Category: fiction

Quick heads-up: Fantasy Magazine Poll

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Fantasy Magazine is having an annual fiction poll (with prizes!) Go here for more information.

(my story “Golden Lilies” is eligible, should you feel like voting for it; but I also recommend Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s sweet and hilarious “Teaching a Pink Elephant to Ski”, Jean-Claude Dunyach’s atmospheric “Birds” “Offerings”, among many others).

“By Bargain and By Blood” in Hub

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My Lansara (aka pseudo-Hindu) short “By Bargain and by Blood” is in the 108th issue of Hub Magazine, courtesy of the awesome Lee Harris. Here’s a snippet from the beginning:

The blood empath came when my niece was eight.

I should have suspected something like that–but my sister Aname had told me little about the begetting of her daughter, little beyond her certainty that everything would turn out right in the end. Her death in childbirth had left my questions forever unanswered.
Nevertheless, when Aname told me about her child to come, she spoke of a bargain struck. And thus I should have known someone would come to honour it–that someone would walk through the rice paddies and the forests until he reached our jati, our small community isolated from the affairs of the world.

But, just as you know about death but do not think about it, so I did not think about him.

A mistake. Perhaps I would have been better prepared, had I thought of his coming.

Read more. (free download at the Hub website)

Many many thanks to Marshall Payne for his help on this one, as well as tlmorganfield, tchernabyelo, and everyone else who took a look at it on Liberty Hall (the crits date back to before I got smart enough to record who had critted my stuff for later thanks). And to Lee for prodding me into submitting it and accepting it for publication.

(and arg: D-4 until release date…à

First reviews of Servant of the Underworld

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Saw a couple of reviews trickle in during the holidays:
-Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic:

The novel fits most comfortably under the heading of “dark fantasy” with the tropes of contemporary urban fantasy – magic, sorcerers, powerful supernatural beings – called Gods here – lots of blood and violence, mostly urban setting – but is set in the Aztec Empire at its peak in the late 15th century.
The world-building is exquisite and we *believe* we are transported to the 15th century Tenotichtlan and together with the superb voice they formed the main reason I enjoyed this book so much… Highly recommended; Ms. de Bodard is a writer to watch.

-Nik Butler at Loudmouthman:

The mystical Aztec setting had every opportunity to become a tongue twisting and convoluted mish mash of vowels and golden thingies. Fortunately none of this occurs as day to day temple life and the duties of its citizens are described you can feel the richness of this bloody empire without once tripping over some unpronounceable God or location.
This is Book 1 in a trilogy and I am eager to get my hands on the next book when it is released.

*happy writer*

Linky linky

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And to start off 2010:
-you can read “In the Age of Iron and Ashes” in the newest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, along with a story by B. Gordon

They ran the girl down, in the grey light of dawn: a ring of copper-mailed horsemen, racing after her until her exhaustion finally felled her.
Yudhyana sat on his horse, shivering in the cold morning air, and thought of home—of the narrow, spice-filled streets of Rasamuri, and of his daughters shrieking with delight as he raced them in the courtyard. Anything to prevent him from focusing on what was happening.
Read more

-the French website Elbakin has launched its new web design, which is very clean and very handy to navigate. Among their latest stuff is an interview of Chris Evans, author of the Iron Elves series. (it’s also available in English for the non-bilingually oriented). They’re a portal for everything fantasy, but I really do love the fact that the new design makes the reviews very handy to read (I’m always interested in their take on things, and it’s quite informative to see how things come across in the French community–which I’m not really part of, with the whole writing-in-English thing).
-on that topic, I’m glad to see that Pyr has snapped up the US rights for Pierre Pevel’s The Cardinal’s Blades (swashbuckling à la Dumas, with dragons, translated by Bragelonne’s Tom Clegg). It’ll be interesting to see the reaction to that one.

Misc. self-promotion

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-My novelette “The Wind-Blown Man” (aka the Daoists in space story) is now available in the current issue of Asimov’s (along with “The Stone Wall Truth” by fellow Codexian and writer extraordinaire Caroline Yoachim, which has a tantalising snippet up on the website). And, er, I would appear to be on the cover, right there with the famous people…

Here’s a snippet:

On a clear day, you could almost see all the way into Heaven.

That was what Shinxie loved about White Horse Monastery: not the high, lacquered buildings scattered across the mountain’s face like the fingerprints of some huge Celestial; not the wide courtyards where students sat like statues, the metal of their second-skins gleaming in the sun; but the clear, crisp air of the heights, and the breathless quiet just before dawn, when she could see a flash of light overhead and imagine it to be the reflection of Penlai Station.

In those moments, she could almost imagine herself to be free.

Quite curious to see the reaction to this one, as it was a bit of a challenge: it’s got a completely different scientific history of the world, a weird melding of science and religion, and it’s entirely told from the point of view of insiders to the culture (unlike “The Lost Xuyan Bride”, where having a European as the viewpoint character made a number of things easier to deal with exposition-wise).

-Apex is organising a Story of the Year Award. Up for consideration is my Chinese post-apocalyptic story “After the Fire”, but there is a lot of fine stuff on display. My personal favourites were Peter M. Ball’s “To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament” and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s “59 Beads”. Both horrific in quite different ways. But go ahead, read and vote :=)

-Over at Strange Horizons, Andy Sawyer reviews The Apex Book of World SF, and says very nice things overall.

A (brief) weekend in London

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So… Took Friday off, and dragged the BF to London, in order to see the Aztec exhibition at the British Museum.

Friday was the obligatory trip down memory lane, specifically of South Kensington and our old house–which felt very weird, especially when walking in front of the French lycée. It was followed by a wonderful Indian dinner with Seb Cevey and Jane in Brick Lane. Tried a random Bengalese dish with mango, which turned out to be wonderfully sweet (and not really spicy).

Saturday morning was Forbidden Planet, aka the bookshop of doom. I had almost succeeded in emerging with only one book (an omnibus edition of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos books), when the BF suggested innocently, “Are you sure this is all you want?” Whereupon I stupidly turned around to stare at the “New Releases” rack, nabbed a signed copy of Elizabeth Bear‘s By the Mountain Bound, caught a glimpse of Daryl Gregory‘s new The Devil’s Alphabet, which made me decide to buy his Pandemonium
At least I only got three books. *whimper* (I also got the chance to see some of Angry Robot‘s most recent releases on the shelves, eye-catchingly placed).

In the afternoon, we went to meet up with VDer Stephen Gaskell and Elle for a look at the new “We Are Astronomers” show at the Greenwich Royal Observatory. The show itself didn’t feature ground-breaking science, but the presentation was awesome, with very cool illustrations and pseudo-3D effects that look pretty good when spread over the dome of a planetarium. Much, much fun. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have dinner with Steve, but it was a great afternoon all the same.

And finally, Sunday, aka the day for which we’d booked the exhibition tickets.

All I can say is “wow”. They had really gathered a lot of cool pieces. A particularly geeky moment included my bending over a glass case peering at a codex and going, “This can’t possibly be the real Codex Mendoza“. (it was). They had the Codex Duran too, the Codex Borbonicus, the Great Temple dedication stone (yes, I realise I’m gushing and that you probably don’t know what they are. It’s like having most of the major artefacts in a very small room. With only a handful of people so you can stare all you like). And I actually got to see a sculpture of an ahuizotl (a creepy water-creature that plays a big part in both my novels) as well as artefacts linked with Tizoc, an Aztec emperor who also features in the novels.

The items themselves were pretty nicely presented with plenty of context, even if, on multi-object displays, it wasn’t always obvious to see which tag corresponded to what. And while I loved the scaled model of the Tenochtitlan sacred precinct (which had me pointing, “Oh, look, Acatl’s temple is here, and this major location in the book is here”…), I could have done without the dramatic trails of blood on the temple staircases, especially since most of the temples didn’t actually have the sacrifice stone. It felt pretty cheap. But overall, it was an awesome exhibition, and I’m glad we got tickets and saw it before it finishes.

And then we hit the exit and the souvenir shop, and it was Forbidden Planet all over again.

In addition to lots of Aztec-themed souvenirs (the mug with the “Five Movement” glyph really had me hesitating), it also had books. Whole bookshelves of them. The BF was very understanding and let me browse for half an hour, writing down the names of authors and books that looked interesting. In the end, I stuck to three books again: the catalogue of the exhibition, which like all British Museum catalogues is amazingly detailed with lovely pictures and plenty of extra information (and a handy index), Karl Taube’s and Mary Miller’s The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, the closest to a dictionary of symbols I could find (with illustrations), and Michael E. Smith’s The Aztecs, which has interesting considerations on crafts and agriculture as well as daily life.

On the minus side, I got to drag the aforementioned souvenirs through the rest of the afternoon–which meant a Chinese noodle restaurant and part of the rest of the British Museum (the Enlightenment gallery, which chronicles the history of science in the 18th and 19th century, and an exhibition on Japanese culture throughout history). But it was well worth it.

And since I never got to see the Chinese ceramics, I’ve made a mental note to come back to the British Museum next year :=)

(I have some genre-related stuff to catch up to as well, but that will have to wait until I have defeated the Giant Pile of Laundry To Be Ironed)

Plugs

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Stuff I’ve enjoyed recently: Apex has an awesomely creepy story by fellow VDer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, “59 Beads”:

Air limousines floated by like ghosts in a night filled with a jangle of sounds. A mad juxtaposition of chords, wailing voices and crooned-out tunes mangled by the sound of honking horns, curses and the cries of the desperate filled the dark streets. Cordoba’s End, home to migrants and refugees.

After their parents succumbed to the rot, Pyn and Sienna wandered the streets of Cordoba. Together, they trekked the back side of the posh quarter. Ecstasy street, Ilona’s Oord, Sonatina’s Point, the words tasted as exotic and beautiful as the places themselves.

“You think we’ll ever be rich enough to live on High End?” Sienna asked.

“I don’t know,” Pyn said.

Read more over at Apex.

Rochita is also blogging over at Jeff Vandermeer’s blog on Writing from the Context of my Culture.

I’ve also been reading the anthology Federations by John Joseph Adams, which, while it contains many good stories, isn’t really my cup of tea–there are far too many stories focusing on the military or pseudo-military of the Federations to appeal to me. But I’ve found two gems so far, Yoon Ha Lee “Swanwatch”, about a poet exiled to a space station overlooking a black hole where people commit suicide, and tasked with turning their deaths into art. Very intriguing concept, and a sparse execution that works up to a punchy ending. In a, er, much different vein, “The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousness” by James Alan Gardner, is what would happen if Intergalactic civilisations developped a consciousness, and started looking for their soulmates using 21st-century dating techniques. Hilarious. Still have the Cat Valente story to read, which I’m looking forward to.

In the latest issue of Interzone, I enjoyed Colin Harvey’s “The Killing Streets”, which showcases his ability to depict believable scarce-resource futures with flawed yet sympathetic characters. Mordantly dark, well worth a look (and it almost made me miss my station, which is a sign of how engrossed I was). I also loved Lavie Tidhar’s “Funny Pages”, easily the best story in the issue, a fast and wry tale of Israeli super-heroes and super-villains (bonus points for relooking a particularly famous superhero as the Sabra–I didn’t catch the reference until fairly late in the story, but it was pretty funny when it came up).

Apropos of nothing

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The December 2009 and February 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy both turned up nearly simultaneously in my mailbox. The reason for the delay, insofar as I can ascertain, is that the January issue had been mauled in transit, resulting in a missing lower-right-hand corner that looked like it had been nibbled by rats (I’m pretty sure that’s not the explanation, but it did look very much like it). On the plus side, the February issue arrived in a neat USPS protected envelope, contained a folded check (which I almost lost when opening the issue, as I’m still not used to checks being folded half-inside the magazines), and, of course, my story “Melanie”, complete with illustration by Frank Wu.

w00t.

Here’s the obligatory teaser:

March in Paris: the trees in the school’s courtyard have bloomed in the mild weather, tumbles of white and pink flowers hanging just out of reach.

The boarders sit in small clutches under the arcades of building B, their notebooks open on their knees–making their last, frantic revisions before the competitive exams.

“Three weeks left,” Richard says, tapping his pen against a mathematical formula.

“Yeah,” Erwan says. He’s staring at the other students–all shining, all gorged with light: the light of numbers and curves, the endless dance of the formulas that rule the world. And, as it always does, his gaze fastens on Mélanie.

Meanwhile, I’ll be off to write some more Harbinger (regained the 2500 words I’d cut, plus some, bringing me to almost 46k. Also, the character with the longest-ever name has walked on-stage, and looks to be taking over the scene if not the plot).

“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” to Asimov’s

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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.

And for your reading pleasure…

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If you want something that looks like a book, Angry Robot has a sample of Servant of the Underworld to download, which contains the first chapter. Available in Mobipocket, EPUB or PDF.

Or you can also read the first three chapters online at My Favourite Books (they were cut into five parts to make them more manageable, hence the number of links).

In the silence of the shrine, I bowed to the corpse on the altar: a minor member of the Imperial Family, who had died in a boating accident on Lake Texcoco. My priests had bandaged the gaping wound on his forehead and smoothed the wrinkled skin as best as they could; they had dressed him with scraps of many-coloured cotton and threaded a jade bead through his lips – preparing him for the long journey ahead. As High Priest for the Dead, it was now my responsibility to ease his passage into Mictlan, the underworld.

I slashed my earlobes and drew thorns through the wounds, collecting the dripping blood in a bowl, and started a litany for the Dead.