-Jim C. Hines blogs on sexual harrassment here, here and here

-Broad Universe publishes stats on diversity in genre

-The World SF blog Tuesday fiction is “City of Silence” by Ma Boyong (translated by Ken Liu): part 1, part 2. Incidentally, the blog is also looking for fiction they could showcase–preferably set outside the US/UK, or by authors from outside the US/UK (note that this overlaps with, but is not *quite* the same thing as fiction by US/UK PoCs). No payment, unfortunately–everyone’s a volunteer and the website runs on a shoestring, but you’d be contributing to a worthy cause; and they take reprints and stories that have been hard-pressed to find a home elsewhere.

First off–hats off to Nathan McKnight, who has produced an Obsidian and Blood glossary for the Kindle, which you can use to call up characters’ names and special meanings. If you’ve always wanted to dip into the books but found the names too troublesome, the glossary is your friend! Download it here.

Oh, and, now that AR has officially announced it: there will be an Obsidian and Blood omnibus! Called Obsidian and Blood, it will gather all three books in one handy paperback (or ebook), and will be released in July 2012. More details here (not much for the moment other than ISBNs, but there should be some cover art at some point).

Costs £13 or $16, depending on whether you’re in the US or UK, and £8 as an ebook, about or less than the price of two volumes–so, if you’ve got fewer than 2 Obsidian and Blood books and want a complete set in a nice package, you know where to head…

Meanwhile, if anyone’s read Master of the House of Darts and wants to post a few reviews on amazon, I’d be very grateful, ’cause I can’t say the book’s getting a lot of attention at the moment…

Finished new draft of short story, “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”. In many, many ways, a horrible story, dealing with languages, the aftermath of revolutions, and colonialism; and a very painful one to write. It’s funny how my process has evolved: I used not to care so much about the contents of my stories, now I feel like I’m being much more ambitious in what I expect of them (complex background, deep characters, and a passable plot); and I end up writing stuff that feels like a failure–because I can never quite convey all that I wanted to in the allotted space…

Though I think that I’ve finally mastered the art of the short scene: before, I wanted scenes to be a complete unit–I would write a scene that held the entirety of a conversation between two characters, for instance, instead of excerpting the conversation. Now I’ve grown ruthless, and I can keep a story like this one under 6k words–not quite effortlessly, but close.

Anyway, a short editing pass is in order, and then I’ll post it up on OWW for feedback before shipping it off. I have a sinking feeling it’s a dismal failure…
(also, this is the last f%%%ing time I write a story that depends on four linked pseudo-Chinese poems, because those are a pain to write. Especially when they have to include planets, and spaceships, and space stations…)

Snippet:

I grieve to think of the stars
Our ancestors our gods
Scattered like hairpin wounds
Along the River of Heaven
So tell me
Is it fitting that I spend my days here
A guest in those dark, forlorn halls?

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This is the first poem Xu Anshi gave into our keeping; the first memory she shared with us for safekeeping. It is the first one that she composed in High Mheng–which had been and remains a debased language, a blend between that of the San-tay foreigners, and that of the Mheng, Anshi’s own people.

What about you? How has your process changed? Do you feel that as time passes, you can tell more and more complex stories? Do they increasingly feel like failures, or is that just me?

And in the midst of various upheavals, I’ve been really remiss in not posting those, but there are a couple of anthologies which include my fiction in them:

-Transtories, edited by Colin Harvey, contains my short pseudo-Chinese story “The Axle of Heaven”. It was the last project Colin worked on before his death, and it’s got a stellar lineup, including Lawrence M. Schoen and Joanna Hall. Well worth a look, whether you knew Colin or not.

-Deb Hoag’s Women Writing the Weird, published by Dog Horn Publishing, contains my French fantasy “Ys”, as well as stories by Eugie Foster and Sara Genge. Lots of neat fiction, but it’s always nice to be showcased.

-And StarShipSofa Stories Vol.3 contains my “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”, amidst a lineup that includes Tad Williams, Joe Haldeman and Peter Watts (*gulp*). You can see the art by Mark Zug here on Google+.

-The World SF blog has relaunched as a brand-new website, and merged operations with The Portal to provide short fiction reviews. I signed up as article writer, and I hope to do a series on Franco-Belgian comics, much like I did for Yoko Tsuno. Will keep you posted as I write They’re running fiction on Tuesdays, the most recent being “Dancing Together Under Polarised Skies” by Milena Benini (do note that the fiction has been professionally translated–the poor vocabulary and grammar are deliberate). Also, couple of interviews, one with Sayuri Ueda (author of The Cage of Zeus published by Haikasoru), and one with Hannu Rajaniemi (who needs no presentation–if you feel you need one, read the awesome Quantum Thief).
-Over at Kaaron Warren’s blog, I speak of Master of the House of Darts–using history as inspiration, and how to let your characters have at each other (which should always be your top priority )
-Stomping On Yeti selects his pick of books for October–and I’m more than a little flabberghasted to find out that Master of the House of Darts ties with David Anthony Durham’s The Sacred Band for release of the month. Er, wow?

In other news, finished a short story (which ended up being called “Breath of the Nine Dragons”), about a Japanese-funded project in the Me Kong delta–which probably has the dubious honour of mangling both the Vietnamese and the Japanese culture in the same 7000 words…
And got my UPS package (a self-printed cookbook from Lulu, which has already started falling apart. As you might guess, I wouldn’t advise using Lulu for hardcovers, or maybe I’ve been very unlucky in my particular copy…)
Next up: novella revisions, and some desultory research into the history of Paris for a novel project.

OK, slowly crawling back into some semblance of normal life (alas, the boxes are still winning the fight in our appartment, and I’m now officially behind on everything). But here’s a handful of things to keep you busy while I’m writing:
-First off, here are the first three chapters of Master of the House of Darts:

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Aka, Teomitl finally gets a chance to be all official and formal, Neutemoc makes a much-awaited comeback. Oh, and a warrior dies of a curse.
-The Best of BCS Year Two is now out, featuring stories by Marie Brennan, Saladin Ahmed, Yoon Ha Lee and more fabulous authors. And my own “Memories in Bronze, Feathers and Blood”. Scott H. Andrews does a tremendous job of publishing vivid and evocative fantasy, and if you haven’t already checked out BCS, this is a tremendous way to dip into the best of what the magazine has to offer. There are some really awesome stories here, and I put one of them (Kris Millering’s “The Isthmus Variation”) on pretty much every ballot I had for the year 2010.
-you can also get The Immersion Book of Steampunk, which also has “Memories…”, as well as stories by Tanith Lee, Paul di Filippo, Lavie Tidhar, and other cool writers. (and yay, I share another TOC with Tanith Lee. Nope, it never gets old…)

-StarShipSofa has put up their issue 200, which includes a reading of “The Jaguar House in Shadow” (thanks to Morag Edward). Listen to it here.

-And you can also get The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction, which includes “The Shipmaker” (and, uh, has me in great company) here, or via amazon. This includes the awesome “Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain”, which was among my favourite stories last year.

-Not audio fiction, but if you happen to speak Hungarian, here is “A Jaguár Háza, árnyékban”, the translation of “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” in Hungarian. Many thanks to Csilla Kleinheincz!

Electric Velocipede are revamping their website to prepare for their launch as a e-zine. In the runup to that, they’re republishing fiction from their previous issues online. Among which is “The Dragon’s Tears”. Probably the best description of this is that I wrote as a homage to the Chinese fairytales I read when I was a child–I wasn’t very up to date on historical research then, but I think I nailed the feeling I got when I was six or seven, and immersed in a big fat book of wonderful stories with dragons, immortal carpenters, and crabby Iron-Crutch Li, where everything and everyone could turn out to be magical (and possibly deadly. That’s part of the deal with magical people).
Also, as Anne S. Zanoni points out, she sent me one of the sweetest mails ever after she proofread this–I’m a big Patricia McKillip fan, so being compared to her while I still felt like a raw newbie was, well, pretty magical…

Huan Ho sealed the last window, leaving only a crack in the shutter. Tonight, he thought, his eye on the empty streets, the neighbours’ barred shutters. Tonight he had to pass the door on the hill, or let the sickness take his mother.

Read more here, and do check out the rest of the cool stuff while you’re there.

In other, writing-related news: Kathleen Bellamy let me know that my story “Horus Ascending” was going to be part of the forthcoming IGMS anthology. Full TOC here, and some pretty awesome company.

So, I guess it’s official now: my story “Prayers of Forges and Furnaces” will be in Sean Wallace’s Mammoth Book of Steampunk. Kind of hard to describe that one–sort of Aztec meets the Wild West (I’ve always pictured it in some sort of post-Apocalyptic Mexico, in the northern deserts). It’s got the requisite mine, train network, and the lonely gunslinger (well, OK, not quite what you think, on any of those things). And robots, too, because they always make stories more fun! Set in the same universe as “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”.

Many many thanks to Marshall Payne and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz for helping me with this one. I’ve always been absurdly fond of this story, and I’m glad to see it find a good home.

Snippet:

The stranger came at dawn, walking out of the barren land like a mirage–gradually shimmering into existence beside the bronze line of the rails: a wide-brimmed hat, a long cloak, the glint that might have been a rifle or an obsidian-studded sword.

Xochipil, who had been scavenging for tech at the mouth of Mictlan’s Well, caught that glint in her eyes–and stopped, watching the stranger approach, a growing hollow in her stomach. Beneath her were the vibrations of the Well, like a calm, steady heartbeat running through the ground: the voice of the rails that coiled around the shaft of the Well, bearing their burden of copper and bronze ever downwards.

(and wow, will you look at that awesome TOC!)