Over the last few days, the Writers of the Future blog has been posting art from the winning Illustrators of the Future–the graphical twins of we writer winners, and the artists who will provide illustrations for our stories in the forthcoming anthology.

So far they’ve posted art by Bryan Beus, Bogdan Stetensko, Lars Edwards, Artem Mirolevich, Corey Loving and it’s all pretty amazing–follow the links if you don’t believe me.

It’s crazy to think that one of these (or perhaps someone not yet posted) will be doing original artwork based on the story I wrote. It’s an entirely unexpected level of coolness to this contest win that I’d not expected.

And yes, I have my favorite of these posted but I won’t tell you which one(s). Never want to upset someone you might be working with soon! 🙂

I know Rob Sawyer has occasionally purchased the original artwork produced for his book covers (having been to his place a few times I can testify that the art for the covers of Far-Seer, the British edition of The Terminal Experiment, and the Science Fiction Book Club and Tor trade paper reprint of Golden Fleece occupy places of prominence around his penthouse). I’m thinking that if I like the art that illustrates my story enough, and if the artist is willing to part with it, I might just see if we can come to some agreement that will allow it to hang framed on my wall…

Really I’m just dying to know what they’ll choose to illustrate from the story. I tend to be very visual when I write–I see scenes in my head almost like I’m watching TV, no doubt a product of a late 20th Century upbringing–and tend to include a lot of visual cues in my stories (sometimes too many, as people in my writer’s group have occasionally told me…) So there are certain key scenes which you could illustrate, I suppose. Or a montage of the characters. Or something else entirely that only a visual artist’s mind would clue in to.

Whatever it ends up being, I’m dying to see it.

Oh, and the otheWotF blog was nice enough to post my notice about UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS coming out. You’ll find it at the bottom of the post here.

– S.