Sherwood Smith...

...Ok, so I was wrong. Crown Duel isn't the first Sherwood Smith story I've read. I thought it was. I started it yesterday morning, and found I couldn't put it down. That's fairly odd for me, nowadays. I used to be able to read multiple books in a single day, and did so frequently, but this was a bit unusual for me. I literally kept reading until I finished, even when hubby-Eric was trying to get me to do other things (just ask him!).

I loved it. It was a great story with a strong female character who slowly grows into herself. She has faults, like a real person. And continues to have faults right up until the end of the story. And continues to grow and learn. And while there were bits of the story (particularly the second part, originally published as Court Duel) that telegraphed themselves, the wonder was in seeing how it all turned out.

So I decided to see if there were more books in the series, and found this partial bibliography that pretty much said, no... but I wanted a full or at least more complete bibliography, so I visited Wikipedia and saw this line in her entry: "In 2001 her short story "Mom and Dad at the Home Front" was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story."

Um. There was a short story that was up for an award a few years back, and I downloaded the free version of the story from some website (it was a limited time offer, to give the story more exposure before the awards). I read it and absolutely LOVED it. The story was about what happens to responsible parents who learn that their children are off having adventures in a magical world. I didn't recognize the author name at the time I read the story, but now I do... I need to find me a copy of that story in some anthology or something.

Whilst looking around, I found a link to Sherwood Smith's Livejournal, which I added to my daily reads. She has a report of the Winkie convention, where I met her. By the by, I do have a Troll picture of Sherwood Smith, I just haven't gotten it cropped and put up on the Troll page yet.