Ladies and Gentlemen, marsupials of all descriptions–WE HAVE LIFT-OFF!

THE DIGGER OMNIBUS KICKSTARTER IN ALL ITS OMNIBUSSYNESS!

We got goals. We got stretch goals. We got art. We got—are you ready? Commemorative hand-forged pickaxes.

(Also foam pickaxes.)

We have video. WE HAVE A KICKSTARTER.

(And I am terrified. Utterly terrified. I have never done anything like this before.  Sofawolf is running the whole thing and I’m kinda freaked out and what if it doesn’t fund and it turns out people don’t really love me and what if it does and it way overfunds and that would be awesome except we have to commission eight hundred pickaxes and the guy making them quits in disgust and I have to learn blacksmithing to fill the orders and I set myself on fire and then I’ll be horribly burned and I’ll have to wear a Phantom of the Opera mask and we still won’t have the pickaxes and the beagle will bay hysterically when he sees me and small children will run away and my career as a children’s book author will be over as a result and OH MY GOD PEOPLE PLEASE GIVE US MONEY BUT NOT SO MUCH THAT I HAVE TO LEARN BLACKSMITHING BECAUSE I THINK THAT WILL END BADLY.)

Ahem.

So, uh, yeah. Check it out. I think it’s cool.

(I’m scared. Hold me, internet. But not in a creepy way.)

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?

I repeat, copies of Digger 5 for sale!

I don’t really predict a problem, but on the off chance that everybody predicting a local Snow Apocalypse this weekend is correct, and we get the half-inch of glaze ice and all the power-lines come down, leaving me without internet or heat or Photoshop, that would be the reason for a delayed comic, if it actually happens, which I don’t think it will.

Since there’s been a huge run on food and everyone is hunkering down, it seems highly unlikely we’ll get anything but a faint white dusting, but since I live in a rural area that has been known to lose power for upwards of three days, thought I’d mention it, thereby hopefully heading off any such scenario at the pass.

Due to circumstances beyond our control–coming back from vacation to a fried video card!–Digger won’t be starting up again until Thursday. Very sorry for the delay! (Can’t really get the art done when the tower is a giant paperweight, alas…)