This morning I awoke slowly, adjusted the bed and grabbed up the iPad, as is my habit.

When I groggily checked my mail, I found this kind note from John Picacio, whose A Song of Fire and Ice calendar tore the roof off that category this year:

“Congrats to all 2012 Chesley Awards finalists! Honored to be a finalist in the Best Product Illustration category… Fellow finalists in the category are Lee Moyer, Stuart Craig, Michael Raymond Whelan, Michael Zug, and William Stout.”

Blink.

What? My work being considered in the same breath as John? As Stout? As Zug? As Whelan? And why is Stuart Craig’s name familiar? Oh yeah! He’s the frickin’ OBE designer of Harry Potter.

And all because of my little charity calendar for Worldbuilders.

Picacio isn’t one to err, but seeing is believing.

So naturally, I nipped around to look at the awards, and sure enough:

Best Product Illustration

• Stuart Craig for production design for the Harry Potter films, Warner Brothers, 2011
• Lee Moyer for Check These Out, 2012 Literary Pin-up calendar, Worldbuilders, 2011
• John Picacio for George R.R. Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire, 2012 Calendar, Random House, July 2011
• William Stout for Zombies 2012, calendar, Andrews McMeel, 2011
• Michael Whelan for Gift from the Sea, Dragon*Con 2011 promo art & program book, 2011
• Mark Zug for IlluXCon 2011 promo poster, 2011

But that wasn’t all.

That wasn’t even the half of it!

Best Cover Illustration: Magazine

• Facundo Diaz for Clarkesworld July 2011
• Laura Diehl for Fantasy, August 2011
• Lee Moyer for Weird Tales, Winter 2010/2011
• Carly B. Sorge for Apex Magazine, September 2011
• Dariusz Zawadski for Fantasy, May 2011

Best Cover Illustration: Hardback Book

• Tom Kidd for Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison, Subterranean Press
• Stephan Martiniere for Prospero Regained by L. Jagi Lamplighter, Tor Books
• Lee Moyer for Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kieran, Subterranean Press
• Cliff Nielsen for The Tempering of Men by Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear, Tor Books
• Greg Staples for The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, Subterranean Press

Somehow, my wildly different work in diverse genres tied me this year for most nominations with the brilliant Dave Palumbo, nominated for Unpublished, Art Director, Paperback. 3 nominations each, and not sharing a single category. Neat!

And as this curious information came in, all the remarkable and wildly disparate trails that led here were lit up in my mind.

Maybe it’s true that one’s life really does flash before one’s eyes….

Just cataloging all these facts, considering all the relations and coincidences involved, and putting all these pieces together will take me the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the month.

Hugo-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal chose and designed the Weird Tales cover. And all because of an unexpected conversation over dinner at her home. When she lived across the street from here. Before I lived here. Before she moved to Chicago. When Liz Argall and her delightful husband Mikey lived in my basement. Before the cover I’ve done for Mary that remains almost completely secret and unseen (Link hidden for security purposes). ;)

I’ve known L. Jagi Lamplighter for years, but only met her brilliant cover artist Stephan Martiniere when we were guesting at Baycon this year. I met Caitlin R. Kiernan at Portland’s own HP Lovecraft Film Festival several years back. I’d admired her in Frank Woodward’s wonderful biography of HPL called Fear of the Unknown (for which I’d done the cover and several illustrations), and I wanted to familiarize her with the work of Henry Clews, Jr. She, of course, immediately understood why. It’s almost funny how little time I spent with her there, considering how much time we’ve spent working together since: on the cover above that Bill Schafer was kind enough to publish uninterrupted by cover type, and on Confessions of a Five Chambered Heart. It amuses me that her name appears larger on the Weird Tales cover than on her own book.
I’m very excited to see her at Readercon this July!

But I digress….

What does it all mean?

I’m not sure it means anything really.
Other than a very surprising and happy day for me.
To have my name listed among the best and the brightest is deeply validating and much appreciated.

My most sincere thanks to everyone involved!
Lee