Well, it’s official: I’ve caught the grandmother of all colds, probably spread to me via the air conditioning system. The only question now is how long the BF will survive without catching it

On the plus side, my books arrived today–I immediately lent the Alastair Reynolds to the BF, who needed reading for a train journey, and kept the Daniel Fox in my grubby little paws. Also made some progress in a new story, after a couple abortive starts–1500 words so far, aiming for 2,500 so should be done soon.

In the cooking experiment series, we bought fresh Chinese noodles yesterday, and I cooked them with cha lua (alias Vietnamese sausage/ham). Yummy. I love this; usually, I stick it in a sandwich or cook rice to go with it, but frying noodles, scallions and putting soy sauce on top of everything was pretty nice.

Just ordered Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space (since I read Chasm City a few months back and really liked it), Daniel Fox’s Dragon in Chains (which I’ve been meaning to read forever), and Daniel Abraham’s A Shadow in Summer (which I own an e-copy of, but no proper paper copy). And a second-hand copy of Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides (which has been optioned for Pirates of the Caribbean 4 in a rather neat move).

In other news, finished importing Foreign Ghosts in Scrivener, and I’m taking a look at the various storylines to see what’s not working (I figure I know where the chronology problem is coming from, and I need to drastically re-think one character’s motivations).

So far, so good…

And it’s tea purchasing time :=)

I try to keep a balance between the different types of tea, but a quick glance at the tea boxes showed that I’m running low on white tea and on flavoured black tea (thanks to Mum’s trip to Vietnam last year, I have enough green tea to withstand a siege. And it’s a good one, too).

And this is where I’m dragging Matthieu:
L’Empire des Thés (awesome shop in the Chinese district which has a bewildering choice–including good blends and neat perfumed teas).

In the wake of the discussions I’ve seen on women in fantasy, I figured I’d do a post of my own ^[1]. Mostly, it’s taken me so long to get to this because I wanted to order my thoughts.

I don’t write epic fantasy, but I write its close cousin, historical fantasy, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts about women in historical settings.
Read More »

I was cleaning up house on my work computer, transferring the contents of folder A to folder B. After emptying folder A into folder B, I proceeded to dutifully erase folder B from the system.

There goes the totality of the data I was working on.

*bangs head against wall*

(It’s not as dramatic as it sounds: we do have backups, and I’ll probably get the data back tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I was left feeling rather silly).

I have a new computer screen–going from 17″ to a 21.5 with high definition.
It does look pretty different :=)

Quiet weekend, in which I finally got to celebrate the sale of my novel by taking my parents to couscous (couscous being something of a family tradition). Also, much cleaning and housekeeping, but that’s the boring part.

After much thinking, I finally invested in Things as a Task Management software: it’s a little pricey, but it looks good and feels at the right level of sophistication for me (ie, not too rigid in the structure of tasks, or too simple). Many thanks to everyone who recommended it to me!

And current addictions include Adrian Tchaikovski‘s Empire in Black and Gold (in his own words: the Roman Empire with World War II technology–and insects, and generally awesome worldbuilding), and Code Geass, an anime about the rebellion of a downtrodden Japan against their Britannian masters, led by a Magnificent Bastard who’s on the narrow boundary between completely unlikable and fascinating.

My wonder BF (1) is currently making a zucchini pie, in an effort to cut down on the household’s consumption of meat. I’ll be making spring rolls later this week, probably.

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(1) the wonder BF is currently being an impressive little houseboy, since he’s (sadly) stuck at home while looking for a job–so far without much success…

Some tidbits about the writing of “On Horizon’s Shores” can be found here at Edmund Schubert’s blog. As usual, Edmund will also run tidbits on all the other stories, which are always interesting (and which, I, for one, am very much looking forward to reading).

My SF novelette “On Horizon’s Shores” is now up in issue 14 of IGMS.

Alex and Thi Loan transferred at Sapalawa Spaceport, from their small shuttle to a military Naga craft — the only ones still allowed to crawl between the stars with the fuel shortage.

Because the thought of their mission on Horizon weighed on Alex’s mind, he said, “You’ve read the files?”

Thi Loan shrugged. “There isn’t much. Professor Kishore died — and then . . . suddenly there wasn’t enough fuel for the spaceships.” She smiled, a showing of white teeth against her tanned skin.

Read more at the IGMS website.

Many many thanks to Edmund Schubert, who did amazing editing–cutting and trimming a useless scene, improving the flow and clarifying a lot of plot that existed only in my head.

Also thanks to those who took a look at the first draft: T.L. Morganfield, Kevin Shaw, Fred Warren, cklabyrinth, Christine Lucas, Rod Santos and Justin Pilon.

And will you just look at that cover art? Wow. Just… wow. Dean Spencer has done a truly amazing job illustrating the story.

Over at the Super-Sekrit Clubhouse, Marshall Payne interviews Vylar Kaftan, about writing, life in California, and her short story “Break the Vessel”:
Interview with Vylar Kaftan

The easiest part [of crafting a story] is characters. They just appear on the page and flesh themselves out like magic. Possibly because I’ve been people-watching forever. The hardest part is letting go of my own ridiculously high standards and accepting that things are always, always lost in translation from imagination to words—and that’s just the nature of the beast.

(and while you’re at it, check out the rest of the Super-Sekrit clubhouse: fun cartoons, birthday posts, and more neat interviews)