It’s taken a couple of weeks to sink in, hence the delay, but I’m thrilled to say that I’ve been shortlisted for the 2018 British Fantasy Awards in the Best Artist category!!! Yay!!!!
Can’t quite believe it but seeing my name listed as a shortlist nominee is surreal and a little overwhelming, but in a good way! 🙂 I’ve been nominated in the Best Artist category for the two hand drawn pen & ink maps I created for HarperCollins last year, for Anna Smith-Spark’s brilliant ‘The Court of Broken Knives’ and Anna Stephen’s wonderful ‘Godblind’! 
It’s been a lovely surprise especially given that this has been a tough year for me personally, health problems, one of my beloved wolfies (Tolly) has been very unwell, massive financial worries (colossal vet bills!) and the latest gut punch – my wonderful Godmother (who I’ve known and loved my whole life and has been there for us through some pretty traumatic times) is desperately ill with ovarian cancer. It fact she’s having her operation tomorrow to try and cut all the cancer out. We’re all very worried and fighting back tears at the moment, so having something lovely like this happen has definitely been a much needed ray of sunshine in amongst a sea of crap.
I won’t find out if I’ve won until the swanky awards ceremony (October 21st). So in a mad dash, despite the fact that I’m totally skint, I booked up the hotel and tickets for FantasyCon 2018 up at Chester (October 19th – 21st) and will be sitting there during the awards ceremony with fingers and toes crossed while practising my ‘I’m not really disappointed’ face when someone else wins it! 😀
A massive THANK YOU to the British Fantasy Society and to everyone who voted for me. Amazing to see the other artists I’m nominated with: 
Best Artist
· Ben Baldwin
· Jeffrey Alan Love
· Victo Ngai
· Daniele Sera
· Sophie E Tallis
· Sana Takeda
I also want to shout out my other friends who have been nominated too. Firstly a massive congrats to the lovely Joanne Hall who has been nominated in the Best Short Story category for her story ‘Illumination’ taken from the anthology ‘The Book of Dragons’ by AJ Dalton published by my publishers, Kristell Ink (an imprint of Grimbold Books). Congrats to Joshua Cornah another fellow Grimmie from Kristell Ink, who has been nominated for Best Comic/Graphic Novel for his hilarious Grim & Bold cartoons. Grimbold Books themselves (worthy winner of the Best Independent Press at last year’s BFS awards) are also again nominated this year as well! Woo hoo! xxx
I also want to make a huge shout out to Anna Smith-Spark who has been nominated for Best Fantasy Novel and Best Newcomer for ‘The Court of Broken Knives’! Way to go Anna! 😀 xxx
Yay!!! So stupidly excited and very honoured and humbled by the whole thing.
To check out more of my work, pop by my website: Sophie E Tallis Illustrations or if you want to BUY any artwork, check out my new Etsy shop: Sophie’s Artisan Arts!
Thank you folks! ❤ ❤ ❤ xxxxx
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I’m thrilled to bits about this; I almost never write short stories and, I’ll level, I’d completely forgotten that I had promised Adam a story for Book of Dragons until he emailed me about ten days before the deadline to remind me about if and I totally told him I was working on it which was A Bit Of A Fib (ok, a complete fib) and then had to flounder to get it written at the last minute*. So to be shortlisted for a major award for it is just brilliant 😀
Sophie E Tallis - Author/Illustrator 