Well, two rants, actually. It’s been a bemusing kind of day.

Resolutely failed to buy the Lymond chronicles in ebook format (I have the paper editions but wanted to have them handy for, say, holidays). However, my purse balked at paying ten freaking pounds per book for something I essentially already own in another format. (it occurred to me that for the price of three ebooks, I can buy a 16GB card, too. No comments necessary).

And if I see one more American remake of a successful other-language movie, under the pretext that Americans are too bemused to handle dubs or (Heaven forbid) subtitles, I’ll hit something. Hard, and with a spiked iron gauntlet. (this brought to you courtesy of Let Me In and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo).

As per snickelish‘s request, an SFnovelists post on how I tackle research in a story that requires galleons of it–dissecting my alt-history “The Wind-Blown Man” (Asimov’s, Feb 2010).

So, the synopsis for book 3 came back from AR towers with a couple of very perceptive editorial comments. I’ll need to sit down and rework it, but I’m going to start working on it as soon as I’ve finished the current short story.

Temp title is “Master of the House of Darts”, which has the inconvenient of not fitting on a cover, so it’s only a placeholder until I have a brilliant idea for an alternative title. Going to be referred to as MHD/book 3, methinks… Focusing on human sacrifice, the Aztec way of waging war, and Tenochtitlan’s relationship with its neighbours.

Also, I’ve put up the combined character index for books 1 and 2 of the series online (warning, mild spoilers), and the combined Aztec glossary (no spoilers, bar if you want to see what concepts I used in books 1 and 2 ).

And for those French-speakers among you, Eclipse, the imprint of Bibliothèque Interdite, which bought the French rights to the series, has announced its initial lineup, which most notably includes Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker. Haven’t seen the actual books other than the mockups, but I do like the sober look very much (and they’re not systematically reordering a cover if they like the original version, which is interesting). Also, I’m a big fan of their big shiny banner (see below).

So, as some of you might know, I’m leaving for my honeymoon in a bit more than two weeks. The catch is that the BF/H took the matter very much to heart, and that the destination itself is going to remain a complete surprise until the day we board the plane.

As some of you might also know, my first novel, the Aztec noir fantasy Servant of the Underworld, will be released in the US and Canada on October 26th, in a little more than a month. I’ve always said I was going to do a competition to celebrate the release, but I had no idea what it could be about.

Well, now I’ve got the perfect idea. Take a stab at where you think I might be headed, and get a chance to win a copy of Servant of the Underworld and awesome Aztec swag.

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Here are the rules:

1. The contest will be open from now until October 9th. You may enter by leaving a comment either at my main website, or at the LJ mirror.
2. Prizes are as follow:
• First Prize: A signed copy of Servant of the Underworld, an Aztec Fifth Sun coaster, and a nifty SoU bookmark.
• Runner-Up Prize: a SoU bookmark, and a signed copy of the February 2010 Asimov’s issue, which contains my alt-hist short story “The Wind-Blown Man”.
3. Anyone may enter, worldwide (bar those few people who already know the destination. You know who you are). You may only enter once.
4. Announcing the winner is a teensy bit tricky, since I might be headed for the biggest Internet black hole ever, but I’ll do my best to post as soon as possible (worst-case scenario, October 24th, when we come back home. I hope it doesn’t come to that…).
5. Guesses may be a country or a more specific area; I’ll tabulate the distance from the boundaries. Winners will be ranked by distance to our destination (if it becomes too hard to judge–ie lots of people with similar distances to our real destination–, I reserve the right to sort out the closest people at random).
6. To help you a bit, the following countries are excluded from the guess list (because it’s been explicitly said by the H we wouldn’t go there): Antigua, Bahamas, Belgium, Egypt, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Morocco, The Netherlands, Seychelles, Spain, USA, Vietnam.
7. I don’t have much in the way of clues other than the fact that there are historical remains there (broadly taken to mean anything pre-20th Century in sufficient quantities). Also, French isn’t spoken there, and English probably isn’t an official language either (I got echoes from websites with horrific English vocabulary and grammar).

There you go–have fun!

PS: I don’t ask for this often, but if you feel like signal boosting… It’s going to be much funnier for me and everyone else if we have enough entries.
PPS: I’ll post pictures of the coaster once I get home. It’s simili-stone with a Fifth Movement Glyph, very pretty. Picture posted.

Hey, they’re releasing a version of the uber-awesome writing software Scrivener for Windows. Beta available for Nanowrimo, official release beginnings of 2011, going for 40$ a license.

W00t.

So, after a month of near-eclipse (wedding-related, to be fair), I’ve started to work on a new short story.

And, of course, I stopped halfway through and started researching planet-building. Right now, I’m onto my tenth webpage of research, and counting…

Josh Vogt interviews me for his “never have, never will” feature over at the Examiner. So if you want to know what I wouldn’t do to promote my book or the story I wish I’d written first, head over here.

Slowly waking up after a much-needed 12-hour night. Got tea and pain au chocolat, with which you can never go wrong.

Today, we’re going shopping for new casserole and pans (not exactly fascinating, but much-needed since our old ones have basically worn through).

Cooking experiments: demonstrated how to cook semi-polished rice (the package was French and suggested some horrendous things should be done to the rice; I made up an alternate method). Next up, brown rice!

-taught myself (not that there’s much involved) how to use VNI to input Vietnamese characters. Basically input numbers in addition to letters in order to add the diacritical marks (slightly non-intuitive, but I prefer numbers to the other method, which involves inputting extra letters/symbols). OK, that’s this week’s distraction, now I have no excuse to go back to my lessons…

-tried a slightly different phở recipe (see, I can use VNI *grin*). H was happy; I, less so. I think using the vegetarian broth as the basis for a phở bò is a bad idea. Yes, kind of obvious, when you think about it. We have veggie broth at home because it’s more versatile, but it’s just not phở without the meat broth… (beef, in this case. Never was a fan of the chicken version). Let’s see if I can find some without MSG… (yes, I could make my own beef broth, but I seldom have 3 hours to cook broth, so shortcuts are nice).

-also, am self-teaching myself Python, on the H’s recommendation that it’s a more versatile language than bash scripting, which is what I used before. I can see his point: it’s more practical, more readable, and it’s portable, which is darn handy. Go Python.

A small reminder that you can now order The Immersion Book of SF, which contains my short story “Father’s Last Ride” as well as awesome fiction from the likes of Tanith Lee and Lavie Tidhar. Should be shipping everywhere now. I have a shiny copy somewhere, which I still need to read.

And you can also get Dark Futures, Jason Sizemore’s anthology of dark dystopias, which includes my Chinese SF horror “Father’s Flesh, Mother’s Blood” as well as contributions by Jennifer Pelland and Ekaterina Sedia.

Meanwhile, I’m told Interzone 230 (which contains “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”, aka the Aztec multi-POV steampunk) has shipped. There’s a comment thread over there, if you’re interested (and have got a copy. I’m still at the “waiting impatiently” stage).