The news struck the Wordos listserver immediately. Jay Lake won the Campbell award for best new writer at WorldCon in Boston on Saturday night.

Jay has been such a force in the last couple of years. For the large, growing volume of his fiction and his colorful presence it's no surprise that he won. Sure, novelists usually win the Campbell, but there have been exceptions to this rule. Jay is an exceptional writer.

He has drive and he is fearless whenever he leaps into storyteller mode. He knows what he wants to do--he wants to write and he wants to tell stories--and he just does it. I admire this a lot and I'm a writer who is less spontaneous and who is a procrastinator. Jay LIVES and he surrounds himself with others who work and play in the field of writing and publishing. I don't know if it's true, but he seems to get energy from being around other creative people.

Jay's energy glows brightly. Looking at Jay's career so far it's easy to be blinded and not see the hard work, the rejections, the developing process of the craft, but perhaps when we write we should be blinded. When we sit down at the keyboard maybe all we should see is the story and putting it down in words on paper. No fear of any kind of rejection or failure, just doing the work. That's always something to work towards and to live up to.

Congrats, Jay. As it has been said before: it's well deserved.