It’s time for all those who attended the World Fantasy Convention last year in Austin to once again cast your votes for the World Fantasy Awards. As you may know, anyone who popped for a membership last year gets to also vote for the next two years, even if they don’t buy any further memberships. So all of you guys who purchased Associate Memberships last year just to vote can do so again. I received my ballot in the mail today, so most of you likely have as well. If not, you can e-mail your vote to Rodger Turner, and he will verify your name against the registration lists for the last two cons.

Although we Howardists were shut out of the winner’s circle last year, hope springs eternal. So if you feel TC did a decent job in 2006, do me a favor and cast your vote in the SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT: NON-PROFESSIONAL category for “Leo Grin, The Cimmerian.” It would be nice to show up once again at the gates to the Ivory Tower and raise a barbaric ruckus.

And as you are filling out your ballots, don’t forget to renominate Glenn Lord for Lifetime Achievement. Everyone is pretty much in agreement that slighting Glenn in the year that REH was the theme of the convention was the one unforgivable action of last year’s judges’ panel. So let’s get his name back on their radar, too.

I don’t really have strong opinions about the other categories, but for Best Novel you could do worse than to nominate Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow by the late David Gemmell. He probably won’t win as the prejudice against Gemmell and similar fantasy authors seemed pretty strong among the WFC faithful (whether they’ve actually read a single word he’s written is another story), but it would be nice to see him nominated at least. That would be yet another shot across the bow of those who would deny the continued existence and relevance of Sword-and-Sorcery in the fantasy field. It’s not just a bunch of insipid Tolkien clones — there is good work being done.

And hey, for Best Artist why not nominate “Dalmazio Frau, a.k.a. Dalmatius” who drew over thirty pieces of Howardian art last year to make The Cimmerian‘s third volume a special one? I don’t think illustrating so many different Howard stories in a single year has ever been done before. Fantasy, horror, boxing, westers — he did it all.