So, remember last year, when I went to World Fantasy and got stuck in a dingy hotel because my flight had been cancelled?

Well, it turns out some clouds definitely have big silver linings, because among the people stuck with me in the hotel were John Berlyne and Marc Gascoigne. We started talking; nine months later, one of them is my agent, and one of them has offered me a deal for three books, starting with Servant of the Underworld, and going on to two sequels.

http://angryrobotbooks.com/2009/08/angry-robot-signs-aliette-de-bodard-lavie-tidhar/
http://angryrobotbooks.com/2009/08/an-author-a-publisher-and-an-agent-walk-into-a-bar/

Publication date is Spring 2010 by new HarperCollins imprint Angry Robot. The books are a mix of murder mystery and fantasy, set in Aztec times, featuring death-priest-cum-investigator Acatl (and fun stuff like ghostly jaguars, bloodthirsty gods, and fingernail-eating monsters). They’re in the same world as “Obsidian Shards”, “Beneath the Mask”, and “Safe, Child, Safe”, forthcoming in Talebones.

It’s been brewing for a while, so I’ve already exhausted most of my screaming and squeeing, but still… Wow, wow and wow.

My many many thanks to everyone who took a look at the manuscript and kicked it into shape (and it goes without saying, but thanks to Marc for the offer and to John for the negotiation).

I’d be off for a liedown except that I really, really have to pack.

PS1: there’ll be a more detailed thank-you post later. I want to make sure I don’t forget anyone who’s looked at it, and this probably means waiting after Worldcon when my head is back on my shoulders
PS2: you can also drop by fellow Zeno Agency authorLavie Tidhar’s blog and congratulate him on the sale to Angry Robot of what sounds like a fun series
PS3: maybe I should send British Airways a thank-you note 🙂

I’ve sold my Chinese alternate-history “In the Time of Transcendence” to Asimov’s (the title is going to change as soon as I can work out a decent one…). Featuring a space centre in a monastery, Daoist philosophy, and forbidden love.

Many thanks to those OWWers who took a look at it: Christine Lucas, Tom Crosshill, Ilan Leman and Owen Kerr; and to Chris Kastensmidt for his comments.

EDIT: the new title is now “The Wind-Blown Man”.

That sound you hear? It’s me hyperventilating. I’ve been dreaming of breaking into Asimov’s for a while, and I don’t think it quite feels real yet. I think I’ll go back for a liedown…

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.

Going to Worldcon? Thanks to Nancy Fulda at AnthologyBuilder, I’ll be handing out shiny badges like this…

For more details, see here. Several authors are involved, most notably T.L. Morganfield and Vaughan Stanger. Collect all the badges, and win a prize!

(via Jay Lake and Jennifer Jackson): Congratulations to Ken Scholes and his wife Jenn on the birth of their twin daughters: Elizabeth 5 lbs 3 oz, Rachel 5 lbs 6 oz – as of about 9 am (Pacific).

For those of you who speak French, this interview of me just went live on Elbakin.net, one of the biggest French fantasy websites.
Many thanks to Emmanuel Chastellière for the time and trouble (and extra helpings to fellow Campbell Nominee David Anthony Durham, whose original post on me on his blog brought me to Emmanuel’s attention).

Not really a lot of activity on this blog at the moment…
I’m completely swamped with a lot of non-writing related things (mostly the day job, with a few side surprises). I’ve been hammering at the new story (aka Aztecs in space) while on the bus, as well as on a revision of “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, and on some edits. And I’m running late on a bunch of crits I owe people.

Eek.

I think I’ll go to bed to get some sleep. With luck, I’ll manage to do some of the tasks on my to-do list before the week is over.

Sigh. Holidays: D-10 and counting.

So, here’s what it looks like (yep, I know. I’m counting on adrenaline to keep me going on Sunday).

Continue reading →

Lazy lazy Saturday (except for the ironing, the dishwashing and the cleaning, ouch).

I managed to find a copy of the Year’s Best Science Fiction in one of Paris’s English bookshops; and boy, did it feel weird seeing my name in the table of contents. It’s now on my desk, to remind me I need to write more ambitious short stories (not that “Butterfly, Falling at Dawn” really falls into the ambitious category, but several of the stories in there do).

Flipping through the HMs, I noted several names I noticed: in particular, the Villa Diodati crew is taking over the world: Sara Genge has two (“The Gong” in Weird Tales, “Prayers for an Egg” in Asimov’s), Steve Gaskell one (“Micro Expressions” in Cosmos Online), Jeff Spock one (“Everything that Matters” in Interzone), Benjamin Rosembaum one (“True Names” in Fast Forward 2, cowritten with Cory Doctorow), and Benevolent Dictator Ruth Nestvold a whooping four (“Troy and the Aliens” in Abyss and Apex, “An Act of Conviction” in Helix, “Mars: A Traveller’s Guide” in F&SF, and “The Rivers of Eden” in Futurismic, co-written with Jay Lake).
Lots of other familiar names as well: TL. Morganfield (“Night Bird Soaring”, the same one that’s nominated for the Sidewise Awards), Ken Scholes, Mary Robinette Kowal, Vaughan Stanger, Tony Pi, Gord Sellar…

Woohoo!

As usual, trying to do four or five things at the same time: specifically, edit a new Xuya short “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, plan a new one (aka Aztecs in space), fill in a form, and return crits. Everything’s going well for the moment, though it’s only a matter of time until some balls drop…

(disclaimer: James Maxey nicely gave me a free ARC of Dragonseed so I could blog about it. Also, this will by necessity contain some spoilers about Dragonforge and Bitterwood.)

Dragonseed is the third book in the Dragon Age sequence, Maxey’s postapocalyptic world where dragons rule over mankind. It takes over from the events in Dragonforge: the humans are now the undisputed masters of Dragonforge, which they plan to use as a powerbase to wage war on the dragons. And they now have a great advantage: their master smith, Burke, has just learnt to make gunpowder, a weapon that could change the face of the war.
Meanwhile, the dragon hierarchy, thrown into chaos by the death of the king, now finds itself leaderless, but the cunning dragon Vulpine is not one to leave power ungrasped–and he will not let himself be encumbered by scruples over the fates of the human slaves.
In the midst of this turmoil, Jandra, the human raised by dragons, still seeks to bring both races to an understanding. However, she finds herself diminished by the theft of her genie, the device which allowed her to wield supernatural powers and gain respect as a witch–and she desperately needs to find it, even if it means going back to a very dangerous place…

Dragonseed sees the return of most of the cast of Dragonforge, and adds a few newcomers such as the escaped slave Shay, and Anza, Burke’s mute daughter (aka killing machine). As always, Maxey handles his cast of diverse characters with great skill, moving from the dark resignation of Bitterwood to Shay’s desperate will to survive, and to Jandra’s ambiguous lust for power.

The world is, as always, fascinating. The post-apocalyptic setting makes it hover on the cusp between science and fantasy: though there are dragons, the magic makes sense, and is not simply used to get out of scrapes. And I was glad to see more of Atlantis, the city of posthumans, which made for an intriguing change when compared with the mostly-medieval setting of the rest of the books.

But what I loved about the previous books, and that I still love about this one, is Maxey’s willingness to handle hard questions about species survival, humanity’s worthiness and the value of faith and religion. Those were themes already explored in Bitterwood and Dragonforge, and I’m glad to see that they’re back, and that Maxey handles them gracefully, without sinking into too much preachiness. Every character has a different view on the matter–and, in the end, it’s only the fanatics such as Prophet Ragnar who might be proved wrong.

If I had one complaint to make, it’s the same one as I made for Dragonforge, ie that there was a little too much going on: with so many point-of-view characters and divergent goals, the novel sometimes felt a bit rushed. I got the feeling it could have been a little longer and still have carried his weight–or pruned to achieve the tight focus of Bitterwood.

Anyway, it was a good read and a welcome return to my favourite characters. Probably best read in sequence, as it’s pretty tightly linked to the previous ones: it will make sense on its own, but not be as rich and fulfilling.

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