Strange Horizons is having their annual fund drive, raising money to support the magazine. Thanks to John Scalzi‘s prompting, they have already raised a whooping $12,000, but if you want to donate, there’s still time. Lots of nifty prizes (including signed books), and you’ll support a very good magazine.
If you need more convincing, might I suggest heading over and read one of the following fine stories?

• “The Spider in You” by Sean E. Markey
  • We kept our god under the sink, in an old aquarium, so it wouldn’t spill its web all over the house. We didn’t tell you because you were so curious. Our daughter: you are like an otter, or a hummingbird. How would you stand against such a monster as our god?
• “Nira and I” by Shweta Narayan
  • Nira and I are with Hemal on the day she dies. She is teaching us a clapping song game, a remembering game. She is winning.
• “Another End of the Empire” by Tim Pratt
  • He sighed. “So I’m expected to send my Fell Rangers to the mountains, raze the village, leave no stone upon a stone, enslave the women, and kill all the younglings to stop this dire prophecy from coming to pass.”

You can donate here.

So, we’re back. Arg. Zombie-jetlagged (the plane landed in Paris at 3:00 am Canada time), and frustrated (we waited one hour for our luggage), but home.

At least, temporarily. We’re leaving again tomorrow for the last leg of the summer holidays (after the Worldcon and the week in Montreal). Destination: Spain, in the Sierra Nevada. Program: pool lounging and book catching-up. Also, writing catching-up.

I’ll have Internet access, but it’s likely to be intermittent, so if you haven’t heard from me in a while, that’s why. (I’ll continue to post con reports, probably more once every two days or something like that).

Speaking of which, books bought in Montreal:

• The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
  • Bought both at con, finished on the plane home. It’s very much traditional fantasy, despite what the hype says on the cover, but it’s nicely done. Reminded me of my nights reading books with a light under the cover
• An Autumn War, Daniel Abraham
  • Very much looking forward to this one. I loved both previous books in the series (A Shadow in Summer and A Betrayal in Winter), and this looks really good.
• Blood of Elves, Andrzej Sapkowski
  • Aka winner of the David Gemmell Award. A Polish book and one of the rare ones published in English translation. I’m usually not a fan of that type of fantasy, but I have to admit I’m curious. (I was also looking for the Night Watch tetralogy, but couldn’t remember Sergei Lukyanenko’s name while actually in the bookstore, and I was already carrying a hefty pile of books…)
• Mark of the Demon, Diana Rowland
  • Again, I’m usually not a fan of urban fantasy. However, fellow Codexian Diana was a cop and worked in a morgue, so I figured this would be grittier than the average. Also, I was intrigued by the first chapter posted online.

Friday
Friday morning started out with a lovely Codexian breakfast in local diner Eggspectation.
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Matthieu and I stayed in Montreal for a while after Worldcon, to do some sightseeing (we’re leaving tomorrow). We visited the McCord Museum, which tells the history of the city from a social point of view (how people winter, how they have fun, how they make money and how they meet each other). Not that it wasn’t interesting, but there was one corner of the museum that drew our attention…
Turns out they were having an exhibition on space travel in popular culture, and that one of the pieces was a giant Lego Death Star. Awesome…

So, ya know, like the geeks that we are, we felt compelled to take lots of pictures…

The Thing in its Entirety

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Fantasy Magazine‘s interview of me is up here. If you want to learn about golden lilies, Chinese ghosts and why Aztec mythology is fun, this is the place to go. Thanks to Rae Bryant for the spotlight!
(I was going to add something on Daoist sex, too, but I figured there’d been enough gruesomeness as it was. I’ll save that for another day–or another story…)

Thursday
So, Thursday morning started out pretty low-key: we had breakfast at Muffin Plus, a lovely café that does tons of differently-flavoured muffins (and they had plenty of kinds of tea, too). Then we followed on to a second breakfast with fellow Codexian Jenny Rappaport (as in, an extra set of drinks, not a second helping of muffins. That would have been bad). We also met fellow Codexian Matt Rotundo in the lobby, where he was checking in.
Traci and I went looking for a fleece in downtown Montreal, and scouted out the important places (ie, the Indigo bookstore, for future use). Read More »

My friend and critique partner Janice Hardy, whose wonderfully dark YA novel The Shifter is coming out in October, has a contest on her blog to win an ARC:

If you’ve been to my website, you’ve noticed I love chickens. I can’t say why, I just find them hysterically adorable. So for the next ten days, send me your very best chicken jokes. The joke that makes me snarf something out my nose from laughing so hard wins a signed ARC (advance reading copy) of The Shifter.

To enter, put your entry at the bottom of Janice’s post.
(and if you don’t win, I highly recommend pre-ordering the book on amazon. It’s the pulse-racing story of a girl who can shift pain into people, and who is desperately trying to keep her head low–but finds herself faced with a dilemma when her ability turns out to be the only thing that might help her save her sister)

I was planning to put up a worldcon post today, but I’ve clogged the blog enough as it is. Tomorrow it is, then.

For your listening pleasure: “Blighted Heart” is now available as a podcast (recorded by Beneath Ceaseless Skies). Go here (for the table of contents of BCS audio) or directly here for the mp3.

In other related news, “Blighted Heart” is also Story of the Week over at Fantastic Reviews Blog, courtesy of Aaron Hughes:

“Blighted Heart” is a powerful, beautifully written story, and a great example of why de Bodard was the runner-up for this year’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, losing out very narrowly to David Anthony Durham.

Wow.

An interesting post from writer Jason Sanford about the new wave of SF: Scifi Strange.

The movement combines a literary (and sometimes experimental) style with a multi-cultural viewpoint and examination of basic human desires and needs, all while staying within the real-world parameters of SF’s literature of ideas.

(yes, you won’t find it in the blog post. I cheated and lifted it from another post Jason made in the TTA Press forums)

Jason mentions a bunch of writers from Interzone: Eugie Foster, Gareth L. Powell, Mercurio D. Rivera and me–along with Paolo Bacigalupi, Ted Chiang, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor.

That’s interesting (basically New Weird, but in SF ). It does describe pretty well the SF I write, as well as the SF I enjoy; and I can think of a couple other writers who are dealing with it, like Sara Genge.

What do you think? Is that a new movement, or has it been there all along? Any other exciting things happening in SF on a large scale?

So, a little bit more in the way of actual con reporting…
(usual disclaimer applies: I have a bad memory, and it was a really busy con, so there’s probably going to be holes…)

Wednesday:
The day started pretty early on Wednesday for me and Matthieu, since the plane was leaving at 11:00 (wakeup time: 6:00am). We’d packed ahead of time: the only pause in that came when we’d finished piling up Matthieu’s suit and my evening dress, and realised no space was left in the suitcase. Ie, no space for books..
Eek. A quick re-arrangement of containers followed, in order to make sure that we’d have at least some extra space available.
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