Huge congrats to T.L. Morganfield, whose story “Night Bird Soaring” is a finalist for the Sidewise Awards !!!
 

On his sixth birthday, Totyoalli’s parents took him to the holy city to see the Emperor Cuauhtemoc, but the plane ride proved the most exciting part. He kept his nose to the window, taking in the vast lands of the One World, from the snow-capped mountains of his home in the northern provinces to the open plains of Teotihuacan. He marveled at the miniature cities and cars passing below. All his life he’d dreamt of flying, ever since the first time he’d seen a bird gliding through the air.

From the airport, they took a cab to the royal palace on Lake Texcoco. Tenochtitlan, the single largest city in the world, sprawled around it for miles. The cab buzzed across one of the royal causeways, the water blue and shimmering in the hot sun. Inside the walled royal complex stood the Great Temple, meticulously maintained by a crew of thousands, its sacred Sun Stone keeping watch over the visiting crowds.

Read more on GUD’s website. 

Packing for the Fourth Villa Diodati workshop, which will take place in Wickens farmhouse, a traditional English cottage in Kent:

As usual, this blog is going dark, and I’ll probably not be in a position to answer emails until I come back Monday evening. (unless I find a handy internet connection, which looks unlikely).

–Appreciation of Black Static 9 by Nick Cato of the Horror Fiction Review:

This issue’s fiction is (once again) fantastic. My faves were HAUNT-TYPE EXPERIENCE by Roz Clarke (an interesting take on the “Ghost Hunters” trend) and Aliette De Bodard’s dazzling, ghostly opener, THE LONELY HEART.

-Charles Tan interviews Nancy Fulda:

The single best thing I’ve done for my career is to make it less important than my family.

–List of nominees for Prix Imaginales 2009 (category Translated Works)

-Steve Cockayne, Wanderers and Islanders
-David Anthony Durham, Acacia
-Hélène (Ellen) Kushner, Swordspoint
-Ian McDonald, King of Morning, Queen of Day
-Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

(lots of good stuff, including fellow Campbell nominee David Anthony Durham, well on his way to conquer the world–but special congrats to Ellen Kushner for making the list!)

–Fantasy Magazine is posting con reports: first ones include Eugie Foster on Outlantacon, Penguicon (Dave Hogg here and Alethea Kontis here)

(and I share a TOC with Sarah L. Edward, alias snickelish on LJ)

EDIT: this is a sneak preview, the magazine isn’t out until May 14th.

This is awesome: the Pacific Asia Museum has online exhibitions (with downloadable pdfs):

• Rank and Style: Power Dressing in Ancient China
• Visions of Enlightenment: Art of Buddhism
• Nature of the Beast: Animals in Japanese Paintings and Prints

(hum, yes, I’m straightening out the ranks in Foreign Ghosts, why do you ask?)

“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.

Wohoo, a holiday 🙂

It’s warm (sort of) and sunny (definitely) outside, a perfect day for not working.

Did some work on Foreign Ghosts, rewriting bits and pieces to give a character more motivation. Midway through chapter 16 (this particular transition was always rough, but I think I’ve got it right now). Next stumbling block is likely near the ending, so most of the work this afternoon should be filling in the research holes.

Went to the Opera Wednesday, to see Verdi’s Macbeth, a very impressive, modern production with an equally impressive soprano playing Lady Macbeth. (first time at the Opera, ever, courtesy of the BF).

And now I shall be off to do some cooking (more on that later, if it works…)

So, we’re still watching Le Chevalier D’Eon, out of which a good section takes place in 18th-Century Russia, and I tell the BF, “It’s fascinating how many empresses Russia had in the Eighteenth Century, when you compare it with the other European countries”.

A quick foray into Wikipedia revealed that out of three Empresses, two had seized power through military coups, and that the third had been designated as figurehead Empress, but soon decided the Privy Council was an inconvenience, and established an autocratic regime of terror to make sure no one would get in her way…

Uh. Women’s liberation indeed.
(I do know any woman who wanted to seize and keep power in those times would have to be twice as ruthless as men, and that Russian czars haven’t been particularly known for their gentleness, but still…)

/snark on

So, for his birthday, I gave the BF a shiny present: the gold edition of Age of Empires III by Ensemble Studios. It included this nifty-looking set of extension called “The War Chiefs”, and “The Asian Dynasties”, which add Native American and Asian civilisations to the game, respectively. Now, the basic principle of AoE III is that each civilisation has a home town, and a great leader: the French have Napoleon, the Ottomans have Suleiman the Magnificent…

And the Aztecs? Well, you can almost imagine the conversation that went on between the developers at Ensemble:

“Ok, we need a war leader for the Aztecs. Someone great, who changed the face of their Empire” *looking over the list of Aztec Emperors* “Darn it, everyone has names of four syllables or more. No gamer is going to have the patience to memorise those.” *looks over the list again* “How about Tizoc?”
“Er, didn’t he only reign five years?”
*dismissive hand* “I’m sure he was cut down in the prime of his glory. Like Alexander the Great. Nah, he should do fine.”

At least, that’s the only reasonable explanation of how we end up with the worst Aztec Emperor in history, the only one who lost his coronation war, barely conquered anything worth mentioning, and died in murky circumstances barely five years after ascending the throne. (poisoning by his own generals or priests was suspected)

*goes bang head against wall*

(not that the Chinese fare any better, since they’re attributed the Kangxi Emperor, who was a Manchu, not a Chinese–but at least you can make a case for his greatness. Tizoc is just… ugh)

/snark over

EDIT: ok, I stand corrected. The game effects a random choice of leader, and does so among a predefined database that includes Tizoc, Cuauhtemoc and Tenoch. It was sheer bad luck that we got Tizoc twice in a row..

Misc.:
-revised a story and lobbed it into the aether
-preparing for VD4, the fourth Villa Diodati workshop, organised in England by Steve Gaskell. Mostly working out my shopping list, since I volunteered to be a cook… (yep, stories to crit, I know. As soon as I’ve worked out who brings the fish sauce…)
-Matthieu and I have booked our hotel and bought our memberships for Worldcon. Which leaves the plane tickets, and other hotels for the non-con part of the trip.
After registering, I took a peek at the seemingly interminable list of current members–and suddenly remembered how bewilderingly huge Interaction had been in 2005. (no, I will not panic, but I did waffle about volunteering to be on the programme…)