rules and these Campbell Award rules have got to be changed.

Without further time-wasting:

Chuck Wendig, great writer, great blogger. Long history of game related writing. Writes very dark and violent tales, too dark and violent for my taste. This is not the Joe Lansdale Award - #5.

Stina Leicht, had lots of attention for a very dark fantasy set in Ireland in the Time of Troubles - Of Blood and Honey. Very dark and unpleasant, the new novel gets even darker. Has a shorter story behind a paywall. My opinion - too dark, this is not the Thomas Covenant Award - #4.

Max Gladstone, a Yale graduate with a novel about magic and detectives and lawyers and Gods. God No - #3. This might be too cruel, he has a lighter more clever touch than the previous two.

Zen Cho writes oriental clever tales of fantasy, technically Malaysian fantasy. It made my heart glad to not feel like killing myself after reading something from a new writer - #2

Mur Lafferty, the queen of the podcasts finally getting into officially recognized fiction markets. Her freebies included in the Hugo packet are very light Christmas shorts. Fortunately there is a lot of stuff available online or on Amazon Kindle or on audible.com or itunes to check out her impressive chops. She is fun to listen to if you want to start way back in her Heaven series podcasts, or her other podcasts like the famous I Should Be Writing. She also has new stuff rolling out. She is just now seemingly on the edge of really breaking out into the mainstream. #1

My rankings could be subject to change in the next few days, but probably not.