Lou Anders has some good words for the covers for the Locus Press year’s bests. There were some bumps along the road to Damascus, but I think John Picacio’s art is very fine indeed, and the Locus folk (hi Liza, hi Tim) ended up doing a terrific job.

I’m trying to move stuff about the various year’s bests over to www.yearsbests.com. I just received a nice Library Journal review for the two Locus Press books. You see it over at the year’s best site here.

The second Coode Street Podcast features Tim Pratt, one of my favorite new short story writers. His first collection, Little Gods, was published in 2003, and his first novel, The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, was published in 2005. Upcoming is a new collection, Hart and Boot, and a new novel, Blood Engines. His short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, one of SF/Fantasy’s highest honors, and in 2004 he was a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He won the Rhysling award (for poetry) in 2005 for his poem “Soul Searching”. He also works for Locus as a senior editor and book reviewer.

“The Third-Quarter King” is featured in Eidolon, a new science fiction and fantasy anthology that I’ve spent the last year or so working with Jeremy Byrne to complete. Eidolon, which also features stories by Carol Ryles, Hal Duncan, Margo Lanagan, Chris Lawson, Tim Pratt, Eleanor Arnason, William Eakin, Holly Phillips, Deborah Roggie, Deborah Biancotti, Kim Westwood, Alistair Ong, Elizabeth Bear, Jeff VanderMeer, Grace Dugan, Lucy Sussex, and Simon Brown, will be published by Eidolon Books in Australia in August and by Prime Books in the United States in December.

The story that follows is one of the book’s stand-outs, and I’m delighted to be able to present it, read by the author, as a Coode Street Podcast.

“The third-quarter king leaned back in his brown leather recliner, eyes closed, and spent the first evening of the season after his reign listening to music by bands named, all unknowingly, in his honor – The Octobers, November Witch, Through the Fall, The Decemberists. His friend the fourth-quarter king had sent the music, because that king loved songs, and giving gifts. When the last song on the last album had played, the third-quarter king rose and went to his window, looking out on the narrow street, and the songs played on in his mind, made bittersweet by the mere fact of their movement into the past. The songs had been lyrical, mostly, and almost all a little melancholy, which was fitting, as they owed some part of themselves to him.”

Listen to “The Third-Quarter King” [17mb].

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I thought it might be fun to put up a quick summary of what I’ve been doing for the past twelve months. These are the newest, latest and best that I’ve been working on which have actually seen the light of day (or are about to). A lot of time was spent working on Locus, and on The Starry Rift and The New Space Opera, but this is the 2006 output. Many, many thanks to Andrew Wheeler and The Science Fiction Book Club, CHARLES, Liza and the Locus Press team, Bill at SubPress and Jeremy at Eidolon. It’s been a challenge and a lot of fun.

Well, this is the cover art for The Jack Vance Treasury. It’s by Tom Kidd, and I think it’ll make for a wonderful cover for the book. In case readers haven’t looked at the SubPress site, the contents for the book are:

• Preface, Jack Vance
• Jack Vance: An Appreciation, George R.R. Martin
• Introduction: Fruit from the Tree of Life
• The Dragon Masters
• Liane the Wayfarer
• Sail 25
• The Gift of Gab
• The Miracle Workers
• Guyal of Sfere
• Noise
• The Kokod Warriors
• The Overworld
• The Men Return
• The Sorcerer Pharesm
• The New Prime
• The Secret
• The Moon Moth
• The Bagful of Dreams
• The Mitr
• Morreion
• The Last Castle
• Biographical Sketch & Other Facts, Jack Vance