Haven’t been keeping with my short fiction reading lately (lots of novels), but here’s a bunch of stuff I enjoyed recently:

• Offerings by Stephanie Burgis (Fantasy Magazine)
  • That Wednesday, the witch found five silver paperclips laid across her doorstep, next to an apple and a sharpened No. 2 pencil. She regarded them gravely as the breeze from the lake swept up through the pine trees and ruffled her upswept black hair. Then she turned to see if she could spot any signs of who had left them.
• “Charms” by Shweta Narayan (Strange Horizons)
  • Edith nods, but what it’s not is fair. It’s too easy, the tide of war washing these feckless, smiling girls up, drowning Edith in the bile and brine of the past. And she’s hardly old, not yet. Not yet. She shakes her head tiredly. Women’s magic, she says, is like everything else. Not good enough for girls these days.
• “Thieves of Silence” by Holly Phillips (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
  • The women that moved within the ring of flames wore nothing but their shifts, silk and lace that freed long white limbs Zel could not help but admire. Three women among the flames, a fourth who held the knife: the old man’s ice maiden daughters.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s novel is going to be set in a Chinese-inspired universe!

The world could bring you poison in a jeweled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn’t know which of them it was…

Penguin Group (Canada) is pleased to announce the new novel from World Fantasy Award Winner and international bestseller Guy Gavriel Kay

UNDER HEAVEN will be published in April 2010, and takes place in a world inspired by the glory and power of Tang Dynasty China in the 8th century, a world in which history and the fantastic meld into something both memorable and emotionally compelling. (more)

OMG, where is the pre-order button? (love love Kay, and can’t wait to see what he does with Ancient China )

For any French-speakers who might happen to be around…

My report on the Worldcon in French is up on Elbakin:

Reportage au coeur de la World Con avec Aliette de Bodard

Again, thanks to the staff for the opportunity–especially to Emmanuel Chastellière for the time and patience.

Got the news from Beth Wodzinski when I was in the Internet Black Hole that is Spain: my story “Within the City of the Swan”, first published in the Art Issue of Shimmer, is on the Recommended Reading List for the Best American Fantasy, vol 3.

It’s not a lengthy list, either. And it includes one other story from Shimmer, MK Hobson’s “The Hand of the Devil on a String” in issue 9, in addition to Kuzhali Manickavel’s “Flying and Falling”, also from the Art Issue, which is in the actual TOC of the book.

Wow. Go Shimmer!

To celebrate, Shimmer is having a promotion of $3 off the cover price of both issues: you can have a PDF copy of the Art Issue or of Issue 9 for only $1!

Monday
Well, this one is going to be short, since it was only half a day of con. I started off by getting up for a 8:30 breakfast with Sheila Williams (unfortunately, this was the only time where our schedules were empty). Ouch. Rolling out of bed when the alarm clock sounded was extra-hard.
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Back, and knackered (24-hour road trip from the southern end of Spain to Paris–albeit in two 12-hour chunks broken by a 1-day pause in the South of France).

I am currently contemplating how best to tackle the huge pile of laundry that’s taking over the corridor.

(also, I have a loong list of writing-related things to do, which I should get started on. Thank God I have Wednesday off.)

Sunday
Ah, Sunday. Aka the big day, and not only because of the Hugos, but also because this particular day had me programmed on 2 panels, a reading, and a Hugo rehearsal–in addition to the pre-Hugos reception, the Hugos and the Hugo Losers party.
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Meant to post about this earlier, and then it slipped clean out of my mind (July wasn’t a good month for my brain-alignment).

I’ve sold “As the Wheel Turns” to GUD for their issue 6 (Spring 2010), a short story of multiple lives in a Chinese universe (complete with karmic wheel of rebirth, psychopathic ancestor spirits, and random Barbarian invasions).

It was workshopped on OWW under the title “Dai-Yu’s Choice”, where it received feedback from the usual suspects: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Linda Steele (who was kind enough to crit it in tremendous detail), and Chris Kastensmidt (whose unshakable faith in that one proved right). Thanks everyone for helping me whip it into shape!

EDIT: posted this a little too quickly, and forgot about the uber-awesome Marshall Payne, whose line-edits were super-helpful, as usual.

Prologue: the Wheel
In the Tenth Court of Hell, stands the Wheel of Rebirth.

Its spokes are of red, lacquered wood; it creaks as demons pull it, dragging its load of souls back into the world.

And before the Wheel, stands the Lady.

Every soul who goes to the Wheel must endure her gaze. Every soul must stop by her, and take from her pale hands the celadon cup, and drink.

The drink is herbs gathered from the surfaces of ponds, tears taken from the eyes of children, scales from old, wise dragons. To drink is to forget; for no soul can come back into the world remembering past lives, or the punishments meted out to it within the other Courts of Hell.

No soul.

Save one.

In case you’re wondering where I’ve gone…

Andalucia is delightful, the pool is lovely–however, the only Internet access I have is very much sporadic. Email checking and blog postings will occur intermittently, when I can propitiate the wifi gods.

Meanwhile, have fun

Saturday

I couldn’t make it to the Codexian breakfast Saturday morning because I had an early panel about medieval technology. I had expected it to be sparsely populated like my previous panels–however, no such luck, as I found when arriving that the room was packed…
After a brief introduction, the moderator suggested that my co-panelist (Phil Nanson, an expert in medieval weaponry) and I each started out by giving a 20-minute talk on the subject, and follow up with questions.

Arg.
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