So…
Locus just released its 2015 Recommended Reading list, and The House of Shattered Wings is on there, under Best Fantasy Novel. Which is, er, kind of amazing.
(equally amazing is that I also have “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” under Best Novella, “In Blue Lily’s Wake” and “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” under Best Short Story. That list also has a lot of my friends–congrats to everyone on it!)

And here’s some quotes from the Locus summation of 2015:

“[a novel] which featured some of the most striking and memorable fantasy settings of the year, Aliette de Bodard’s House of Shattered Wings, with its ruined Paris haunted by fallen angels” Gary K Wolfe

“Aliette de Bodard delivered her best novel to date, with The House of Shattered Wings. I’m not usually one for tales of fallen angels, but this story of Europe in ruins, where Lucifer and his cohort have taken up residence in Paris was a page-turner and deserves to stand among the fantasies of the year.” Jonathan Strahan

“I (…) had fun spotting Parisian landmarks and learning about Vietnamese dragon lore in Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings.” Cheryl Morgan

“Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings (Roc) reimagined Paris after a devastating war, as seen from several different vantage points in society. It’s not de Bodard’s first novel, but it is surely the one that will propel her to the recognition she deserves.” Graham Sleight

“The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard is a novel I’d like to call epic, though its particular subgenre is impossible to pin down. Set in a Paris that never was – decayed from the aftermath of a great and terrible war, possessed of a baroque, fin-de-siècle air – ruled by fallen angels and magicians, it’s a novel of secrets and murder, outsiders and alchemists, power and change. Difficult to describe, but fantastic to read. Although a sequel is alleged to be forthcoming, it stands alone – which always makes for a pleasant change.” Liz Bourke

The Locus Poll and Survey for 2015 is also open–come and check it out and vote for your favourite fiction of the year (I’m going to be on auto-repeat, but don’t hesitate to vote in that kind of poll even if you don’t think you’ve read enough in the field this year: everybody’s votes count, and “I’m not voting because I’m not well-read enough” is a very common way people, especially those from non-dominant cultures, exclude themselves)

So, this was the year of cooking courses: I got a pack of two for my birthday plus Christmas, and I picked two things which I’ve always wanted to get some hands-on instruction on. The first was pizza making, and the second was dim sum.

The H was the one who pointed out the pizza making course to me: it’s a group thing organised by l’Atelier des Sens, which has a range of cooking courses that go from making your own bread to detailed, week-long courses for people who want to become chefs or simply terrific home cooks. The course itself was near Les Halles, which is handily located in the centre of Paris, in a large, kitchen with a huge work counter (fortunately, because 12 of us mixing pizza dough at the same time got a bit chaotic). We covered pizza dough (flour, yeast, kneading), and pizza toppings, and made different combinations that we ended up eating afterwards. Yum.

It’s, of course, hopeless to hope to cover the full range of dim sum making in a single 3-hour course, so I went with Margot Zhang’s course on making bao (buns which came down to Vietnam in a slightly different, fluffier version, bánh bao). She does group courses (4 people at a time), but alas, I couldn’t make it to one and ended up on a one-on-one course. Margot is awesome and very knowledgeable, and covered everything from making the dough to folding the pleats neatly. My first attempts were disasters. The picture you see above is my second batch, by which point she’d showed me an alternative way to fold the dough (on the counter as opposed to freeform in the air, and with a slight change of guiding hands).

The resulting dough is… interesting: bánh bao is made, insofar as I can tell, from a different flour (Hong Kong flour, which is very white) and possibly includes a bit of rice flour and some milk, so I was expecting something a little more fluffy than I actually got. But they tasted divine (the H confirms ^-^).

The cooking classes are both, as you can guess, very different beasts. I liked the Ateliers des Sens one a lot–very clearly pro and a smoothly oiled machine, my only comment is that there were 12 of us in the room which was a little too many I think? In a “really big group” thing like this I feel like you don’t really get a chance to handle everything. But the chef’s great and always really helpful, and it’s really geared towards making do with what you have in your kitchen without building a stone oven (which, let’s face it, not many of us will do).

The Margot Zhang course is a one-on-one, and as such it’s a very different beast: I got to do everything, and to see where I was failing–my pleating technique, for instance, improved markedly when I had to pleat 15 baos in a row! You naturally get more instructor time in a situation like this. And it ended up aimed specifically at me: namely, some cooking experience, some experience handling bread/wheat dough, and a reasonable familiarity with the ingredients we were using (sesame oil and rice wine). The price range, of course, isn’t the same, though due to Margot’s prices being more than reasonable, both this and the pizza making class ended up in the same hourly rate ballpark (it was 75 euros for 3 hours, and I ended up bringing 10 big buns of pork-filled goodness home in addition to the recipe).

Margot has just started doing cooking classes full time instead of her work teaching Chinese, and if you’re looking for that extra oomph to your cooking I would highly recommend you give her a look . She also does beginners classes, but I was obviously a little bit less interested in that :p

I will be a Guest of Honour at the 2016 Eastercon in Manchester, along with Ian McDonald, Sarah Pinborough and David L Clements.

More details here!

My schedule is here, including Saturday’s freestyle cooking demo *gulp*

Just a quick post to let you know I’ve updated the book pages for Obsidian and Blood with all the new ebook links: Servant of the Underworld, Harbinger of the Storm, and Master of the House of Darts.

Or you can follow these:

Servant of the Underworld:

Harbinger of the Storm:

Master of the House of Darts:

(cover design and art: Melanie Ujimori/Jonathon Dalton. Art direction: Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein)

Just a quick extra word: on Kobo (and on a bunch of other retailers), the Obsidian and Blood omnibus and the other Angry Robot editions (with the old covers) still show up for sale. I’d be all in favour if there hadn’t been a snafu: these editions are officially out of print. We’re still sorting that out, but in the meantime I’d be really grateful if you would take a look at the new editions? Thanks!

-My esssay “Pushing Back Against the Wall” is up, over at Lightspeed Magazine’s kickstarter for funding their special issue of “POC Destroy SF!” (edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Kristine Ong Muslim).

I am told I shouldn’t speak of this, because it makes me angry and unpleasant and unattractive, and is that what I really want to be, as an author?

But I have to speak up, lest I choke.
Read more.

-A Fantastical Librarian reviews The House of Shattered Wings

I loved The House of Shattered Wings. I found it immersive, delicious, and full of beautiful visuals. Definitely one I recommend.

-James Nicoll reviews Harbinger of the Storm (with new spiffy cover!)

Acatl’s problem is working out which of the dozens of competing schemes is causing the current crisis.

(I love this quote. It’s like my idea of court plotting in a nutshell :p)

And tonight I’m off to Margot Zhang’s bao class, aka finally mastering the art of little fluffy buns (thanks to the H and his Xmas present of a cookery class!)

Been remiss in posting these, but very happy to reveal the new look for Obsidian and Blood. The ebooks will be sold through JABberwocky: they’re currently trickling their way through the system (I spotted them at Amazon and Kobo, but other retailers don’t yet have them). Will update when I have more info!

Aren’t these gorgeous? The design is by Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein (art direction), Melanie Ujimori & Jonathon Dalton (art and cover design). Also, creepy owls FTW!

He, what would you know, it’s January again (aka, wow, where did all the time go, and arggggggg I am so late on things!). The main thing I published in 2015 was my novel (I know, kind of hard to miss :p), The House of Shattered Wings, aka magical intrigues, deadly creatures and elusive wonders in a decadent turn-of-the-century Paris ravaged by a magical war.

It won a British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel, as well as being on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2015. It also got starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly and Library Journal. It’s eligible for the Hugos.

I can’t provide a copy of the complete text, but I have put together a short sampler of the first three chapters: bits and pieces of this have appeared online, but this is the first time that you can actually read all of it (I think? The kindle sampler is shorter than this, ending mid-chapter two). You can download it here in EPUB, MOBI, or PDF (if you need DOC or RTF, drop me a line via the contact form, and I’ll be quite happy to provide a copy. I just am not a big fan of putting Word formats online–too easy to modify them by mistake…).

If you came here wanting whole stories (which I can understand!), I do have a Xuya short story online, “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight”, which won a British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Short Fiction, and  is at Clarkesworld (and is getting reprinted in Dozois’s Year’s Best). You can also download EPUB or MOBI.

And if anyone is interested and a Hugo or Nebula voter, contact me and I’d be quite happy to email you a copy of my novella “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls”, which appeared in Asimov’s Oct/Nov and is now a tad hard to find.

And now for the bulk of this, aka, the stuff that I read from 2015 and want to recommend. (this list is a slightly modified and expanded version of one I wrote for the Book Smugglers. I would urge you to go read it: these recs for 2015 are more up to date, but the Book Smugglers post also has my 2016 TBR pile, and it really looks awesome. I made a slight headstart on said TBR pile thanks to friends, and so far I haven’t been disappointed!).

Short stories
“Variations on an Apple”, Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, October). It’s no secret that I love Yoon Ha Lee’s stuff, and this clever retelling of the Trojan war is no exception. Tackles mathematics, desire, and the consequences of decisions that aren’t always wisely made. Also, Illium and Helen are both awesome in different ways.

“Milagroso”, Isabel Yap (Tor.com, August). In a future where food is grown in labs and always perfect, there is still room for the miracles of saints… By turns exuberant and heartbreaking, this is a story of what we take for granted, how we seek to protect our children, and the price we pay.

“The Star Maiden”, Rokshani Chokshi. Tala’s grandmother used to be a star maiden, annd tells her granddaughter stories of longing for the sky. But Tala grows up and starts questioning the veracity of the story–and becomes ashamed of her grandmother’s oddness. There’s nothing really surprising in this one, but it’s very very well done (as in I broke down and cried at the end), and encapsulates the heartache of growing up.

“The Monkey House”, Tade Thompson (Omenana, March). The narrator returns to work after a breakdown–and finds that everything is *almost* normal. I love the sense of creeping unease of this one, the feeling that everything looks almost quite right (and that 1% “not right” that is downright unsettling). I’m not usually much of a reader for horror or dark, but this is perfect.

“If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler”, by Xia Jia (Clarkesworld, Nov). I love Xia Jia’s stuff, and this short story about a poet and her legacy–and how people handle it in the age of the internet and social media–is lovely and sharp.

“City of Salt”, Arkady Martine, (Strange Horizons, March). This one has stuck around in my head since I read it: the story of a man who comes back to a deserted city, to face the woman he once knew and what she has become… Poetic and elegiac in all the best ways.

Continue reading →

First off: happy new year everyone! Hope those who celebrated had a great holiday season. I’m wrapping up mine (and arg so late on ALL THE THINGS).

Am pleased to announce that my novel The House of Shattered Wings and my short story “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” have both been longlisted for the BSFA Award. Many thanks to those who nominated them, and here’s a link to the ballot if you feel like voting some more 🙂

Also, congratulations to a lot of friends I see on the longlist. 2015 was a great year for fiction and the company is an honour.

(work continues apace on The House of Binding Thorns aka “that %%% sequel”. Thanks to a very sympathetic husband and a bad habit of getting up one hour ahead of everyone in the house, I hammered down a lot of words on it. Here’s hoping some of them stay in °_°)

So, things I did this year, in no particular order:
-Published my first hardback! The House of Shattered Wings, my post-magical-war Paris dystopia with Fallen angels, Vietnamese mythical beings and entirely too many dead bodies, was published in the US by Roc and in the UK by Gollancz. Reviews were mostly good (yes, really nervous author here). It received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers’ Weekly and a “Top Pick” from RT Book Reviews, made Best of the Year on SFF World’s list.  You can find more info and quotes etc. here.

Even more haunting following recent events, de Bodard’s atmospheric fantasy is set in a fractured version of our own world, where a magical war has left a ruined Paris living under the rule of fallen angels. De Bodard spices her plot with a dash of mystery, which pulled me through her exquisitely constructed and darkly mesmerising decaying urban landscape.

-For people wondering: yes, there is a sequel to The House of Shattered Wings that will (hopefully!) tie up some of the loose ends left in HoSW (though the book is very largely self-contained). It’s called The House of Binding Thorns, it’s focused on the House of Hawthorn (and on a spoilery bit of Paris), and I’m working on it right now (and pulling my hair out :p)
-Took my first stab at cover design for self-pub and kind of, er, decided I wasn’t cut out for this :p But the story in question (a fluffy tie-in to House of Shattered Wings, “Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship”, is available on amazon and other retailers).
-Got the rights back to my Aztec noir fantasies Obsidian and Blood, ordered some new fabulous covers from Jonathon Dalton and Melanie Ujimori (thanks to Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein). Release to come–we’re hoping to get them up before the holidays but it might be a little too late for that…
-Published a bunch of short fiction stuff, and a novella set in the Xuya universe, “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” (which I’m very pleased will be reprinted in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best next year).
-Learnt to bake bread! (English muffins FTW. So good).
-Made a first pass at my annual recs post, which will be published over at the Book Smugglers. Lots and lots of novels this time around, because I didn’t have much time for reading short fiction (I read short fiction at home, and novels on the commute, that’s why)
-Lost a Nebula and two Locus Awards. I can live with that 🙂
– A couple of my blog posts went viral (aka 0_0). “The Stories I Wanted to Read” is about me as a child (and why Andre Norton’s “Year of the Unicorn” is the best thing ever). And “On Colonialism, Evil Empires and Oppressive Systems”, my rant about how colonialism is depicted in SFF, also got some wide circulation (thanks to the Tor.com reprint!)
-And hum, that’s it mostly? I’m holing up with family for the holidays, and here’s to next year’s adventures! (I would also like to thank everyone who was reading, signal boosting and generally supporting me and my writing this year, because it’s not been the easiest–thank you toddler *sigh*)

Oh, also! It’s Christmas soon, so here’s a little The House of Shattered Wings gift. Head on over to Ghostwords (and check out all the other fun snippets while you’re at it). This is a snippet from The House of Binding Thorns–it’s not going to be in the actual book (and I’m still writing actual book so it’s not canon yet, either), but it’s set in the interval between the ending of The House of Shattered Wings and the new one. Featuring everyone’s favorite sarcastic Fallen.

So… I discovered about Japanese Knife Company online, and also that they ran knife sharpening classes. Which was kind of handy, as colleagues gave me a set of Kai Seki Magoruku knives about six years ago, and that I’ve not been a pro at keeping them maintained… The shop is in the 12e, so not exactly next door to me, but it was a great excuse for a (lengthy) expedition for a two-hour class that was well worth the time (though it was actually a lot more time than that–many thanks are due to the H who did the snakelet wrangling).

The shop itself is kind of a Mecca for Japanese knife lovers–they sell everything from entry-level (around 100 euros) to, er, much much more expensive. They also sharpen knives: in fact, while I was there several people (mostly professionals, that I could see) dropped their knives off and came in to buy supplies, and they sharpen both Japanese and Western knives. In fact, if I was in the market for a knife sharpener they’d probably be among my first choices.

What follows are my notes, which are kind of fragmentary because I wasn’t actually taking notes, rather trying to follow along 🙂 No guarantees whatsoever, this is what I understood and I’m not a pro (and it’s also knife sharpening 101–you can find a better class of advice here at Serious Eats).

The class started with an intro course on the various kinds of steel: stainless steel is what most Western knives are made of, and is resistant to corrosion, flexible and middling solid–mostly it doesn’t hold an edge well, which means you have to sharpen aggressively and often. Carbon steel is not as flexible but holds an edge better: the drawback is that the more carbon you put in a blade, the more fragile it becomes. Also, it’s more susceptible to corroding, which means that you usually add some other metal like chromium or tungsten so that your blade doesn’t rust at the mere sight of water. Some bright souls came up with the idea of laminated steel, which is sandwiching a hard steel blade (for the edge) between two layers of softer steel: a combination of a good edge, an easy to sharpen blade (because of the soft steel), and something that won’t actually chip *too* often on you. From there on, you climb into more worked steels: Damascus Japanese blades are made with several of these layers (anywhere from 30 up) and are a. more expensive b. more durable.
(then it gets more technical, and I confess I got a little lost, especially as most other participants were enthusiasts about steel–I felt very much like a hobbyist who’d wandered in by error at some points 🙂 Also, it will not surprise you that I was the only woman on that course, which mostly became a problem because the counter was very high and I had to stand on a stool to make sure I got the right height for sharpening)

Sharpening stones have different grits: the lower the grit the coarser the stone. 120 is what you use for a stainless steel, and the more carbon there is your blade the higher you need. There’s generally two (or more) passes necessary: you go from a coarse grit to a finer grit, so for instance the knife we sharpened was stainless steel and we had a 120/1000 stone; a 3000 stone will have close to zero effect on a blade that’s low on carbon, but a 6000/8000 stone might well be all you need to keep a Damascus knife sharp .The coarser the stone, the more metal it shaves off from your blade, which of course is bad for the longevity of high-carbon blades. The whetstones are waterstones, which means you have to moisten them with water (how depends on manufacturer’s instructions, the ones we had had to be completely immersed), and then keep wetting them to make sure your knife doesn’t bite into them (the coarser your stone, the more often you have to sprinkle water on top of it). You also have to semi-hemi regularly flatten them (he did this with a diamond stone in the shop, but advised us to use a ceramic tile and lots of water at home as it was cheaper–it won’t work on 120 stones, but anything from 1000 upwards can be maintained flat with this method).

The key to having a sharp knife is having a constant angle along the length of the blade–it’s not always the same angle (some knives are 70°/30° for instance), and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the original angle the knife was given (though if you deviate too much from it you’re basically reshaping a knife, which isn’t recommended). Japanese knives are usually and roughly a 15° bevel, but you can have 16/17/18 as long as you keep that angle. Western knives are more U-shaped: the angle is closer to 22.5°.

We then moved on to practice, basic gestures etc., which is where, uh. I discovered that basically I can’t keep a constant angle when moving a knife over a whetstone. Remember the bit about the angle being key? Yeah. Turns out I’m not very good at it. “abysmal” would be a better description of what I can do, in fact. They finally took pity on me and gave me a guide, which isn’t 100% recommended but–for me–made all the difference between having a disastrous blade and something that was semi-hemi-correct.

End result is also that our knives were in a rather disastrous state due to neglect: the blades were chipped in multiple places and basically I’m going to have to redo them from scratch. It also turns out they’re this kind of weird limbo thing where the steel isn’t very much enriched in carbon, making them closer to a Western knife–but shaped like Japanese knives. Go figure. Anyway, I walked out of there with a coarse stone, the guide (which they were kind enough to leave to me), and instructions on how to get them up to reasonable shape.

I. Hum. Also got a laminated-steel nakiri because it was so pretty. Sorry not sorry.

(and would I recommend the class? Definitely if you want to get the basics on knife sharpening on water stones, and not only for Japanese knives. It’s very hands-on, they’re super nice even to a total novice like me, and I hope I can put some of that into practice… Though you might curse me afterwards, as their knives are so pretty. So so pretty. They have several locations in London as well, though their sharpening classes are an order of magnitude more expensive than what I paid for this one).