So, the Locus Recommended Reading List has hit the stands. I’ve been involved it compiling the list for a few years now, and this one was kind of different from previous years. Normally, CHARLES has hopped a plane from the icy climes of California and headed Down Under, and we have sat on the shores of the Indian Ocean, quaffed an ale or two, and worked together on turning recommendations, reviews, thoughts, and notes into what I think is the best annual overview of the genre published anywhere in the field. Unfortunately, health is making it harder and harder for CHARLES to fly to the other side of the world, and my commitments make it difficult for me to travel to California more than once a year, so this one was done via email and telephone. And, because I’m reading an insane amount of short fiction, the book list was largely assembled by CHARLES with the help of Amelia, while I co-ordinated the short fiction list. This is good, and bad. I LOVE the recommended reading list, and love being involved in it all. I also love needing to know about the field to have to read everything. This year I’d probably read fewer recommended novels than at any other time in the past twenty years or so, and I doubt this year’ll be much different. That said, I’m getting to know short fiction pretty well, I guess.  So, check out the list, vote in the poll, and subscribe. I know I’m biassed, but I think Locus is a pretty good ‘zine.

thanks to those who posted in response to the previous post. thanks too, to those who didn’t. posts like that one are why we shouldn’t have blogs. still. ever onwards…

<-- start self-loathing Every weekday morning, pretty much, I have coffee with my mother. This morning, as a sweet kind of reminiscence, she brought along a batch of old school reports of mine that she'd found. They covered from the beginning of school - when I was six - through till I was close to finishing school when I was maybe seventeen. It proved to be incredibly depressing. It's not so nice to see every bad trait that you thought you had repeated year after year after year in report comments. Seems like I was always lazy, disorganised, shallow and so on and so forth. At 43, sometimes you realise you get the life you (didn't) work for. end self-loathing -->

Just around New Year’s Lou Anders blogged about Chris Roberson’s terrific PS Publishing novella The Voyage of Night Shining White. Having just read the story, I was interested to hear about Lou’s connection with the story, with Chris’s ‘Celestial Empire’ sequence of stories and so on.

I was particularly interested in Lou’s retelling of how Stephan Martiniere had done some cover art for a now-abandoned edition of The Voyage of Night Shining White. I checked it out on Stephan’s site, and thought it was a pretty amazing piece of art, and something clicked. I was starting into getting the next edition of Best Short Novels ready and we needed a cover. I dropped Andy Wheeler at the Book Club an email. He loved the art too, and so did his art people. The result? Stephan’s “O” is now the cover for Best Short Novels: 2007. How cool is that? I’m very grateful to Lou for pointing out the piece of art, and to Andy and Stephan for being able to make it happen. Now, all you have to do is make sure you order a copy of the anthology!

Just in case any of you were wondering, this is what 2007 looks like for me…