Best of 2007 / Talk Soup

Some talk soup about a few notable books that I'm proud to have done covers for:

* Congrats to Bruce McAllister and Golden Gryphon Press. McAllister's THE GIRL WHO LOVED ANIMALS is amongst Graham Sleight's Top Five Books of the Year, according to his Year-End Round-Up in the latest issue of Locus Magazine.

* Congrats to Lou Anders, Pyr and FAST FORWARD 1. An amazing FIVE stories from FF1 will appear in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's YEAR'S BEST SF 13. Wow! More details here at Lou's blog. In addition to several nods on this year's Locus Recommended Reading List (including Nick Gevers selecting it as one of the very best anthos of '06), Bookgasm.com says: "...so good that I suggest Pyr wait a year and republish it with the title BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF 2007. This is an important book that can move science fiction one step closer to the 'literature' shelf, if it so desires....Anders has coaxed such incredible goodness out of these writers that if you only read one or two stories a month, it's better than a year's subscription to most of the genre magazines out there...With a deep bench of talent and a perfectly paced setlist, Lou Anders has made a book that truly represents its own theme. FAST FORWARD has the potential to be the future of short-form science fiction."

That's good to hear, as I'm currently working on the cover for FAST FORWARD 2....

* In other news, Joseph Mallozzi's super-popular blog announced today that discussion of Jeffrey Ford's THE EMPIRE OF ICE CREAM will begin April 21. (Even though EMPIRE is actually a 2006 release, I just wanted to pass it along.)