Wow, that was fast. Courtesy of Andy Cox and the Interzone editorial team, you can now find “The Shipmaker” online, over at the TTA press website. Do feel free to come back here and comment on it after you’ve read it–any and all feedback appreciated.

(while you’re at it, you can read another shortlisted story, Nina Allan’s “Flying in the Face of God”, which is definitely worth spending some time with)

I swear there will be actual content on this blog soon, and not shameless self-promotion–but for that, my %%% fever is going to have to come down (`tis the season to be sick, apparently. 39°C and counting…)

For those who might be interested: my novelette “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, first published in Asimov’s, July 2010, is now available for free on my website for your reading pleasure. (and, of course, if you happen to be in the right fraction of the population, it’s eligible for the Hugos/Nebulas/Locus Awards/Asimov’s Awards etc.).

Jason Sanford listed it as one of the three best novelettes in Asimov’s for 2010; so did Richard Horton; and it’s already received at least one Nebula nomination.

Go here to read it, and don’t hesitate to pop back here and tell me what you thought!

Since it seems to be the custom this time of the year… may I point out that:

-my novelette “The Jaguar House in Shadow” (Asimov’s, July 2010 issue) is currently eligible for the Hugos, Nebulas and BSFA. It’s in the SFWA forums for those who want to download it, and also online on my website.

-my short story “The Shipmaker” (Interzone, Nov/Dec 2010 issue) is eligible for the Hugos Awards, and for the BSFA awards (and has received at least one nomination already). Likewise, quite happy to email it to voters.

-for those with more time on their hands, my novel Servant of the Underworld is eligible for the Hugos, Nebulas and BSFA awards (and the email offer still stands). It’s also in the SFWA forums.

-if you hate my guts and/or didn’t feel my stories were great (fair enough), don’t forget to still read and vote. As I understand it, a lot of awards suffer from too few potential voters actually casting their votes, leading to the loudest people winning (Cheryl Morgan had a fascinating article about how a lot of people, especially women, abstained by saying they hadn’t read enough in the voting year; and how they were then drowned out by people who hadn’t read enough either but who voted anyway). So–go forth and nominate!

EDIT: just realised “The Shipmaker” is also eligible for a Hugo, if you feel so inclined.

So… in 2010, I published 9 short stories, 6 novelettes (one in collaboration with the inestimable Gareth L. Powell), and 1 novel.

I don’t keep as much track of my writing as I used to, which is really bad, but I wrote the following:
–Shipbirth (novelette)
–Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders (short story)
–Exodus Tides (short story)
–The Shipmaker (short story)
–Harbinger of the Storm (novel)
-Various non-fiction pieces, including “Science Fiction in Non-Western/Non-Anglophone Countries”, and three pieces for SFnovelists.
–Starsong (short story, currently in redraft)
-Nameless book 3 of Obsidian and Blood (56,000 words out of a projected 110,000)

A great year for sales and publications, but not so much for writing (see below for explanations of why). Hope to do better next year.

In non-drafting news, I got married (part of the reason for the non-productivity, since this was fun but a timesink for both my family and me); attended Eastercon and two Villa Diodati workshops (both in Germany), was translated into French and Romanian; and picked up for Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best SF.

Re-discovery of the day: speaking Spanish definitely helps when researching the Aztecs.
(was looking for information about an important city in the narration, and couldn’t find it on the English version of Wikipedia. The Spanish Wikipedia, however, has a detailed map of the centre of the city. With numbered temples and religious structures)

Aka what happens when I have too much time on my hands and am procrastinating on the writing of book 3.

Want to know more? There’s the first chapter up here.

Wanna preorder? Random house | Amazon US | UK | B&N | Book Depository

(brought to you by the department of shameless self-promotion)

Via Douglas Cohen:

Hi Everyone,

I’m about to ask for your help with something. As I noted when I announced that Shawna and I would be coming back, there are a number of submissions that were in various states of consideration when the magazine announced its closure. The only right thing to do was release these manuscripts from consideration. Now, the manuscripts I had that were going to be passed along to Shawna were discarded. In the interests of goodwill, I’ve subsequently contacted all of these authors and invited them to resubmit their manuscripts to me via email if they’re so inclined. (PLEASE NOTE: this is a special exception made just for them under the circumstances–we’re still at this time just accepting submissions via snail mail).

However, there are also quite a number of submissions that are sitting with Shawna, enough that I thought it would be a good idea to post this note. Here’s the thing: Shawna is going to have a lot of reading ahead of her as we build the magazine’s fiction inventory back up. Since I don’t have the manuscripts, it would drive me rather insane to hunt down all of the email addresses to all of the authors who have stories with Shawna. And it would be rather time consuming for Shawna to email all of these people to see if they’d like their manuscripts to still be considered. Then she’d also still have to wait to hear back, which eats up more time. I’d rather Shawna be able to use this time to read stories as we get the magazine caught up. Some folks have already told me they still want their stories to be considered. But I’d like to hear from the rest of you. If you had a story that was with Shawna and would still like it to be considered, please email me (slushmaster@gmail.com) and tell me the name of your story. It will save Shawna the trouble of reading a story that has since been withdrawn. It also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to let me know you’re officially withdrawing your story or that you’ve already sold it elsewhere.

So here’s where you come in, Internets. Blog about this. Tweet about this. Facebook about this. Help us out. As Picard would say, “Make it so.”

Thanks all.

ETA: Please don’t contact me regarding general slush submissions. Not that those stories aren’t important, but it will just create too much confusion. We’ll figure this out a little later, thanks.

Bit of a wash today, due to a truncated lunch break.

Wordcount: 10,500/100,000

Awesome title ideas: no further ones.

Body count: 1, 3 in progress. Oh, and 1 owl.

Best moment of the day: autopsy from really, really far away (just to be sure there’s no contagion)

Unexpected moment of the day: the warrior with a Zen outlook on things.

Missing research: have to check where the blazes Metztitlan is and what happened there–which would be easier, had I not lost the Hassig book.

Missing bits: we’re down to extra bits, with a little scene that I mean to use at the beginning of chapter 4.

A new French webzine has launched here: its inaugural issue has stories by Laurent Kloetzer and me (“Coeur Flétri”, the English-language translation of “Blighted Heart”). With extra texts by Xavier Mauméjean and Daryl Gregory, which you can get when you buy the whole issue (2.99 euros), or you can wait a bit for them to be posted.

Thanks to Seb Cevey, Florence Dolisi, and the whole Angle Mort team for the honour of opening up the shop 🙂

(and wow, it sure feels weird to be published in my native language…)

Also, for an encore, my second French translation will soon be published in Galaxies, courtesy of Pierre Gévart and Camille Thérion. It’s “Chute d’un Papillon au Point du Jour”, in which the astute will recognise the French version of the Xuya story “Butterfly Falling at Dawn”.

And for the encore of the encore, here’s the webpage of my French publisher, Eclipse.

It’s probably a testament to my general disorganisation that I’ve managed to confuse dates again: I was for some reason convinced that my Aztec noir novel, Servant of the Underworld, was scheduled for release Wednesday.

I just glanced at the date on my desk’s phone, and realised that, er, no, it was today. Cue panic and disorganisation.

I’m stuck at work, of course, with a zillion other things I should really be doing–but my first US book release is definitely worth a celebration. So feel free to party in my name, wherever you are. Virtual champagne and other delicacies appreciated from this side of the trenches 🙂

Extras, aka party over the blogosphere:

-Janice Hardy lends me some blog space to talk about outlines and novel planning.

-My French fantasy “Melanie”, originally published in Realms of Fantasy, is up on the World SF blog, as part of their new fiction feature. Look out for more great stories there!

-The book trailer, for those who want to get into the spirit of things:

-And, wow, amazon is already shipping it!!