Among the hundred or so guests who dropped in on Lolita last night to help the GalleyCats celebrate a slightly delayed first anniversary, and spread general holiday cheer, I was especially delighted to see illustrators Molly Crabapple and Julie Klausner (left). Both are doing phenomenally well; we hear that Molly's Dr. Sketchy's Official Rainy Day Colouring Book is on the verge of a second printing, and Julie will be performing tonight through Saturday at Joe's Pub's The Loser's Lounge in a special tribute to Elton John. I am given to understand costumes from the original Broadway production of Cats may be involved. I was also glad for the opportunity to introduce my friend Robin Epstein to fellow novelist Bridie Clark, whom I was meeting for the first time (and we totally bonded over our mutual love for Dawn Powell, which bodes well).

Overall, the party was a tremendous success, as you'll see from my Flickr set of the evening—kudos to the mediabistro.com events team, led by Alison Mitchell, for keeping everything organized and rounding up copies of Alison and Kyle's novels for partygoers to purchase! And thanks, too, to the Lolita staff, for handling the unexpected throng gracefully and for not minding two hours of cheesy holiday Muzak. (No, really, I own CDs of music culled from the actual Muzak archives...) I hope we got to say hello to most of you; if we missed anybody, or for those of you who couldn't make it (like the folks at Tor and Little, Brown who had staff parties of their own), we hope to see you at many parties in '07!

So here's a picture of Sarah and me flanking Lynne Scanlon, the blogosphere's Publishing Contrarian, followed by guest of honor Alison Pace (center) with her pals author Sarah Mlynowski, literary agent Joe Veltre, author Lynda Curnyn, and graphic designer Jane Archer.