A new recipe, courtesy of “Aliette cooks fast in the evening because we don’t have much time to eat before the snakelet wakes up”.

Pleased to announce my science fantasy story “The Breath of War” is now published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies‘s special Science Fantasy month. You can read it here.

As the first few paragraphs indicate, this is tangentially connected to the Xuya universe (it’s a great big large universe out there 🙂 ). Those with knowledge of Chinese/Vietnamese history will probably recognise the inspiration for this: it’s a mix of fairytales I read as a child, one about jade carvings (which are about whittling down the stone to the true shape it contains), and another about a painted dragon that came alive when the artist painted the eyes (the only missing part). Aka I continue to mine mythology for awesome SF. There are worse things :p

Pleased to announce my Xuya short story “The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile” has been published in Subterranean‘s Winter 2014 issue. It’s also a sequel of sorts to my novella On a Red Station, Drifting, with a cameo from one of the characters (and a mindship).

I’m inordinately pleased with this story, which was inspired by the animal guardians of the four cardinal directions in Vietnamese mythology, and typed while the snakelet was 2 weeks old (an achievement in and of itself 🙂 ). You can read it here.

Audible.com has released the audiobook version of Servant of the Underworld. You can download it here.

The rest of the series is upcoming: Harbinger of the Storm on March 4th, and Master of the House of Darts on March 7th.

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but I’m pleased and honoured that “The Waiting Stars” is up for a Nebula Award in the novelette category. Lots of familiar names on the list, but special congrats to fellow VDer Sylvia Spruck Wigley for her short story nomination for the heartbreaking “Alive, Alive Oh”, to Ann Leckie (about whose book I have been hearing awesome things), Veronica Schanoes (loved “Burning Girls”!), Sofia Samatar for her double listing, Ken Liu and Henry Lien for writing two awesome stories based on Chinese lore, and all my fellow nominees.

Full nominees below:

Best Novel

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Hild, Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island)
A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker (Harper)

Best Novella

‘‘Wakulla Springs,’’ Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13)
‘‘The Weight of the Sunrise,’’ Vylar Kaftan (Asimov’s 2/13)
‘‘Annabel Lee,” Nancy Kress (New Under the Sun)
‘‘Burning Girls,’’ Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com 6/19/13)
‘‘Trial of the Century,’’ Lawrence M. Schoen (lawrencemschoen.com, 8/13; World Jumping)
Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean)

Best Novelette

‘‘Paranormal Romance,’’ Christopher Barzak (Lightspeed 6/13)
‘‘The Waiting Stars,’’ Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)
‘‘They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass,’’ Alaya Dawn Johnson (Asimov’s 1/13)
‘‘Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters,’’ Henry Lien (Asimov’s 12/13)
‘‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,’’ Ken Liu (Lightspeed 8/13)
‘‘In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,’’ Sarah Pinsker (Strange Horizons 7/1 – 7/8/13)

Best Short Story

‘‘The Sounds of Old Earth,’’ Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed 1/13)
‘‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers,’’ Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons 1/7/13)
‘‘Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,’’ Kenneth Schneyer (Clockwork Phoenix 4)
‘‘If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,’’ Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13)
‘‘Alive, Alive Oh,’’ Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Lightspeed 6/13)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Doctor Who: ‘‘The Day of the Doctor’’ (Nick Hurran, director; Steven Moffat, writer) (BBC Wales)
Europa Report (Sebastián Cordero, director; Philip Gelatt, writer) (Start Motion Pictures)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, director; Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, writers) (Warner Bros.)
Her (Spike Jonze, director; Spike Jonze, writer) (Warner Bros.)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, director; Simon Beaufoy & Michael deBruyn, writers) (Lionsgate)
Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, director; Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro, writers) (Warner Bros.)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
When We Wake, Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin; Little, Brown)
Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central)
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
Hero, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
September Girls, Bennett Madison (Harper Teen)
A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine)

Damon Knight Grand Master Award: Samuel R. Delany
Special Guest: Frank M. Robinson

About the Nebula Awards

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. Voting will open to SFWA Active members on March 1, and close on March 30. More information is available from http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/how-to-vote/.

About the Nebula Awards Weekend

The 49th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend will be held May 15-18th, 2014, in San Jose at the San Jose Marriott. The Awards Ceremony will be hosted by Toastmaster Ellen Klages. Borderland Books will host the mass autograph session from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 16th at the San Jose Marriott. This autograph session is open to the public and books by the authors in attendance will be available for purchase. Attending memberships, and more information about the Nebula Awards Weekend, are available at http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/nebula-weekend/. Membership rates increase on March 1. The Weekend is open to non-SFWA members.

About SFWA

Founded in 1965 by the late Damon Knight, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America brings together the most successful and daring writers of speculative fiction throughout the world. Since its inception, SFWA® has grown in numbers and influence until it is now widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence, boasting a membership of approximately 2,000 science fiction and fantasy writers as well as artists, editors and allied professionals. Each year the organization presents the prestigious Nebula Awards® for the year’s best literary and dramatic works of speculative fiction. Media: For information on obtaining press passes, interviews with nominees, or questions about the event itself, please contact SFWA’s Communications Manager, Jaym Gates, at communications@sfwa.org.

Very pleased to announce that my story “Heaven Under Earth”, published in Electric Velocipede, has made the Tiptree Honor List. The Tiptree is a great award, and the Honor list always makes for great reading, so I’m honoured to get that kind of nod, especially in the company of fine folks such as Ann Leckie, Nicola Griffith, and Alaya Dawn Johnson. And I don’t know N. Sulway, but <i>Rupetta</i> sounds fascinating. Many congrats to everyone!

In which I cook a lovely creamy soup, because it’s winter and because I need to test drive my new Braun hand mixer (I’ve had the mixer for a while, just never had a chance to do stuff with it before). And yeah, I know it’s hard to make pictures of a soup look good, especially with no herbs. You’ll just have to take my word for it, but it was truly scrumptious (and got H’s seal of approval!).

Recipe here.

Pleased to announce I’ve sold “The Dust Queen” to Jonathan Strahan’s upcoming anthology Reach for Infinity. The full table of contents is here; quite pleased to be sharing with Al Reynolds, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Pat Cadigan, among other luminaries of the genre.

Many thanks for this are due to a sharp-eyed team of critters: Mary Robinette Kowal, D Franklin, Max Edwards, and Joe Iriarte; and also to Ken Liu and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who took a look at my very different first version of this and gave me plenty of ideas for the rewrite.

More info here on the anthology, and a snippet from the story here.

Yup, I got cooking. It was very relaxing to chop up vegetables after half a day at work and half a day taking care of the snakelet…

Ooooh, so happy to see that my recipe for thịt kho tàu has been featured in the Guardian’s recipe swap for Lunar New Year. I feel like I’ve unlocked some major achievement there 🙂