First off–hats off to Nathan McKnight, who has produced an Obsidian and Blood glossary for the Kindle, which you can use to call up characters’ names and special meanings. If you’ve always wanted to dip into the books but found the names too troublesome, the glossary is your friend! Download it here.

Oh, and, now that AR has officially announced it: there will be an Obsidian and Blood omnibus! Called Obsidian and Blood, it will gather all three books in one handy paperback (or ebook), and will be released in July 2012. More details here (not much for the moment other than ISBNs, but there should be some cover art at some point).

Costs £13 or $16, depending on whether you’re in the US or UK, and £8 as an ebook, about or less than the price of two volumes–so, if you’ve got fewer than 2 Obsidian and Blood books and want a complete set in a nice package, you know where to head…

Meanwhile, if anyone’s read Master of the House of Darts and wants to post a few reviews on amazon, I’d be very grateful, ’cause I can’t say the book’s getting a lot of attention at the moment…

Finished new draft of short story, “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”. In many, many ways, a horrible story, dealing with languages, the aftermath of revolutions, and colonialism; and a very painful one to write. It’s funny how my process has evolved: I used not to care so much about the contents of my stories, now I feel like I’m being much more ambitious in what I expect of them (complex background, deep characters, and a passable plot); and I end up writing stuff that feels like a failure–because I can never quite convey all that I wanted to in the allotted space…

Though I think that I’ve finally mastered the art of the short scene: before, I wanted scenes to be a complete unit–I would write a scene that held the entirety of a conversation between two characters, for instance, instead of excerpting the conversation. Now I’ve grown ruthless, and I can keep a story like this one under 6k words–not quite effortlessly, but close.

Anyway, a short editing pass is in order, and then I’ll post it up on OWW for feedback before shipping it off. I have a sinking feeling it’s a dismal failure…
(also, this is the last f%%%ing time I write a story that depends on four linked pseudo-Chinese poems, because those are a pain to write. Especially when they have to include planets, and spaceships, and space stations…)

Snippet:

I grieve to think of the stars
Our ancestors our gods
Scattered like hairpin wounds
Along the River of Heaven
So tell me
Is it fitting that I spend my days here
A guest in those dark, forlorn halls?

#

This is the first poem Xu Anshi gave into our keeping; the first memory she shared with us for safekeeping. It is the first one that she composed in High Mheng–which had been and remains a debased language, a blend between that of the San-tay foreigners, and that of the Mheng, Anshi’s own people.

What about you? How has your process changed? Do you feel that as time passes, you can tell more and more complex stories? Do they increasingly feel like failures, or is that just me?

Woke up to find out that Anne McCaffrey had died–I had never met her, but her work meant a lot to me when I was a teenager. At a time when most of the SF I read was male-dominated, it was good to know that girls could be dragon-riders and Harpers and have adventures just like the male protags.
The world is going to be a little less without her in it.

Still moving through the Vietnamese. The area around my screen is now handily covered with vocabulary post-its (down to pronouns now, after doing numbers last week). Currently brainstorming a story about obsolete languages (no relation, I swear), and dearly hoping to keep it short, which isn’t going to be much fun. I seem to be stuck in novella mode lately. Reading-wise, going to tackle House of Silk, the authorised Sherlock Holmes novel, next. Quite curious to see what it’s worth.

Latest cooking experiments: a re-tread of my ginger and chả lụa noodles , with lots of onion, and a bunch of fresh ginger. Bánh cuốn with fried shallots (let’s just say I need to get better at that whole steam-cooking thing, because they came out tasting good, but looking horrible).

More late. Off to write.

And in the midst of various upheavals, I’ve been really remiss in not posting those, but there are a couple of anthologies which include my fiction in them:

–Transtories, edited by Colin Harvey, contains my short pseudo-Chinese story “The Axle of Heaven”. It was the last project Colin worked on before his death, and it’s got a stellar lineup, including Lawrence M. Schoen and Joanna Hall. Well worth a look, whether you knew Colin or not.

-Deb Hoag’s Women Writing the Weird, published by Dog Horn Publishing, contains my French fantasy “Ys”, as well as stories by Eugie Foster and Sara Genge. Lots of neat fiction, but it’s always nice to be showcased.

-And StarShipSofa Stories Vol.3 contains my “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”, amidst a lineup that includes Tad Williams, Joe Haldeman and Peter Watts (*gulp*). You can see the art by Mark Zug here on Google+.

So, the weekend… part of it was spent looking for a crockery dresser, not entirely successfully (the H loved the place we dropped by first, but the prices are about 75% above what we’d be ready to pay for such a piece of furniture). Part of it was spent sorting out papers, using ye old method of “trash most of them, they’re not useful anymore”. I hadn’t realised until I got rid of stuff from my old workplace how liberating the entire process was 🙂 (I loved my old workplace–it had a great atmosphere–; but moving on did me a world of good).

And part of it was spent revising a short story that I wrote over a year ago, “Starsong”. I think I’m done now, though I managed to crash Scrivener rather badly and had to reinstall from scratch. Currently brainstorming for a new project I pitched to my agent–urban fantasy set in Paris, but which has a gaping hole where the words “magic system” should be.

Oh, and we also got a headstart on Xmas shopping–ordered present for 3 people (out of the 7 we have to deal with), checked out stuff for a fourth, and I made my mind about a fifth (the H).

Recent reads: working my way through David Gemmell. I read those when I was a teenager in London, and I was rather afraid that they would not hold up to another reading. But actually, they’re pretty good. I’m really glad that although they feature strong stereotyping (Chiatze=China, Gothir=Persia, Drenai=Greece or somewhere thereabouts, Nadir=Mongols), the author never takes swipes at the various nations: people come in all colours and alignments, and we have as many Nadir madmen as Drenai ones. Also, they’re fairly gender-typed (though there are a few women fighters), but Gemmell never denigrates what women do, and indeed his fighters often find themselves envying women, knowing that the greater courage is on their side. And his heroes are just impressive and memorable, and he never hides that they have terrible flaws, but can rise above them (it’s been rather a lot of years, but I can remember Tenaka and Druss and Ananais quite clearly). All in all, very entertaining and satisfying, and I’m glad I had those around when I was ~16. I’m really sorry I never got to meet Gemmell in person, and tell him how much his books meant to me when I was growing up.

-Elizabeth Bear, New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, and The White City. A series of linked short stories and a novella, all set in an alternate history where the English Crown still has the colonies, and where magic works. It’s very effective urban fantasy, both drawing on the stereotype of the vampire as the ultimate seducer (vampires have groupies who only live for the pleasure of providing the ecstatic gift of blood, and are drawn into various relationships with humans–that run the gamut from patrons to abusers, from friends to walking pints of blood), and it just hits so many small details in a fashion that had me nodding along: for instance, at one point, one of the (rather long-lived) main characters reflects that churches are becoming unfriendly places because religion has changed beyond all recognition, compared to what he remembers from his childhood, and this is SO true. And it has Bear’s usual pretty writing, which flows along effortlessly (even though I’m sure the actual process of couching it onto paper involved blood and sweat); and wonderful and deep characters that refuse to become established stereotypes, and feel very much like real human beings with their flaws and frailties, but also their wonderful capacity for quiet heroism. I’m very much looking forward to the last book, Ad Aeternum.

–Steam-Powered 2, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft (review copy). I’m probably not in the target audience for this, because I’m not particularly fond of romance in general, and a lot of steampunk leaves me cold (the “mad adventure and costume” side doesn’t appeal overmuch to me). And, indeed, the main problem I had with this anthology was that I could predict a lot of the endings: if a story only has two women on stage, and it’s in a book of lesbian steampunk, well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen… On balance, I thought that the best stories in the book were those that moved away from the stereotype of two women falling in love, and dealt with other aspects of the relationship: either further along in time, like Nisi Shawl’s “The Return of Cherie”, or by questioning its power dynamics and putting it into a colonial framework (such as Stephanie Lai’s “One Last Interruption Before We Begin”); or by eschewing the mad adventure steampunk altogether and focusing on much smaller-scale events (Alex Dally MacFarlane’s awesome “Selin that Has Grown in the Desert”, by far and above my favourite story in the book). I also enjoyed those stories with a very different setting and mindset: “In the Heart of Yellow Mountain” by Jaymee Goh is reminiscient of Chinese fairytales and adventures stories, and has a very unique vibe; “Not the Moon but the Stars” by Shveta Thakrar is set in a wonderfully recreated India that brims with lovely cultural details; and Zen Cho’s “The Terracotta Bride” takes Chinese Hell as its setting, deftly dealing with issues of power between the haves and have-nots (your status in Hell being, very appropriately, determined by how many children you had, and whether they’re still burning funeral offerings for you). Overall, even though I didn’t enjoy everything, the book as a whole is definitely worth reading. (and I suppose it says something about me that the stories I enjoyed most didn’t follow the brief of “independence, romance and adventure”, and tended to be written by people outside of the US, or by US POCs *sigh* I’ll go hide away now, promise).

One of the funny things about moving (well, OK, it’s not funny, but you take your fun where you can get it) is the drastic change in rhythms of life. On the one hand, it’s inevitable: the H and I haven’t moved far, but we’re completely changed our commute time, and our commute schedule (we take half as much time, and the trains are much more regular, but tend to be jam-packed in the evening). On the other… it’s a funny thing to see the differences between the suburbs and downtown Paris: we’ve only moved 20-30km, but the “culture”, for want of a better word, is already radically different. For starters, the timetables are very different: things open up early in the suburbs, but also close very early; and I used to have to come home around 6:30pm, because the shops would be closed if I got there later! By contrast, everything is open late in Paris: our butcher and baker close at 8:00pm, the local supermarket at 10:00pm, and we even have an emergency shop that’s open until midnight every day! However, the laws on having the obligatory day of rest are stricter in Paris, which means that very few shops are open on Sunday: the other day, the H and I wanted some DIY supplies, and the closest open shop which had them was in La Défense, technically outside Paris (and bloody far, too).
All of this means… well, people tend to arrive late at work, and to leave late, and I tend to do the same (at the moment, I’m not entirely succeeding because I keep having various errands). Leaving late also means you miss the rush in the metro; and boy, that’s something that I can gladly do without.
And the sum total of this is, of course, that I’m struggling to reorganise. I used to have a day that started early and finished early, leaving me time to write in the evenings. Now my days start later, and also finish later, and I’m still doing the shopping at that point… I also used to take an all-but-empty bus, which was handy for typing out words; but now I take a packed metro where all I can do is read ebooks (you wouldn’t believe it, but it actually takes space to turn the pages of a hardback or a paperback). I don’t like it, but it looks likely that I’d shift some of the writing time towards morning, in order to have some spare time to spend with the H come evening. Something to think about, at any rate.

(I’m not complaining, btw. Pretty sure things are going to work out, but right now I need a little breathing space to think on my process and how best to kickstart it back into shape)

What about you? If you’ve had any moves, have you experienced rhythm shifts, and how have you adapted to them?

For those who were wondering about the French translation of volume 2: Le Cinquième Soleil is indeed due to come out soonish; but due to various delays (everyone was running super tight, including my end of things; and the cover was still in draft stage), the book has been pushed back. I’ll post more when I have extra information.

The book will feature a special introduction by me (well, and the H, who valiantly reread all my anglicisms and rooted them out with a sword); and a super awesome cover by Larry Rostant, the same artist who did the cover for volume 1.

Hum, I think I’ve sort of made progress in Vietnamese–I can sort of pronounce stuff (after 15 minutes of putting myself back in the proper mood). Now, if I could actually separate words properly instead of pronouncing them randomly (you know, like saying “the yel-low cat da-shes a-cross the lawn” in one long horrible run-on sentence makes sure that virtually no one can understand you? I can do that *so* well).
Also, I need to stop confusing “d” and “đ” (one is a “y” or “z” depending on whether you’re Southern or Northern, the other is a “d”), and “t” and “th” (hard. Sort of the difference between a hard French “t” and a soft “th” like “think”, but it doesn’t always work).

Arg. Need to practise more.

In other news, “to eat” in Vietnamese is naturally “eat rice” (ăn cơm), and “to cook” is “to make rice” (làm cơm). Yeah, figures.

Tomorrow, I will edit the crap out of one short story. And possibly do a green mango salad.