Letter of News: BSFA Award for Time War!

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Dear Readers,

The British Science Fiction Association announced the recipients of its awards this weekend, and I’m thrilled to share that This Is How You Lose the Time War won the award for Best Shorter Fiction! Max and I recorded an acceptance video, which you can check out below!

We dressed up in reds and blues and got a bit fancied up for the occasion, though my lighting’s perhaps not up to the task of showing that off.

Things I love about this video:

• our bookshelves look like one continuous shelf connecting our homes

• getting to show off Elise Matthesen’s gorgeous necklace (called “Blue in Motion”!)

• our spectacularly failed fistbump

• Max’ baby’s audio-only cameo at the end

And here’s the text of our speech:

Max: Hello everyone!

Amal: Helloooo! This is a fantastic honour, especially given the amazing company we’re keeping on this ballot. Thank you so much to everyone who’s made the BSFA Awards possible this year under these — proverbial at this point — extraordinary circumstances, and to everyone who read, shared, and voted for This Is How You Lose the Time War. We’re thrilled to receive this award, and so, so grateful!

MAX: We’d like to thank DongWon Song, Navah Wolfe, Greg Stadnyk, Molly Powell, Jo Fletcher, Milly Reid, and everyone at Saga Press & JFB who worked to get this book into your hands. 

AMAL: We’d also especially like to thank our parents, siblings and spouses for their love and support. 

MAX: Most of all, we’d like to thank the readers who’ve taken Red and Blue into their hearts, and anyone and everyone who finished our book and went to send a letter.  

AMAL: This book’s travelled through some incredible times. We started writing our novella the summer of the Brexit vote and finished it after the US presidential election, and we’re now receiving an award for it during a literal plague year. So — we’re sorry? I don’t know what we can say about — I’m sure we didn’t cause it, but, nevertheless, we genuinely couldn’t have imagined, writing an epistolary love story between super spies who travel a braid of alternating timelines, how much we’d all start talking about being in the wrong one. It’s been a wild ride.

MAX: With all that — this is a book about two people who grow to love each other across incredible distances and differences, and people who shape each other into fiercer, stronger versions of themselves through that love. It’s also a book about how many things can be love letters — cups of tea, loaves of bread, fibres knotted by hand. And how those seemingly small things, passed from hand to hand, can change the present, and the future. 

Amal: This is how we win. 

MAX: All of us, together.

AMAL: Thank you — 

MAX: — and stay safe.