Very literally, in this case….
My Aztec steampunk weird alt-hist “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders” has sold to Interzone (with mechanical creepy man, imprisoned god, blood magic, and a mining town in the Old West). Many thanks to the VD6 crew, Nancy Fulda, Stephen Gaskell, Sara Genge and Ralan Conley, for the crits that helped me fix the ending of this.

And I would also seem to have sold my Aztecs-in-space SF story “Shipbirth”, part of the Xuya continuity, to Asimov’s (do you detect a trend in story themes? :=) ). Many thanks to everyone who took a look at it on OWW: Allison Starkweather, Cécile Cristofari, Terra LeMay, L.K. Pinaire, Christine Lucas, and Ilan Lerman. And an extra dose of thanks to Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who read it in record time and helped me fix a very important plot point.

I will be going for a liedown and more novel brainstorming.

Have had a couple questions about my alt-history universe Xuya (where the Chinese, the US and the Aztecs share North America), I decided to take the plunge, and transcribe my notes into a more legible form. I figured that with three stories out (two in Interzone and one in this month’s Asimov’s, the universe had cemented well enough that people might want extra explanations.

So behold the brand new spiffy Xuya page: all you’ve ever wanted to know about Xuya (well, not quite yet, but it does have a few pointers about the chronology, where the stories fit in there, and a few items of general interest).
Enjoy!

BTW, since I’ve locked the comments on the page, this post here is as close as it’s getting to the official question thread–in the (unlikely[1]) event that you have any interrogations about Xuya-related stuff, ask in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer.

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[1] I’m a natural pessimist, and those are only short stories after all, with a small audience…

…slowly recovering from post-novel ennui. Showed Matthieu one story I wrote back in April, and wrote a zillion addresses on wedding invitations (my hand, it hurts). Also made some nice spring rolls involving salad, coriander and a variant of a cha siu/xa xíu (aka reddish BBQed pork). I’m starting to get the hang of this cooking thing.

Also worked on a Sekrit Project, which I should be allowed to make public soon.

Finally, look at this: the TOC for the July 2010 issue of Asimov’s, which includes my Xuya novelette “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”. I can haz pretty cover (with my name on it, w00t).

This is the bit where I’d go for a liedown were it not early morning here…

I’ve sold “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” to Asimov’s. It’s a novelette set in the Xuya universe (where China discovered America before Colombus, the same as “The Lost Xuyan Bride”, “Butterfly Falling at Dawn” and “Fleeing Tezcatlipoca”, not to mention novel Foreign Ghosts, currently with my agent). It focuses on the Aztecs in Greater Mexica, and the Jaguar Knights, elite spies and manipulators caught in the bloody aftermath of the civil war. Complete with blood sacrifices, crazy priests and hallucinogenic drugs.

The mind wanders, when one takes teonanácatl.

If she allowed herself to think, she’d smell bleach, mingling with the faint, rank smell of blood; she’d see the grooves of the cell, smeared with what might be blood or faeces.

She’d remember–the pain insinuating itself into the marrow of her bones, until it, too, becomes a dull thing, a matter of habit–she’d remember dragging herself upwards when dawn filters through the slit-windows: too tired and wan to offer her blood to Tonatiuh the sun, whispering a prayer that ends up sounding more and more like an apology.

Wrote the first draft of this in Brittany last summer (somewhat amusingly, the previous sale I made to Asimov’s, “The Wind-Blown Man”, was also written in Brittany, so there’s clearly something in the air here). I workshopped this on OWW, where it got very helpful crits from Christine Lucas (silverwerecat), Rachel Gold and Swapna Kishore.

If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the flat, jumping up and down and making incoherent noises.

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…

The BF has just finished reading Foreign Ghosts, aka the Xuya novel, in between two rounds of writing summaries for his PhD dissertation (it’s like synopses: no one agrees on what length they want).

Yay!

On the plus side, a lot of his comments are small, easy fixes; the book seems to hang together, and he loves the universe.

On the minus side, one of the characters made no sense to him, so I clearly need to do some motivation work. Also, he wants me to reorder scenes so that it’s a little less fragmented, ie one chapter per POV rather than 2-3 scenes per chapter in strict chronological order.

Hum, good thing I’ve got Scrivener if I decide to go down this road.

(I haven’t decided yet how I’m going to tackle his comments–still at the processing phase, plus at the “trying to finish short story draft” phase)

So, I’ve finished the editing pass on Foreign Ghosts, which took it from first draft with a beginning and an ending to first draft I could lob off to poor Matthieu. And I’ve been thinking a lot about Xuya, my alternate-history universe, and why I write alternate history.

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