Viva Italia….illustration by me on the cover of ROBOT 52, the latest issue of the sexiest sf digest in Italy, on sale now from Delos Books. Stories by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow; interviews with Frederik Pohl and Ridley Scott…I so wish I could read Italian….

In case you’re wondering, this illustration first appeared as the cover of ADVENTURE, Vol. 1, edited by Chris Roberson (MonkeyBrain Books).

Saratoga Springs, NY — largest World Fantasy Convention to date. Whew. I won’t attempt to be all-inclusive about the people pleasures of this con. Too many to count. Here’s a brief set:

MC’d the International Horror Guild Awards ceremony and was honored to be amongst this year’s nominees. I figured since the IHG folks asked me to MC, then I was surely not going to win the IHG Artist Award, since I couldn’t imagine them making me feel icky by having an MC also win an award. I was wrong. Paula Guran read that category and announced that it was a tie and Aeron Alfrey and I had both won. Congrats to Aeron, and I’m pleased to be in his creative company along with the other Artist finalists this year: Camille Rose Garcia, Chris Mars, and J.K. Potter. According to Cheryl Morgan, the ceremony took 28 tidy minutes (minus the time for Jo Fletcher and Ramsey Campbell’s brilliant speeches in recognition of Ramsey’s Living Legend Award). A real pleasure and an honor to be part of the whole affair, and needless to say, much celebrating with Maudite on-tap ensued that evening with my pals Lou Anders, Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, and company. Maudite is a Belgian ale and it means “the damned one,” which summed up my head the following morning. Well worth it though.

The Art Show was world-class. To date, one of the very best con art shows I’ve ever been associated with. Props to Ted and Bonnie Atwood, and the committee who made it happen. The list of illustrators displaying at this year’s show included Moebius, Donato Giancola, Bob Eggleton, Charles Vess, Gary Lippincott, Les Edwards, Todd Lockwood, Shaun Tan, Vincent Villafranca, and a ton of other amazing folks. I’ve gotta single out two guys though. Robert Weiner — Robert didn’t display any paintings of his own, but he’s responsible for giving the con a rare 38-painting exhibition of some of the best of the legendary Jeffrey Jones. The bulk of the works were from Robert’s personal collection and it was a herculean effort on his part to do that for the con. Personally, I can’t thank him enough. It was the visual highlight of the whole weekend for me. Derek Ford — a pleasure to see this young guy’s vision and abilities rapidly blossoming. He presented a fascinating set of ink drawings along with his first oil painting. Pretty courageous, that oil painting, considering the experienced competition surrounding him, but the talent and enthusiasm is oh-so-clear. Extremely pleased to see him recognized with a WFC Certificate of Merit for his drawing “Ganesh” and he was on Cloud 9 the night of the Art Show Reception, as you can see. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this guy’s got a very, very bright future if he keeps trucking along. Way to go, Derek. Amongst these luminaries, I managed to hold my own with my own display. Included were a set of original pencil drawings that will appear in the upcoming Del Rey release ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS. That set of drawings won a Judges’ Choice Award at the show, and I was pleased to be amongst the list of winners along with Tom Kidd, Stephen Hickman, Mike Dringenberg, and all the rest, which you can see here.

WFC is very much a professional con, but let’s be honest, most of the real action happens in the bar and after-hours. Left to right (back): Jae Brim, Sophia Quach, Joe McCabe, Karen Jones; foreground: Jen Heddle. Orbit pitched a dynamite launch party on Saturday night at Tiznow’s. Pictured here like two stealthy animals caught in the middle of dark dealings: Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books and Lou Anders of Pyr.I could attempt to list all of the good folks at this con if I tried, but I’d still miss way too many. Very quickly though….some folks not pictured, but equally appreciated — Jess Nevins, Paul Cornell, George Mann and Marco Gascoigne of Solaris, Michael Rowley, David Louis Edelman, Cheryl Morgan, Rani Graff, David Anthony Durham, Jeff Ford and family, Irene Gallo, Todd Lockwood, Diana Gill, Liz Scheier, Therese Littleton, Jacob McMurray, Liza Trombi, Jim Minz, John Klima, Andy Wheeler, Ellen Datlow, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Bruce Coville, Ted Chiang, Chris Cohen, Jae Brim, Diana Rowland, Paula Guran, Steve Jones, Mike Willmoth, Beth Gwinn, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Hal Duncan, Sharyn November, Sheila Williams, Deanna Hoak, Jetse de Vries, Jeff Mariotte, Maryelizabeth Hart, and….oy, the mental list goes on, so I’ll stop there. Apologies to anyone I didn’t mention. Blame the Robitussin. Special thanks to Holly and Theo Black for sage advice about the childrens and YA book markets.

Congrats to all the winners of the World Fantasy Awards this year. The banquet was cause for celebration for me. Not so much for my own nomination in the Artist category, but moreso, for good friends who were first-time nominees. John Klima was nominated for his work on ELECTRIC VELOCIPEDE; Scott Cupp (pictured left, with Mark Finn and his wife Cathy) was nominated for his anthology CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE and Mark was nominated for BLOOD & THUNDER: THE LIFE OF ROBERT E. HOWARD. I was also pleased to see Greg Ketter acknowledged for the first time. None of them won, and many of my other faves didn’t either (congrats to Jeff though for “Botch Town”), but the entire winners list was diverse and fabulous. Special congrats to Shaun Tan who won the World Fantasy Award in the Artist category for the second time in his career.
More photos from the festivities:
Chris Roberson and Allison Baker of MonkeyBrain Books, who as per usual, along with Lou Anders are pretty much the longest-running fixtures for me in my professional career and it’s amazing that we all connected not so many years ago via the WFC. Much of the pleasure of winning the IHG Award on Thursday night was that it was a direct acknowledgement of COVER STORY: THE ART OF JOHN PICACIO, which they published via MonkeyBrain. A team win shared by the three of us, as far as I’m concerned.

Left to right: Mark Kelly of Locus Online and Rome Quezada of the Science Fiction Book Club

Left to right: Paul Cornell, Lou Anders, David Louis Edelman, and yours truly. A tremendous weekend across the board. My body’s still recovering. Back to drawing and painting. Onward to Calgary next year!

Two of my cover illustrations are featured in the forthcoming Millipede Press art book showcase, ARTISTS INSPIRED BY H.P. LOVECRAFT. This thing is gonna be massive…400 pages worth of Lovecraftian illustration from a who’s who of fantasy and horror art greats. H.R. Giger, Michael Whelan, Mike Mignola, Virgil Finlay, Bob Eggleton, J.K. Potter, and many, many more. Intro by Harlan Ellison; afterword by Thomas Ligotti. Wow, I can’t wait to see it. If you’re a Lovecraft fan, check this out.

Here’s a look at the full wraparound jacket for Michael Moorcock’s forthcoming THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE from Pyr. Front cover illustration and design by me, as well as spine art, and the overall jacket design is by Nicole Lecht. Pyr’s latest newsletter features a few words from me about the book. It’s available to anyone who registers at their site. However, here’s a brief excerpt: “I originally wanted to paint [Seaton Begg’s companion] Taffy Sinclair on the cover too, but I designed the cover type as well, and I realized there was a balance between the picture and the words, and Taffy was upsetting that. I was refining the illustration and designing the type simultaneously, and I realized that Taffy was gonna get lost in the type so regretfully, he had to go. Even better, Mike was at my wedding in March and he was with me in the green room about ten minutes before I was gonna be married. So we’re talking about the progress rough of the cover, and he said that he really dug it, but wished it had a female presence somewhere. It sure seemed like a sensible request since Rose Von Bek appears, but I couldn’t figure out how to work her in without destroying the composition. I think Lou Anders was the one that said, ‘What if she shows up on the spine?’ So that sparked my solution for the spine and that separate piece of art wraps around partially to the back cover. So Rose is staring at the audience when the book sits spine-out on the shelf, which I think is very nice. If you’re a fan of Moorcock and the Multiverse, you’re gonna love this. Can’t wait until Halloween when this hits the shelves.”

I generally try to keep non-professional stuff to a minimum over here, but this crosses over somewhat. So I attended my 20-Year High School Reunion this past weekend (for the record, Oliver Wendell Holmes High School in San Antonio). I didn’t want to go, but my longtime friend Tom Kustelski talked me into it. Very surreal, but it was great to hang out with him and his wife Ann, and I’m glad Traci and I were there. Looking back twenty years, I definitely wasn’t amongst the most popular folks in high school, and I definitely wasn’t amongst the sexiest. My friends tended to be the geeks and the nerds and I suspect I got labeled the same, for better or worse. Finishing with the 3rd best GPA in a class of 600 probably didn’t help. They were good years, but I don’t feel too many Uncle Rico moments where I wax nostalgically about them. So back to the reunion, about 200-250 people showed up, and it was good to hear how many folks went on to success. Kevin Jackson has a PHD and is proffing at the University of Illinois; more folks than I can count have large, prosperous families; and of course, my buddy Tom is doing well enough that he’s already thinking about retiring to Colorado in a few years. Lawyers, doctors, designers, CEOs….you name it…the whole gamut. So toward the end of the evening, they announced the “Class Favorites,” including “Most Successful.” When they got to that one….whoda thunk it….but they called my name and I had to walk up to the stage, more than a bit stunned. The tradeoff is I had to wear a sash that said “Most Successful” and I was bestowed with a lovely bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine. Too funny. As my wife wisely said that night, “Success is measured a lot of different ways.” I wish I would’ve known that twenty years ago.

That’s what Walter M. Miller Jr’s classic A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ looks like in Czechoslovakia, courtesy of Laser Books. I’m not sure when this edition was released, but it was sometime within the last several months. Pleased to see my cover artwork (which first appeared on the USA/Eos trade paperback edition) also make it into the Czech Republic. In addition, Laser bought the one-time right to re-use another of my cover illos for a short story collection by Dan Simmons, which, according to their website, has also been published. I’d love to see what both of these look like in real life, but I haven’t received any comp copies yet from the good folks at Laser. I’m sure they’re on their way (ahem).

Here’s the just-completed rough sketch (8.5″ x 11″, pencil on bond) for the wraparound cover for Pyr‘s forthcoming edition of Robert Silverberg’s classic SON OF MAN. It seems a little strange to publicly display in-progress work while I’m still working out that job for a client. I doubt I’ll make a habit of this in future, but I’ve been having fun chats with Pyr’s editorial director Lou Anders about this cover, and we thought it might be fun to share this and see where the final art ends up. So with his consent, voila.

Liner note: I have no idea why, but I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin’s first album while working on this. “How Many More Times” has been playing a lot while I’m drawing.

Pyr will release the brand-new trade paperback edition of SON OF MAN in 2008.

Rave reviews coming in for Michael Moorcock’s THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE from Pyr (forthcoming, late October). Lou Anders has posted some over at Pyr’s blog, as well as a brand-new interview with Mike, courtesy of The Fantasy Review.

Reminder: If you’ve been meaning to check out MonkeyBrain Books’ 2-for-1 September Sale, only a few days remain before October comes calling. If I didn’t already own almost everything they publish, I’d be breaking out the checkbook myself. For instance, if you don’t already own Jess Nevins’ THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC VICTORIANA, no time like the present…

Here’s a triptych I recently completed for Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books. I submitted it to the publisher earlier this month, and thanks to some enterprising Trekkies, it’s already generating cyber-buzz. So I’ll share it here. Forthcoming in 2008, Pocket will release an eagerly-anticipated Terok Nor trilogy chronicling the Cardassian occupation of Bajor and the pre-DS9 origins of the legendary station. My triptych art will be divided across the covers of the three paperbacks. The three novels are:

STAR TREK TEROK NOR: DAY OF THE VIPERS by James Swallow
STAR TREK TEROK NOR: NIGHT OF THE WOLVES by S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison
STAR TREK TEROK NOR: DAWN OF THE EAGLES by S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison

Thanks to James Swallow as well as the folks at TrekWeb for all of the kind words.

Two reviews for Sheri S. Tepper’s THE MARGARETS (Eos), available in stores now in hardcover: A rave, courtesy of BookLoons (reviewed by Hilary Williamson), and a mixed review over at Bookslut (reviewed by Adrienne Martini). The Bookslut review kindly mentions the cover as “lovely”. Unfortunately, because of the publisher’s mixup with the cover credit, Bookslut credits the wrong illustrator, which can only be expected when the wrong credit is printed on the back end flap of the hardcover. Just to once again set the record straight — the cover illustration is by me, but I’m very pleased that the cover is doing its job and attracting readers to the book.

Cover illustration by me for both of these. Deja vu — I previously posted the wraparound art for these, but I’m posting this reminder that the books themselves are now available from Golden Gryphon Press. Shoutouts to publisher Gary Turner and editor Marty Halpern, for two more jobs well done.

A THOUSAND DEATHS by George Alec Effinger…this one boasts an introduction by multi-Hugo Award winner Mike Resnick, and an afterword by Andrew Fox, author of the cult classic FAT WHITE VAMPIRE BLUES. It’s an elegant, poignant collection of Effinger stories revolving around George’s semi-autobiographical character Sandor Courane, and it contains some of the finest writing he ever did.

THE GIRL WHO LOVED ANIMALS by Bruce McAllister…one of 2007’s best single-author collections; it’s that good. Bruce was a Hugo Award finalist this year for his short story “Kin” which is included in this book. I loved his story notes that accompany each piece. Afterword by Barry N. Malzberg, and an introduction by the great Harry Harrison who says, “Among top short story talents in the field, McAllister is a leader. Polished, moving, thought-provoking — this collection is without parallel.” Hard to find higher praise than that.