So, first off, this is the result of having too much spare time the weekend before last and discovering the joys of imovie:

Yup, I made a book trailer. Go on, take a look, it’s only one minute long *grin*

Makes you want to read the book? Well, you can also drop here at My Favourite Books and read the first chapter. They’ll be posting the first five chapters of the book, one per day.
(while you’re at it, you can also head over to SFSignal, which is running similar excerpts from fellow AR author Lavie Tidhar’s steampunk fantasy The Bookman)
Should keep you busy until the book comes out in January 🙂

Meanwhile, I’ll go back to Harbinger, where a lot of innocent people are about to find out how dangerous Tenochtitlan can be on a bad day…

OK, I suck at that shameless self-promotion stuff, but I figure I’ll just follow the movement, and write down the stuff I published that’s eligible for the Nebulas–in case anyone is interested.

If you want to read any of the stories below that are not available online, feel free to contact me, and I’ll be glad to provide a copy (whether you’re a SFWA member or not).

Novelettes

• “On Horizon’s Shores”, Intergalactic Medicine Show, issue 14, September 2009 (SF)
• “Healing Hands”, Fantastical Visions IV, July 2009 (Pseudo-Greek Fantasy)
• “Beneath the Mask”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, issue 8, January 2009 (Aztec fantasy/mystery)
• “Butterfly, Falling at Dawn, Interzone, issue 219, November 2008 (SF, alternate history: I think that one is eligible by virtue of its first US publication in Dozois’ Year’s Best, but I’m not 100% sure on this)

Short Stories

• “After the Fire”, Apex Magazine, November 2009 (Dark Chinese SF)
• Golden Lilies”, Fantasy Magazine, August 2009 (Dark Chinese fantasy)
• “Blighted Heart”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, issue 22, July 2009 (Aztec Fantasy)
• “Memories of my Sister”, Expanded Horizons, issue 7, May 2009 (Pseudo Hindu fantasy)
• “Dancing for the Monsoon”, Abyss & Apex, issue 30, April 2009 (Pseudo Cambodian fantasy)
• “City of the Gods”, Alternative Coordinates, issue 1, Spring 2009 (Pseudo-Hindu fantasy)
• The Dragon’s Tears”, Electric Velocipede, issues 15/16, Autumn 2008. (Pseudo Chinese fairytale)

FYI, if I had to pick favourites, they’d be “After the Fire”, “On Horizon’s Shores”, “Golden Lilies” and “The Dragon’s Tears” (which I’m still absurdly attached to even though I wrote the first draft of it about 3 years ago).

I’ll be off to take a look at my reading list and see what I can nominate myself.

EDIT: added categories…

My story “After the Fire” is now up at Apex Magazine, as part of the special World SF issue edited by Lavie Tidhar. It’s, er, sort of a post-apocalypse story, set in a China where the Empire never fell. Well, sort of set in China…

In her dreams, Jiaotan saw Father: hands outstretched, the flesh of the fingers fraying away to reveal the yellowed, tapered shape of bones, the deep-set eyes bulging in their sockets, pleading, begging her to take him away.

“You’re dead,” she whispered. “Rest in peace, with the Ancestors–watch over us from Heaven.”

But the Ancestors were bones and dried sinews, shambling upright from the wreck of their graves–anger shining in the hollows of their eye sockets as they walked past the devastated gardens, the withered trees, the dried-out waterfalls and rivers. And clouds marched across Heaven, a billowing mass of sickly grey spreading to cut the path of The Red Carp as it rose away from Earth…

The issue also includes Nir Yaniv and Aleksandar Žiljak, and an interview with Maylasian writer Tunku Halim (courtesy of the tireless Charles Tan)

I workshopped “After the Fire” (as “In Our Minds, In Our Hearts”) on OWW rather close to the deadline for handing it in–so many thanks to Mark Hünken, Tom Crosshill, Sylvia Volk and Max Griffin for helping me whip this into shape. And thanks to Lavie for the editing and the title help, as well as giving me the opportunity to write in a genre and a length I don’t often try.

And don’t forget that The Apex Book of World SF has been released, giving you a chance to read “The Lost Xuyan Bride” on paper alongside many other tales from cool writers such as Mélanie Fazi, Jetse de Vries and Kaaron Warren. You can read a sample of the book online, Aleksandar Žiljak’s “An Evening In the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia On My Mind”–as Lavie puts it, a mixture of Boogie Nights and Men in Black.

My short story “Golden Lilies” is up at Fantasy Magazine.

It was the smell which woke me up, insinuating itself between the planks of my coffin: cooked meat mingling with the sweet odour of aromatic rice, and the tangy hint of fruit and spices — a powerful summoning if there ever was one.

Read more.

For those of you who prefer their fiction in audio form, it’s also available as a podcast read by the talented M.K. Hobson (who does a truly awesome job).

My Aztec-y short story “Blighted Heart” is now up in issue 22 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies:

For years my city gave the hearts of maidens to the corn-man to awaken him, but on the day I came to him I was no longer untouched by man. The priests were careless; they had checked the previous morning, but did not check again. Their mistake, and mine, for I had made love to a warrior on the evening before, out of pique, out of a desire to defy them for the last time before they took my innocence away. I was not thinking of the consequences at the time.

The corn-man was in a room at the top of the largest pyramid temple. I came in, half-carried by two warriors, to gaze on row upon row of expectant faces. Dozens of priests had gathered to watch the last sacrifice—mine. I could not breathe; fear constricted my chest with each step. Fear of pain. Fear of loss.

Read more.

Finally got myself motivated to download the Hugo Voter’s Packet. Wow, lots of good stuff here. Even discounting those books I’ve already read (Acacia, Thunderer and Little Brother), there’s still plenty to sink my teeth into. I’m becoming an adept of Stanza, nifty software that allows me to read ebooks on my ipod. Not optimal in a sunlit bus, but kind of neat all the same.

I’ve seen that the ballot is now online and that you have until the 3rd of July to vote. Almost finished the short fiction; now I need to get cracking on the novellas and the novels… (and boy, does it feel very weird to see my name down there for the Campbell, even if it’s not a Hugo).

The packet includes three of my short stories (“The Lost Xuyan Bride”, “Obsidan Shards” and “Autumn’s Country”); I’ve also reordered stuff on my website to put stories directly online (the Packet ones, and two extras, in addition to the stuff I’ve published in online zines).  I’m still looking for a way to list subpages within a post (I’ve found the wordpress syntax, but it seems to be working only in the sidebar).

I also have an author page up on Facebook, mostly following the example of Gareth. I suppose every little bit helps 🙂

And, as said above, I’ve finished up my Cambpell reading by the two novels I’d ordered a while ago: Thunderer and Acacia. Two very different beasts: a urban secondary-world fantasy with hints of Dickens and fabulous worldbuilding (indeed, the city of Ararat itself is as much a character as the people passing each other on the street), and an epic fantasy of political intrigue, a clever reflexion on how history is written by the winners until even the old myths become forgotten. For my money, I preferred Acacia, mainly because I’m a history buff, but both are pretty good books.

Currently working my way through Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori, superlative fiction set in a world inspired by Medieval Japan. Very well-researched, very well-written, and obviously told by a master.

And, since I’m between novels at the moment, I’m hammering away at an alternate history that involves a lot of weird science. 3000 words in, halfway through.

“Memories of My Sister” is now up on Expanded Horizons. It’s one of several stories inspired by my trip to India in 2004, set in the Hindu-flavoured universe of Lansara.

Many thanks to everyone who took a look at it on Liberty Hall, on Yahoo (Swapna Kishore), and on OWW (the awesome Marshall Payne, for whom this will be an anniversary of sorts, since I believe it’s the first critique he ever gave me–as well as David Reagan, Jeremy Yoder, John Oshea, Matthew Herreshoff, Samantha Rolfes).

I was baking flatbreads on the hearthstone when I saw my sister walk out of the forest.

I paused, disbelieving. She had left us, many years ago, to become a hermit. She had abandoned both my husband Nayen and me, and we had never heard from her afterwards. We had thought her safely ensconced within the forest, weathering monsoon after monsoon in some crude hut, serenely meditating on the gods of the Triad. And now she was walking towards me, as if she still belonged in my house.

She had changed. Her hair was white, her face gaunt and pinched, as if she had not eaten for moons. She wore rough, blackened clothes of bark, nothing like the red cotton sari she had put on before entering the forest.

I had half-risen, my hands still covered in spiced dough; she saw me. “Isalaya?” she asked, and swayed.

“Menmathe,” I said, and was there to catch her as she fell.

Read more.

“Dancing for the Monsoon” now up on Abyss & Apex (thanks to Wendy Delmater and the inimitable Kelly Green). This was my Bootcamp story–infinitely improved with the great feedback I received there. Thanks as well to the BF, and to Marshall Payne, who both convinced me not to throw it away.

Sharing a TOC with Villa Diodati Beloved Dictator Ruth Nestvold. Awesome!

Nanpeng watched her student Khean practise for the Great Dance in the courtyard, her lithe body swaying to the rhythm of the xylophones. Each of Khean’s hand gestures naturally flowed into the next; her body bent smoothly, without visible stress. Khean’s face under the golden headdress was, as proper for a dancer, expressionless, but no tiredness appeared either in her eyes or in her gestures.

Khean was good. Extraordinarily good, and fearless as well. That mattered very much for a dancer, especially one about to enter the Great Dance, the dance that would bring the monsoon rain but leave the dancer utterly paralysed. Nanpeng was proud of her student.

Serey, the High Priest of the Destroyer, stood to Nanpeng’s side, his eyes watching every gesture Khean made.

“Only two days left before the Great Dance,” he said. His almond eyes turned, briefly, to Nanpeng.

“Yes,” Nanpeng said. “You sound worried.”

Serey kept watching the courtyard, where the musicians played under the eyes of the numerous statues of the gods. No, Nanpeng realised with a pang of fear. Serey was watching Khean.

Read more.

I’m making a free sampler of my short fiction available mainly for the purposes of the John W. Campbell Award, for which I’ve been shortlisted in 2009: if you want to get an idea of what I publish, this is a great place to start. The stories here showcase a range of subgenres I write in.

Click here to download this sampler.

If you’re a voting member of Anticipation, and see anything in my bibliography you’d like to check out, why don’t you send me a mail?

Information about voting for the Campbell here. The nomination ballot isn’t yet available; I’ll update the website when it is.

• “The Lost Xuyan Bride” (SF/alternate history), originally published in Interzone. [PDF]
  

  Honorable Mention, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois

  Nominated for a BSFA Award, 2007

  To be reprinted in The Apex Book of World SF, ed. Lavie Tidhar, December 2009

• “Obsidian Shards” (Mystery/Fantasy), originally published in Writers of the Future XXIII. [PDF]
  

  Second Place Winner, Third Quarter 2006, Writers of the Future

  Honorable Mention, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois

• “Autumn’s Country” (Fantasy), originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. [PDF]
  

  Honorable Mention, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Twenty-First Annual Collection , ed. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant

• “Through the Obsidian Gates” (Epic Fantasy), originally published in Shimmer [PDF]
  

  Honorable Mention, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Twentieth Annual Collection , ed. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant

• “The Dancer’s Gift” (Dark Fantasy), originally published in Fictitious Force [PDF]