My friend Dash pointed me toward an offer by Shweta Narayan – she and her friends offered Worldcon supporting memberships to multiply marginalized people in exchange for voting in the Hugos and possibly blogging about it. I agonized over my application for days, because I always feel like I belong to all too many minorities and I don’t really like to enumerate them one by one, it makes me feel quite miserable. Also, I went on a long line of rationalizations about things I could afford versus things I could not, etc. (and then promptly felt bad about all my non-essential purchases… *sigh*)

I finally decided to take the plunge and apply. It helped a lot that there were multiple memberships offered, so I didn’t feel like I was taking a Once In A Lifetime Opportunity away from someone else who needed it more. I got in! Thank you everyone for the support, I’m very touched that people I don’t know in person would do this for me – I hope to live up to the trust placed in me!

If you know me in person, you might have been subjected to one of my “I need a long-term project” rants lately. I spent a long time trying to come up with a project that would interest other people and would serve for the general benefit of the world at the same time. Unfortunately a lot of that seems to be beyond my capabilities  – due to my health problems I have not been as active anywhere as I would’ve liked it to be. But this is something I can totally do – I feel really honored that someone would appreciate my perspective (which is an outsider’s perspective in all too many respects) sufficiently to encourage me thus.

This means a lot more updates! I will revive my public blog and rant here about spec fic, minorities-related issues, and whatever I think would interest a wider audience.

Here are things I’ll need to do in the following days:

* Post an introduction aimed at people who don’t know me from elsewhere (which is basically most of my prospective visitors…)
* Add Facebook/Twitter buttons to my posts
* Make a Facebook page for my public blog?
* Revamp my sidebars (and axe long-dormant projects)

In addition to all that technical stuff, I will also try to come up with content. A lot of stuff I’m reading even outside the Hugos has relevance for my prospective readership (i.e. YOU!) – for example lately I’ve been making my way through the Haikasoru books and the Carl Brandon award winners. Since people have already expressed interest in supporting this project by buying books etc., I should probably set up a wishlist. (I’ve already tried to make a wishlist on Book Depository a year or so ago, but it kept on vanishing and I wasn’t really motivated since no one bought me books anyway.) Please don’t send me Amazon gift certificates, because Amazon charges a lot for shipping to Hungary! I will probably write a mini-guide on how to support me on this endeavor and what to avoid.

More posts coming soon…