NEWS (and delay)

I'll be posting more about my NYC trip soon, but in the meantime...I'm still in NYC. Our flight got delayed due to bad weather in Atlanta. But we'll be home by tonight.

In other news, my story "Farmer's Cat" has been selected by Sean Wallace for his year's best fantasy and by David Hartwell/Kathryn Cramer for their year's best fantasy anthology.

I've also completed introductions to two Clark Ashton Smith short story collections being put out by the University of Nebraska.

My interview with Rebecca Pawel, author of Summer Snow, just appeared in Publishers Weekly.

Interviews with Conrad Williams and Keith Brooke will appear in future installments of SF Site. In addition, I've agreed to write the introduction to Conrad's new novel, forthcoming from Earthling Publications. And at some point I will be writing the introduction to Night Shade Books' reprint of Glen Cook's Dread Empire trilogy.

Finally, as you may have noticed, I will be a World Fantasy Award judge in 2006, reading 2005 material. I thought it was a good year to do it since I had very little original material out in 2005, and because it was also a year in which few of my close friends published major fiction. In the few cases where they did, it will be easy enough to recuse myself. I'm excited about the opportunity, looking forward to reading widely, and was delighted to find out who my fellow judges are--good souls all.

Reading for the World Fantasy Award strikes me as a very general proposition. I love a lot of different kinds of fantasy. I choose to promote and champion very specific sub-genres because they need the help and because they're close to my first love as a writer. But, as a reader, it's exciting to think about being able to read and champion a broader selection of work for this award.

Jeff