year's best fantasy & horror 20

Thanks to Vin and Andrew, I unexpectedly came into possession of my spec fic "bible", The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 2007, edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link & Gavin Grant.

Nikki and I are always delighted by this hefty tome which not just collects wonderful short fiction from all over but also gives recommendations for novels, single author collections, young adult books, comics and more in those two broad genres.

Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol.2 appears in Ellen Datlow's horror summation for 2006 (in the Mixed Genre Anthology). That recognition is already reason for delight, but even better is the fact that three of the stories in last year's antho made it into the Honorable Mentions: 2006 section (a stunning list with stories from Naguib Mahfouz, Haruki Murakami, Anna Tambour, Chris Barzak, Ray Bradbury, Emma Bull, Jeff Ford, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Tim Powers and others - it's truly a humbling honor being included, as well as fantastic encouragement to write more):

"Feasting" by Joshua Lim So

"Six from Downtown" by Dean Francis Alfar

"The Sign of the Cross" by Stanley Geronimo

In the previous volume, Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol.1 also had three stories cited:

"Emberwild" by Nikki Alfar

"In the Arms of Beishu" by Vincent Michael Simbulan

"Lovelore" by Francezca Kwe

And, to make things even better, in Jeff Vandermeer's Fantasy in Comics and Graphic Novels: 2006 summation, Gerry Alanguilan's Elmer is cited as "clearly one of the most provocative comics of the year". And deservedly so.

Kudos to Tokwa, Stan and Gerry!