Just a heads-up that we’re moving this week, so from Sunday onwards (and quite possibly for 10 days after that), we’ll have no internet access (and no landline), so I very probably won’t be in a position to answer emails (of which I already have a backlog!).

Hopefully everything will be back to normal by mid-August.

Just a reminder that the voting deadline for the Hugos is July 31st, 11:59 p.m. CDT.

You can find the online voting ballot here, and the packet here if you’re still trying to find nominees. This year I had to skip the novel category due to lack of time, and a bunch of others; but if you still need a candidate for your Campbell Award for Best New Writer, give Zen Cho a try? Stories here, here and here.
Also, she’ll be at Nine Worlds in London August 9-11 if you’re in the vicinity!

(and, hum, if you feel like voting for “Immersion” in the Short Story category, I’d be as pleased as punch)

From last week’s wordage, for all my write-a-thon supporters:

“Come on,” Isabelle said, pushing a small stone door in an unremarkable corridor; and Philippe, with a sigh, followed her. 

To stop, awestruck, at what lay inside.

It had been a church, once. You could still see the columns and the beginning of the vaulted ceiling, a first row of arches gracefully bending towards each other; and the remnants of wooden benches, burnt where they had stood. The stained-glass windows were broken, or absent; but the gaze was still drawn, unerringly, down the nave and to the altar at the other end–or where the altar would have been, if it hadn’t been turned to rubble long ago, and the only things remaining were the wrecks of three statues–the centre one was least damaged, and had probably been a Virgin Mary carrying the corpse of Jesus.

No, not a church. A cathedral, like the pink-hued edifice the French had built in Saigon–he could still feel the fervour of its builders, of its worshippers, swirling in the air: a bare shadow of what it had once been, but so potent, so strong, so huge.

“Notre-Dame,” Philippe whispered. 

Snippet:  He was tall and thin, with horned-rimmed, rectangular glasses–his particular affectation, since all Fallen had perfect eyesight–his hair dark, save for a touch of grey at the temple; his hands with the thin, long fingers of a pianist, even though the instruments he played on did not make music–unless one counted cries of pain and ecstasy as music (Madeleine knew he did). 

Things researched: not much. Wrote 1.3k words in snatches between appointments.

Plot direction of the day: wondering how best to order three scenes.

Today, Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection, hits the store. Stories by Lavie Tidhar, Pat Cadigan, Brit Mandelo, Elizabeth Bear, Hannu Rajaniemi and more luminaries of the genre–and it also includes my Xuya continuity story “Ship’s Brother”, originally published in Interzone.

Cover

Buy now at Amazon.com|Amazon.co.uk|Book Depository.

Snippet: The Great Market had used to be held in the same place week after week–Les Halles, the belly of the city, the exuberant display of abundance of an empire that had believed itself immortal–against all the evidence of history. But Les Halles had been destroyed in the War; and the fragile magical balance that had followed led to an arrangement where the Great Market rotated between the major Houses. 

Things researched: geography of Ile de La Cite. Zola’s life, of all things.

Plot direction of the day: drastic alterations to outline for chapter. Wondering how to cram in extra body count.

So… as people might have noticed, I was Guest of Honour at Finncon 2013 in Helsinki. This was my first stint as a GoH, and all I can say is wow. This set a really high bar for GoH gigs.

Helsinki Harbour

The H and I flew into Helsinki on Wednesday afternoon (after a brief negotiation session with the airline, who for some reason had decided I was too far along in my pregnancy to fly and dubiously eyed my gynecologist’s certificate that I could fly). After resting in the hotel, we headed to Harald, a Viking restaurant complete with plastic helmets, where we met the con people and the other guests of the convention (Peter Watts, Caitlin Sweet, Finnish author J. Pekka Mäkelä, academic Stefan Eckman, Cheryl Morgan and Swedish authors Mats Strandberg and Sara B Elfgren), and had lots and lots of food, complete with Viking roleplaying game in which many speeches were made and some rotting shark meat was consumed (by Peter, who drew the short straw on this one, but who got to be initiated as a Viking with a nifty certificate).

Thursday was the day of the press conference at the Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, where I saw hard copies of my Finnish short story collection, Perhonen ja Jaguaari (The Butterfly and the Jaguar), met my publishers (Osuuskumman is a publishing cooperative, which means many members!), and had a lovely interview about World SF. This was followed by a cruise around the Helsinki archipelago (wonderful landscapes), a quick shopping trip to find the Moomin shop (which resulted in the acquisition of an apron), and an evening spent at a sauna. I couldn’t do the sauna thing, sadly, but it looked like an experience–after finishing in the sauna, participants took a dip in the nearby (icy) sea and emerged much reinvigorated, and about ready to try the wonderful buffet of Finnish delicacies (courtesy of Hanna and Maya), which included moose meatballs, Karelian cake (pastry and rice. I was in love), cranberry fizzy drink (which actually tasted like berry and not like sugar), fresh mushroom pie, and a variety of barbecued food (the stuffed mushrooms wrapped in bacon were a big hit, very nicely juicy and tasty).

Then it was time for the con proper, which lasted over three days. The Cable Factory is actually a series of rooms spread around a courtyard, which made for interesting going-arounds (you had to go in and out of buildings); the dealers’ room was *huge* and stuffed with entirely too many books (I resisted temptation, but the H succumbed). All in all, it was a very busy event, and I’m sorry I had to miss on some of it (naps were my best friends, and panels can be pretty draining!). I was joined at the hip to Tom Crosshill, for some odd reason; we did a short story workshop together (my first teaching experience!), an GoH interview, and a bunch of panels. The English-language track was very interesting: we went to a hilarious panel about TV series that never were with Cailtin Sweet and Karin Tidbeck, and attended  Peter Watts’ GoH talk about researching Blindsight full of interesting science tidbits, and I got to catch up with Karin Tidbeck and Nene Ormes (who has such beautiful covers for her Swedish urban fantasy series that I wish I could actually read the language!). At least it looks like Mats and Sara’s book, The Circle, is available in English; I’ve bookmarked it for future checking-out.

Photography by Henry Söderlund

There was also some great costuming going on; the T-Rex has got to be the most unforgettable costume I’ve ever seen (complete with sound effects!), but you also had Zelda, Harley Quinn, Iron Man (shown here in the Tardis!), … I had to miss on the parties due to major fatigue crashes, but I did manage to make the Dead Dog Party Sunday night, in which much fun was had (and many fajitas consumed). Overall, a really great experience–thanks to all organisers and the attendees, and I hope to make it to another Finncon where I actually try the sauna and eat the smoked fish (and party until the end of the night, though I realise that is unlikely to happen any time soon…)

Oh, and if you want more Finland in your conventions? The same team (or at least a team with a significant amount of overlap) is putting in a bid for Worldcon in Helsinki in 2015, which looks set to be a truly awesome convention (plus, come on, you know you’ve always wanted to try a sauna by the sea). If you’re involved in Worldcon site selection or want to be involved, can I suggest checking them out?

(other people can correct me on this, but it looks like you have to be at least a supporting member of LoneStarCon 3 to vote? The instructions here seem to indicate there’s an additional fee involved?)

So, it would appear that “Immersion” has won a Locus Award for Best Short Story. It’s kind of very… humbling when you see that the past list of winners includes Ted Chiang, Ursula Le Guin, and Roger Zelazny… My deepest thanks to everyone who voted/nominated/spread the word, and special extra thanks to E. Lily Yu, who very kindly agreed to accept for me.

Lots of friends among the winners and finalists–big congrats to, among many others, Pat Cadigan, Elizabeth Bear, Ellen Datlow and Jonathan Strahan.

Meanwhile, the radio silence continues–a bit swamped currently with snakelet and snakelet supplies. Slowly chipping away at the novel, and hoping that maternity leave will leave me some energy pre-snakelet to get some way into the actual writing. Am looking forward to being Guest of Honour at Finncon next week while the H explores Helsinki (I’m allowed to attend the con but not to wander around the city).

So, in the interest of actually being held accountable for stuff…

I’ve joined the Clarion West write-a-thon: my goal is to have 50,000 words of my (untitled) novel set in a post-apocalyptic, colonial Paris completed by August 2 (ok, maybe by end of August). Can’t say much about it (I *hate* talking about what I’m writing while I’m writing it), but it’s got fallen angels, Vietnamese dragons and immortals, and plenty of magical fireworks.

You can see a snippet from the WIP on my write-a-thon page–as well as information for donating, and links to all the pages by fabulous other writers such as Rochita Loenen Ruiz, Stephanie Burgis and Floris M Kleijne.

Aka, why make it simple when I can make it complicated…

One of the things I really love about a language is listening to the music of its poetry/folk songs/etc. (I spent a lot of my formative years in English reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry); and it’s always fascinating to see how different languages approach poetry, even though it means that poetry has to be the most untranslatable form of text. Vietnamese poetry doesn’t put quite so much emphasis on rhyme as French poetry (mostly, I suspect, because it’s really easy to make words rhyme in Vietnamese). The major feature is how it uses the tonal system to create its patterns, and it takes great advantage of the language’s conciseness to deliver its punch. I can’t really pretend I understand much of how it works, being only a novice, but here’s my attempt at dissecting a poem.

The source is John Balaban’s Ca Dao Viet Nam, basically folk songs from the villages; the poem itself is interesting in that any attempt at faithful translation is bound to be much, much longer than the original, not only because of the language issue, but also because the text itself is filled with Buddhist imagery that doesn’t translate all that well in English.

“Thức tỉnh hồn mê tiếng chuông Linh Mụ
Dặn dò nợ trần duyên rửa sạch
Qua đò đã tây phương.”

“Thức tỉnh hồn mê tiếng chuông Linh Mụ”
“Thức tỉnh” is “to be enlightened, to see reason”; “hồn” is “soul”, mê” is “unaware, unconscious”, I think in the sense that said soul hasn’t been enlightened yet. “tiếng chuông” is “the peal of a bell” (but in this context, it’s interesting to see that “tiếng” also means language). Linh Mụ is a famous pagoda in Huế.
So the sentence would translate something like “The sound of Linh Mu’s bell awakens the unmindful soul”

“Dặn dò nợ trần duyên rửa sạch”
Dặn dò is “advise, recommend”, “nợ” is a debt (a karmic debt, in this context), “trần” I’m not too sure of (the dictionary suggests “ceiling”, “maximum”). “duyên” is a completely untranslatable Vietnamese word that means “bound to meet as lovers or friends [in a future life]”. “rửa sạch” is “wash”. So probably something like “Reminds it to incur no debt, washes it clean of worldly bounds”

“Qua đò đã tây phương”
“Qua đò” is “cross over/board a ferry”, “đã” is the past indicator, and “tây phương” is the Western Place, a Buddhist paradise. So “[has] already crossed over to the Western Place”. What’s missing is the subject of the actual sentence–from context I’m assuming it’s “the soul” of the first sentence, but I could be wrong…

So, putting it all together, should be
“The sound of Linh Mu’s bell awakens the unmindful soul
Reminds it to incur no debt, washes it clean of worldly bounds
Helps it to reach the Western Place”

And you pretty much see why this is hard-as-nails to translate properly, as I had to leave half the meanings out of the translation; not to mention that this is a really ugly translation, word-wise…

(Of course, I never pretended to be a very good translator, and poetry is as hard as nails to get–there’s a couple words I’m not sure I understand properly, and while I understand every word in the last sentence I’m not entirely too sure my interpretation is the one that’d most likely occur to a native speaker. But I figured it’d be fun to share my struggles)