Four clients win British Fantasy Awards
I'm delighted to report that no fewer than four of my website clients walked away (in the direction of the bar, for the most part) with demonic statuettes at the British Fantasy Society Awards on Sunday.
The awards are voted for by members of the BFS in an annual poll and are the most prestigious UK awards for fantasy, horror and related fields of fiction (and non-fiction) endeavour. To win an award is a measure of the high regard amongst fans and peers alike, and means a lot to the recipients.
Mark Morris won the Best Non-Fiction award for Cinema Macabre, a collection of short essays on favourite horror movies written by some of the top names in the horror genre (oh, and yours truly... I wrote a piece on The Sixth Sense). Mark was very pleased indeed to win the award.
Mark Chadbourn won the Best Short Fiction award for 'Whisper Lane', which was originally published in the British Fantasy Society's 30th anniversary anthology The BFS: A Celebration and which I really do have to dig out and read sometime...
Peter Crowther's PS Publishing won the Best Small Press award for the sixth time in the past seven years, an incredible feat that's entirely justified by the superb range of titles that Pete continues to bring to the market year on year (which is just one of the many reasons that I'm incredibly pleased and proud to work with PS).
And last but by no means least, Tim Lebbon won the Best Novel award for Dusk, the first part of his dark fantasy duology set in the grim and chilling world of Noreela (that site's not actually one of mine, alas... wish I had that good an eye for graphic design). Tim's a great guy and it's fantastic to see him win the award, especially against such a strong shortlist, and he was also chuffed to bits to win. Marvellous!
And several more of my clients were shortlisted for various awards as well, including Sarah Pinborough, both Les Edwards and his artistic alter-ego Edward Miller and Chris Teague of Pendragon Press, a soon-to-be client whose site re-design I'll be starting work on in October.
Redevelopment in progress
This is my new blog / portfolio site, currently being installed, adapted, tinkered with and then stuffed full of legacy content. You can watch it happening in real-time, if you really have nothing better to do. Be warned though, I may break for lunch. And it's actually a glorious day here in Manchester, so there's a fair to middling likelihood that I might stop to mow the lawn at some point, too...
Edit, 18.45 - Well, I got a few kinks in the template ironed out and most of the legacy content across, but that's it for today. Didn't get to mow the lawn, either... one more chore to save over to the weekend.
Edit, 11/09/07 - Major push underway on the new PS Publishing e-commerce website - now that I've got the full forthcoming schedule data through from PS - as well as an update to the current site. So the potfolio additions I was hoping to make will be along in a couple of weeks, all being well.