Been busy, busy over here. Just noticed that this weekend, Subterranean Press unveiled the final cover for their limited edition of Dan Simmons’ THE TERROR. I did the cover art for this one and Subterranean is now accepting preorders for the book. The previous two covers I’ve done for Subterranean Press were also for Dan Simmons limited editions (MUSE OF FIRE and DROOD). Both of those books have completely sold out. I would expect that THE TERROR will likely do the same, so you might consider ordering yours soon before they’re gone. 🙂

Can’t believe it’s already been a week since I last posted here! Some odds and ends that I haven’t had time to post, until now:

1. The full Locus Awards results have been published in the print edition of this month’s LOCUS MAGAZINE. I’m pleased to see that I finished #3 in the poll. Many thanks to all who considered me on their ballots. As most folks know, Michael Whelan finished #1, and Bob Eggleton finished #2. It’s a heckuva list and I’m honored to be included.

2. Enjoyed this short Lev Grossman TIME MAGAZINE/Nerd World Q&A with the great Michael Moorcock. In it, Lev pimps Tachyon’s terrific new book THE BEST OF MICHAEL MOORCOCK.

3. Jeff Vandermeer recently posted about Mark Chadbourn and the AGE OF MISRULE trilogy over at Omnivoracious. Solid piece — check it out. 🙂

4. Been working on several illustration fronts here — mostly drawings for the 6th Del Rey ELRIC book! Will hopefully be sharing some of it here when the publisher gives the greenlight. 🙂

5. If you happen to be on Twitter, or are considering it, I seem to be dropping by there at least once a day to offer a thought or comment. Here’s my Twitter feed if you’d like to follow it. (And by the way, no plan to abandon this blog! In fact, Paul Vaughn is currently working on revamping it and my website with a brand-new look! Stay tuned.) 🙂

Editor Steven Silver sent me this the other day — the final jacket layout for NESFA Press’ forthcoming WAR AND SPACE: THE BEST OF LESTER DEL REY, VOL. 1. NESFA’s website says the book is slated for release next month, so I’m guessing that means they’ll have copies available at the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal. Can’t wait to see how it turns out….should be a winner. 🙂 Cover illustration by me, and jacket design by Alice N.S. Lewis. Alice is also the designer responsible for the cool Boskone poster that’s been distributed recently. Way to go, Alice!

Man, the NESFAns are like clockwork with their newsletters. The latest one includes this cool little full-color flyer pimping next year’s Boskone 47 in February. They used my cover illustration for George Zebrowski’s MACROLIFE and I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it. Whomever is responsible for designing this flyer — great job! 🙂 I dig it and I’ll hang up mine here in my studio. You can download your very own right here.

Crazy good news for Mark Chadbourn’s AGE OF MISRULE: BOOK 3 — ALWAYS FOREVER! The book has sold out its first printing before it even hits the stores! Here’s what that means — bookstores liked what they saw from the first two books in the trilogy and they have confidence this third book is a solid bet to sell equally well, if not better. So they upped their orders and effectively bought up the entire first printing. What that means to you is this: if you want a first-edition copy of ALWAYS FOREVER, they should be at your local bookstore right now and it’s best to buy soon because the distributors don’t have any more in their warehouses. 🙂

My comp copies of Mark Chadbourn’s ALWAYS FOREVER arrived the other day and the printing turned out great! I illustrated the cover for this one, as well as the previous two books in the series, WORLD’S END and DARKEST HOUR. It’s fun to see the three books lined up, side by side.

Meantime, I’ll soon be back to working on the covers for the next books in this story arc. Congrats to Mark and to Pyr!

Received fabulous news late yesterday! I’m nominated for four 2009 Chesley Awards. Wow!! Here’s the complete list of nominees. And boy, what a list it is — there will be some heavyweight decisions in several categories. Here are my four nominated works:

(Above)
Best Cover Illustration: Hardcover
VIEWPOINTS CRITICAL: SELECTED STORIES
Author: L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Publisher: Tor

(Above)
Best Cover Illustration: Paperback
FAST FORWARD 2
Edited by: Lou Anders
Publisher: Pyr

(Above)
Best Cover Illustration: Magazine
ASIMOV’S
September 2008

(Above)
Best Interior Illustration
ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS
Author: Michael Moorcock
Publisher: Del Rey
(This selection is one of 20+ interior illustrations I did for the book, but I’d have to say this is my personal favorite. Here’s an extensive gallery of some my other interiors from the book.)

And finally, shoutouts to Lou Anders — a 2009 Hugo Award nominee for Best Editor, and a 2009 Chesley Award nominee for Best Art Director (a very rare feat) — and also fellow Texan Vincent Villafranca for his well-earned 3D nomination. Congrats to all fellow nominees. I’m proud and honored to be amongst you!

Yesterday, you saw the May 2009 cover of China’s FANTASY ART Magazine. This morning, I received a PDF of my interview pages inside the mag. Above are four of the feature’s eight pages. FANTASY ART says it’ll be about three months before I see a physical copy of the mag. That’s a mighty slow boat, but I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait. Too bad I can’t read Chinese, but the spreads are so beautifully done that they’re still a pleasure. Huge thanks to Lizzy Carft and all at FANTASY ART for making this possible. 🙂

My illustration for Michael Moorcock’s ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS is featured on the May 2009 cover of China’s FANTASY ART Magazine, the country’s leading pro magazine celebrating fantasy art and design. Earlier this year, Lizzy Carft conducted an interview with me, which is reportedly inside this issue. I say “reportedly” because I’ve yet to see the actual magazine itself. I’m sure the good people of FANTASY ART will be sending a few to me and I can’t wait to see how it looks. When they do, I’ll likely need the mighty Xin to translate the read. 🙂 Very cool!

Seems like FAST FORWARD 2 is the critical darling that just won’t die, well over a year after initial release! 🙂 Here’s two more extensive reviews courtesy of SFSite (reviewed by Derek Johnson) and Fantasy Book Critic (reviewed by Fabio Fernandes). Happy to see this, as it’s always been tough for anthologies to survive, even at the best of times. I’ve said this before, but I’m extremely proud to have illustrated this cover because books this good don’t grow on trees, to say the least. If you love great sf, and wish to see anthos like FF2 continue, please consider buying one, if you haven’t already. Your purchase doesn’t affect me one way or the other. I certainly don’t make any money from the sale, but literature is best when it’s diverse. The sf field needs books like FF2 just as it needs its ubiquitous best-sellers.

No secret that Jeff Ford is one of my favorite authors. I’ve done covers for several of his books, including the wraparound cover art for THE EMPIRE OF ICE CREAM (pictured above). For years, we’ve talked about collaborating on a lush, illustrated book of his much-loved, Fountain Award-winning story “The Annals of Eelin-Ok”. I’d love to illustrate this story, but so far, it’s proved impossible to shoehorn a major project like that, on-spec, into my busy cover art schedule.

Well — check this out: Jeff’s story centers around the mythology of the Twilmish, a race of fairies who live in sand castles. Later this month, there will be a festival celebrating the Twilmish in Fairfield, CT. Big deal, right? Well, to the best of Jeff’s knowledge, he made this mythology up, completely out of his imagination, and was shocked when he found that he was being invited to a celebration like this. The festival organizers believed his story so whole-heartedly that they were sure he was referencing an existing Celtic mythology. And they’ve now built a festival around it! Awesome!

So, back to this dream book — he’s a World-Fantasy Award-winning writer who’s busy, busy writing, and I’m a World Fantasy Award-winning illustrator who’s busy, busy illustrating. We both want to illustrate a beautiful hardcover edition of his story “The Annals of Eelin-Ok.” Currently, there’s no publisher for this book.

If an entire festival can be inspired from this simple short story, then how successful would an illustrated book be?

Over at Joseph Mallozzi’s blog last week, Michael Moorcock answered an extensive battery of questions from Joe’s fans, mostly about Elric and ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS). It’s fabulous stuff. Joe’s blog is terrific because he’s so well-read and makes every effort to help others be the same. He’s the executive producer of the STARGATE: ATLANTIS series as well as the forthcoming STARGATE UNIVERSE series, and he’s a mensch.

Free stuff, folks — courtesy of the good people at Tor.com. They’ve just posted my artwork for George Alec Effinger’s A THOUSAND DEATHS as a wallpaper — part of their week-long celebration of the Hugo Professional Artist nominees. Go grab it while it’s there. Available in several formats for your convenience. And if you haven’t voted in the Hugos, what are you waiting for? 🙂 Worldcon supporting memberships are only $50 and not only give you the right to vote in the Hugos, but you receive the Hugo Voter Packet, a ton of free Hugo-nominated reading and art. Memberships available here, and here’s the Hugo online ballot. Voting deadline is July 3rd.

Here’s my new illustration for Stephen King’s ‘SALEM’S LOT. It’ll be featured in the forthcoming massive art book KNOWING DARKNESS: ARTISTS INSPIRED BY STEPHEN KING. ‘SALEM’S LOT is one of the seminal vampire novels of the modern era, and a book this famous comes “pre-loaded” in the audience’s imagination with a lot of vampire visual tropes. I wanted to avoid those because we’ve seen them enough. It seems to me the book is much more than just a vampire novel. So no fangs or blood spatters here. Instead, my picture is simply about a house and a small, mundane town.

As for the book itself, it’s gonna be an amazing volume. Contributing artists include Michael Whelan, Bob Eggleton, Bernie Wrightson, Don Maitz, Les Edwards, Drew Struzan, David Ho, Douglas Smith, and a ton of others. Essentially, this will contain the vast majority of King book cover art ever produced, as well as new works created especially for this edition. Centipede Press is the publisher, and if you remember the jaw-dropping LOVECRAFT art book they released last year, then you know the production values are gonna be gorgeous for this book. They’re taking pre-orders right now. It’s a limited edition, so definitely check it out! 🙂

(Top left: Art by Michael Whelan / Top right: Art by P. Craig Russell / Bottom left: Art by Kent Williams / Bottom right: Art by Walt Simonson)

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Is this a lush, hardcover art book that you’re missing? No, it’s not missing. It doesn’t exist. As far as I know, no publisher has seriously approached Mike Moorcock about it. But wouldn’t it be an amazing art book if it did? Think about the greats that have illustrated Elric over the years…. Michael Whelan, Yoshitaka Amano, Brom, Walt Simonson, P. Craig Russell, and Robert Gould, just to name a few of the legions of artists in Elric art history. And speaking of legions, think about the armies of Moorcock fans worldwide. What Moorcock fan wouldn’t covet a book like this? Heck, what fantasy art fan wouldn’t? Sounds to me like a smash hit waiting to happen. 🙂

The cover of AGE OF MISRULE: BOOK ONE — WORLD’S END recently received love from no less than font god Dave Nalle, owner of one of the coolest font sites anywhere, The Scriptorium. He designed the font Valdemar which is used in the cover’s type design. He gave a shoutout to designer Nicole Sommer-Lecht, and offered the following:

“The overall result is excellent, and it’s just the kind of book Valdemar was designed for. I also quite like the cover art by John Picacio, which is surprisingly conceptually reminiscent of the cover Howard David Johnson did for my Ysgarth RPG. Special kudos also go to Lou Anders of Pyr for putting such a good design team together.”

I’ve never heard of Howard David Johnson or seen the Ysgarth RPG, but thought that was strange and amazing. Dave’s full text even offers an impromptu review of the book to boot! After seeing this, I emailed him and asked if we could do a mini-interview. He graciously accepted.

What inspired the creation of the Valdemar font?

Dave: I was actually on vacation with my family in England when I started working on it in 2000. There was a hand-lettered title on the cover of a horror-themed puzzle book which I bought for my daughter and after looking at it for several days I gave in to a compulsion to design a font which would be a better title font for a book like that. Because my computer access was limited while traveling I drew the characters by hand, starting with a set of rough-looking serif characters and then adding somewhat ominous, magical elements to create alternate versions of each character. The font ended up being very successful and was picked as the signature font for the Harry Potter merchandising campaign so it appeared all over the place on packaging for action figures and toys. The result was that it became overexposed, so a few years later I designed Valdemar Alternate so that there would be more variant characters, giving designers more options and giving the font a longer shelf-life.

What are some of the decisions you face when designing a font like this? Any surprises in the making of this one?

Dave: The challenge on Valdemar was coming up with elements to add to the basic characters which looked mystical and yet were visually appealing. Most of them worked, but I really hate the “L” in the Valdemar Alternate character set with the short, rather weak looking spike going through it. But the biggest challenge was to come up with enough little quirks for 26 and ultimately 52 characters while not duplicating ideas I’d used in a couple of past conceptually similar fonts like Necromantic and Ironworks. The main surprise is how popular Valdemar has been. There are other fonts I’ve put enormously more work and thought into which haven’t been anywhere near as popular. When I made it I was just kind of playing around, but clearly the idea resonated with people.

You’ve designed some amazing fonts. At this moment, what are three of your all-time faves you’ve designed?

Dave: I like Hadrianus because although it’s derived from Roman inscriptory lettering, it’s still basically an original design and it’s the first traditional text font I did which works really well. Earlier text fonts I designed were either too derivative of other fonts or awkward looking, but Hadrianus works. I rather like Newgrange because I took the basic elements of Celtic calligraphy and took them to an interesting extreme and I think the result is very effective. Another favorite is Orpheus, because like a lot of my fonts it came from looking at someone else’s work — in this case the overly popular Morpheus font — and deciding that I could do the same concept and make it better. With Orpheus it really worked. Now we just need the world to realize that they should be using it.

Much appreciated, Dave! Thanks for the time. Long live Scriptorium!