And the 2010 AlphaOops Award goes to…

…the San Francisco Chronicle, for their lovely review of Althea Kontis’s AlphaOops: H is for Halloween.

I get it, I do. It’s not totally their fault. Spell check nowadays will actually correct “Alethea” to “Althea” when you’re not looking. I forgive the folks who spell it wrong in emails (even though they’ve somehow managed to spell my email or Facebook address correctly). I also have no problem correcting people when they pronounce it wrong in person (even if I’ve known them for several years). After a few decades, a body gets used to it.

It happens so often, I even have a Google Alert out for “Althea Kontis”. You’d be surprised how many items pop up in that search. She’s quite prolific, this Althea chick.

When the original AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First came out, folks were misspelling my name all over the place. I grumbled as much to Orson Scott Card. He told me as long as they got the title right, it really didn’t matter. Especially if they were saying nice things.

In truth, there is one thing that matters slightly more than the title. Publisher’s Weekly (the 2007 AlphaOops Award winner) spelled the title right but got the ISBN wrong in their review, which led to all sorts of confusion since reviews are usually database cataloged by ISBN. Ingram fixed it, but I’m still not sure it ever showed up on Amazon.

I’m rather surprised that praise for Althea Kontis’s Halloween book hasn’t popped up sooner. Word of my famous SF Princessness must be getting around. At least, that’s what I choose to believe. That’s the sort of thing we princesses do.

In the meantime, I would like to thank the San Francisco Chronicle on behalf of Althea Kontis. I’ll be sure to tell her you said there was “plenty of humor amid the colorful chaos.” It will make her smile, I know. She and I are like *this*.