Bigfoot and Nessie is an Eisner WINNER!!!
If I couldn’t believe we were nominated for this, I REALLY couldn’t believe it when we won! I was excited just to get to go to the ceremony and sit at a VIP table. The awards ceremony took place at Comic Con in San Diego and there were, like, actual celebrities there presenting the awards! It was the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten to be a part of, even before we won. Even the meatloaf was good (it tasted like spaghetti!), and if you’ve read Renegade X, you can guess how I feel about meatloaf. :P
I was so prepared to not win that I took a sneaky picture of Mariko Tamaki’s trophy, since she was the first to win at our table, and I thought I might not get any closer to one than that. Except I also thought that the woman on my right (Erica Henderson) had real winner vibes and would probably get a trophy I could take an even closer picture of, lol. But our category came up fairly early on and we were actually the second win at our table. (By the end of the night, everyone at our table had won! We were grouped by publisher, so theoretically that was just a coincidence and it wasn’t purposely a winners’ table.)
Anyway, when they called out the winner and it was our book, I GASPED SO HARD and did a double take out of my seat. We got to go up on stage, where Gigi Edgley (Chiana from Farscape!) handed me my trophy.
The other presenter, Ming Chen, gave Laura her trophy. People keep asking me if we both got one or if we have to share, and if you were wondering that, too, let me ease your mind by saying everybody who won got their own trophy! Also, the trophies are very solid and heavy, like something that would turn out to be the murder weapon in a TV show. The globes actually spin, too, and the plaque has the name of our book and the category we won (Best Publication for Early Readers).
When I got to the microphone, I said what Pam says on The Office when she wins her Dundie, which is, “I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.” XD We didn’t have anything prepared, so I said a few funny things and then thanked Laura, plus our editor, Rachel Sonis, and our designer, Jay Emmanuel. I’m glad I didn’t have anything written ahead of time, because I feel like I do better improvising these things (otherwise known as winging it), and if I had sat down to write something, there are so many stories I could have told or things I would have wanted to express that I wouldn’t have even known where to start and would have stressed myself out. But ultimately, I think what I said in this post about getting nominated pretty much sums it up.
I don’t think anybody’s posted my part of it, but you can watch Laura’s speech:
📚 Inspiring young readers, Bigfoot and Nessie: The Art of Getting Noticed by @CampChelsea and @LauraKnetzger wins #BestPublicationForEarlyReaders! @penguinrandom pic.twitter.com/G9HzkW4ao8
— Comixology (@comiXology) July 27, 2024
I swear neither of us is that orange in real life.