So, first off, my many thanks to everyone who entered–I didn’t imagine I’d have so many people showing up for this, and I’m delighted I get to pick the winner from so many guesses.

My thanks also to everyone who signal-boosted this over FB, twitter, or their own blogs, getting an absolutely gob-smacking amount of traffic my way.

Broadly speaking, the guesses fell in two geographical zones: Latin America and Asia. Which, er, is unfortunate, because I’m much, much closer to home: specificaly, in Malta (ex-home of the eponymous order).

So the winner is, by a rather large margin, Kulsuma, who suggested Algeria.

Runners-up: three people suggested Turkey, which is the nearest neighbour. I don’t have prizes for everyone, so my magic hat awards the prize to Shirley.

Khajidu and Benjamin DeHaan, you nevertheless get a surprise runner-up prize.

Congratulations to everyone!! I’ll be sending mails to everyone awaiting a prize, but if your name is on this list and you don’t get email from me, don’t hesitate to nag me.

Meanwhile, I’m back to lounging by the swimming pool…

PS: I do owe you guys an apology for the clues. I did say English was not an official language, and it turns out I was wrong. My bad. I was going in good faith from what the H told me, but I made one assumption too many, as it turns out English is an official language in Malta–just not the one most widely spoken (people speak Maltese. English seems to be mostly for gvt. business). People have varying mastery of it, especially in some of the more remote places…

How is it Friday already?
Oh, well. At least the honeymoon is just over the plateau… (and remember you can win Aztec swag by guessing my destination–you have until tomorrow midnight GMT to enter). I now know where I’m going, and where we’re going to be staying, and let’s just say it’s going to be bloody amazing.

Currently fighting with %%% scripts that won’t cooperate, but that’s just life.

The awesome Scott H. Andrews has reminded me that tomorrow marks the second anniversary of Beneath Ceaseless Skies‘ launch.
I always have a soft spot for BCS: not only did they publish a fair amount of my fiction, they also fill in the hole between plot-driven fantasy and more serious stuff. The prose is pretty, but it doesn’t get in the way of the story. And I’ve yet to find a bad story in there. Scott publishes a great variety of stuff, from Old West to Eighteenth-Century Paris, from China to Medieval London–and there’s bound to be something you enjoy in there.
If you’re just dipping in, may I suggest checking out “The Isthmus Variation” by Kris Millering (creepy as heck, perfectly paced in its reveals), or Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Territorialist” (awesome world building and beautiful prose), among the more recent offerings?
And, of course, there’s the anniversary double issue, which boasts Richard Parks and Tony Pi in its table of contents.

Books read recently:
–Unseen Academicals: the latest Terry Pratchett about the wizards of UU playing football. A lot of the pleasures of the Pratchett books currently is the reccurrence of the main players such as Lady Margoletta, Sam Vimes, Rincewind and the witches, and this one is mostly the same. There’s a couple of hilarious set pieces (the chicken-powered computer is awesome), and the new characters are nice, though not all are memorable (I loved Glenda, wasn’t such a big fan of Juliet, who’s too good to be true, though I got it was the point).
–The Sea Thy Mistress: Elizabeth Bear was kind enough to provide me with an ARC of this one, and I leapt at the chance. The Edda of Burdens is one of my absolute favourite series out there: All the Windwracked Stars had this awesome meld of technology, magic and post-apocalypse, and By the Mountain Bound has all the gravitas and sense of impending doom of the Norse epics. The prose is always a pleasure to read, and there’s a couple of really strong characters (the wolf Mingan, and Muire, the least of the waelcyrge, who learns that she can grow and come into her own). Short, non-spoilery version: the book is made of awesome, and you should go read it and its predecessors. It’s available for pre-orders now; I think it’s not out until Jan 2011.
(more spoilery discussion under the cut)
Continue reading →

OK, looks like the package is actually on its way back to Spain after the delivery failure.
%%% post office. You’d think they’d have come up with a way to warn me that it was waiting 30km from where I lived for the past two weeks…

So, I ordered 6 seasons of Buffy recently, from a Spanish vendor. That was about a month ago. When nothing showed up, I finally contacted the distributor, who sent me the tracking number for the package.

Insofar as I can determine from correos.es, the itinerary went something like this: package left Spain, package went to France, some attempts were made to distribute it (which quite patently failed, since I never actually received it or any message telling me to drop by the post office); and in the absence of any life sign from my part, package went back to Spain. It’s now going back to France for another merry-go-round, insofar as I can tell…

Careful reading of posts which featured people in similar situation unearthed the logic, which goes something like this: the post office provides tracking numbers, therefore you should log in every morning to check where your package is, and nip into the post office to get it if you see it’s there. Last time I tried this, I positively had to seduce the postman to convince him to look into all the packages, since your average French post office sorts packages by day of arrival and not by numbers. Here’s to hoping the situation has changed.

Let’s not even get into the fact that the package doesn’t have an approved French tracking number and thus doesn’t seem to be in the French system at all…

*head-desk*
(though I’m really thankful the distributor paid that little extra for a tracked package, otherwise we’d both be wondering what the blazes had happened)

Well, two rants, actually. It’s been a bemusing kind of day.

Resolutely failed to buy the Lymond chronicles in ebook format (I have the paper editions but wanted to have them handy for, say, holidays). However, my purse balked at paying ten freaking pounds per book for something I essentially already own in another format. (it occurred to me that for the price of three ebooks, I can buy a 16GB card, too. No comments necessary).

And if I see one more American remake of a successful other-language movie, under the pretext that Americans are too bemused to handle dubs or (Heaven forbid) subtitles, I’ll hit something. Hard, and with a spiked iron gauntlet. (this brought to you courtesy of Let Me In and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo).

As per snickelish‘s request, an SFnovelists post on how I tackle research in a story that requires galleons of it–dissecting my alt-history “The Wind-Blown Man” (Asimov’s, Feb 2010).

So, the synopsis for book 3 came back from AR towers with a couple of very perceptive editorial comments. I’ll need to sit down and rework it, but I’m going to start working on it as soon as I’ve finished the current short story.

Temp title is “Master of the House of Darts”, which has the inconvenient of not fitting on a cover, so it’s only a placeholder until I have a brilliant idea for an alternative title. Going to be referred to as MHD/book 3, methinks… Focusing on human sacrifice, the Aztec way of waging war, and Tenochtitlan’s relationship with its neighbours.

Also, I’ve put up the combined character index for books 1 and 2 of the series online (warning, mild spoilers), and the combined Aztec glossary (no spoilers, bar if you want to see what concepts I used in books 1 and 2 🙂 ).

And for those French-speakers among you, Eclipse, the imprint of Bibliothèque Interdite, which bought the French rights to the series, has announced its initial lineup, which most notably includes Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker. Haven’t seen the actual books other than the mockups, but I do like the sober look very much (and they’re not systematically reordering a cover if they like the original version, which is interesting). Also, I’m a big fan of their big shiny banner (see below).

So, as some of you might know, I’m leaving for my honeymoon in a bit more than two weeks. The catch is that the BF/H took the matter very much to heart, and that the destination itself is going to remain a complete surprise until the day we board the plane.

As some of you might also know, my first novel, the Aztec noir fantasy Servant of the Underworld, will be released in the US and Canada on October 26th, in a little more than a month. I’ve always said I was going to do a competition to celebrate the release, but I had no idea what it could be about.

Well, now I’ve got the perfect idea. Take a stab at where you think I might be headed, and get a chance to win a copy of Servant of the Underworld and awesome Aztec swag.

>

Here are the rules:

1. The contest will be open from now until October 9th. You may enter by leaving a comment either at my main website, or at the LJ mirror.
2. Prizes are as follow:
• First Prize: A signed copy of Servant of the Underworld, an Aztec Fifth Sun coaster, and a nifty SoU bookmark.
• Runner-Up Prize: a SoU bookmark, and a signed copy of the February 2010 Asimov’s issue, which contains my alt-hist short story “The Wind-Blown Man”.
3. Anyone may enter, worldwide (bar those few people who already know the destination. You know who you are). You may only enter once.
4. Announcing the winner is a teensy bit tricky, since I might be headed for the biggest Internet black hole ever, but I’ll do my best to post as soon as possible (worst-case scenario, October 24th, when we come back home. I hope it doesn’t come to that…).
5. Guesses may be a country or a more specific area; I’ll tabulate the distance from the boundaries. Winners will be ranked by distance to our destination (if it becomes too hard to judge–ie lots of people with similar distances to our real destination–, I reserve the right to sort out the closest people at random).
6. To help you a bit, the following countries are excluded from the guess list (because it’s been explicitly said by the H we wouldn’t go there): Antigua, Bahamas, Belgium, Egypt, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Morocco, The Netherlands, Seychelles, Spain, USA, Vietnam.
7. I don’t have much in the way of clues other than the fact that there are historical remains there (broadly taken to mean anything pre-20th Century in sufficient quantities). Also, French isn’t spoken there, and English probably isn’t an official language either (I got echoes from websites with horrific English vocabulary and grammar).

There you go–have fun!

PS: I don’t ask for this often, but if you feel like signal boosting… It’s going to be much funnier for me and everyone else if we have enough entries.
PPS: I’ll post pictures of the coaster once I get home. It’s simili-stone with a Fifth Movement Glyph, very pretty. Picture posted.