Sorry for the radio silence, I wish I could say the week has been productive, but mostly I’ve been going on too little sleep, with very little coherence as a result…

To tide you over into the weekend, have an online story: “The Heartless Light of Stars” over at Daily Science Fiction, aka the Sài Gòn story, and last of my contribution to the Numbers Quartet (but there’ll still be Nebula Award nominee Nancy Fulda’s awesome “Godshift” to round off the sequence).

Meanwhile, I’ll be off to brainstorm more Jade in Chains, which has morphed into Thick Waters considering the way the story is developping (yeah, the whole “blood is thicker than water” thing, and a few other clever allusions in there. I’m going to need to research the history of the Seine a bit). It’s occurred to me, reading stuff over the week (two of Kameron Hurley’s awesome posts on Gender Equality, in addition to her novel God’s War, which messes with your head in all the right way, and one from Requires Only That You Hate on female strength in popular UF series), that one of the reasons I’m having trouble with this book is that I’m trying to fit in a typical UF narrative with, er, someone that’s not best suited to it? My MC’s main reaction to anything is unlikely to be ass-kicking, and she’s not very much the lonely vigilante type either. It occurs to me I need a new plot, or a new MC. Or both…