I'm very guilty of not having read a lot of stories this past year, but of the ones I have read, some I plan to nominate and others I do not. I guess what I'm saying is that I see nothing wrong with nominating from the pool of stories you have read. I figure if I liked a story enough to nominate it, I'd nominate it whether I had read 3 stories or 30 stories or 300 stories. It's not as if I have only so many noms (well, okay, we are limited to 8, but that's pretty generous!) so I have to pick and choose carefully or rank things. If a story touched me or was especially good IMO, it deserves my nom and shouldn't be denied it simply because RL kept me too busy to read everything out there. Does that make sense?
However, I do beleive it is imperative that you read
all the stories on the short list in a category before voting. In a way, I really look forward to the releasing of the nominations because I get to dive into what people have listed as their own favorites, so I know I'm in for some great reading.
Lynn
