-I blog over at Futurismic on belief in science vs. religion
-GUD issue 6 is out, containing my Chinese reincarnation short story “As the Wheel Turns” (special thanks go to Chris Kastensmidt on this one, for never stopping to believe in it). You can read a sample here, and get more information about the current issue here.

-Maria Zannini interviews me for the Online Writing Workshop. In which I talk about critique partners, and writing rules (and how to break them)
-The full version of Jenny Barber‘s interview of me can be found in the latest issue of Dark Horizons, the British Fantasy Society magazine.
-And, from now until the 14th of September, I’ll be guest-blogging over at Futurismic, along with fellow IZ authors Gareth L. Powell and Lavie Tidhar. Check out today’s post, which is full of geekiness about rice and rice cookers.

On a more personal note, I am utterly swamped, and finding it difficult to get into much of a writing groove at all. Feeling decidedly cranky about this.

(courtesy of a friend. Click for larger versions. Official pictures might be a little longer in coming)

Exit of the church, with our guard of honour

Close-up on BF and me with our respective parents by our sides

And on the beach, ‘cos it’s a holiday…

And this is where we went for our pre-honeymoon. Three days of relaxing bliss. Real honeymoon in October, destination unknown. Well, to me. I sure hope the H knows 🙂 .

Many many thanks to everyone who came to be with us on this special day; and to those who sent their encouragements and good wishes!

Up to midpoint of season 2. Still a bunch of consistency issues, the worse ones being the ones around breath–if your vampire has no need to breathe to exist, and no way to exercise their lungs, they shouldn’t be able to gasp out; or, when held dangling by way of another vampire’s hand wrapped around their neck, to look as though they’re being strangled. [1]
And Gunn… OK, I’m the first for ethnic and class diversity in series, and the show’s record so far was pretty abysmal (all White apart from the occasional skimpy-clad Chinese demonness who doubles as martial arts specialist *sigh*). But really, did the one Black person on the show need to come from the street, have dodgy connections, and spout off “brother” every two lines? Do the words “bad stereotypes ” even register here?

[1]Also, how are they talking without lungs again? Or, for that matter, bleeding without a beating heart?

Er…
So this is possibly quite silly, but the H and I need someone who can read Chinese. See, we bought ourselves a nice rice cooker from the local Chinatown. What we hadn’t planned for was that although it came with an English instruction manual, it doesn’t provide an explanation of the different settings in a language either of us speaks. There’s a row of white Chinese characters around the central LCD screen (which is meant to be the cooking modes), and a further set of five settings on the LCD screen itself (which is meant to be the rice type, if we read the instruction manual correctly). I have no idea if they’re traditional or simplified Chinese.

Pictures below after the cut. If anyone can provide us with translations, we’d be pretty grateful (it would avoid our messing up dinner by confusing congee, steam-cooking and standard rice cooking…)

EDIT: we’re pretty reasonably sure the white characters are the following (or some variant): regular, quick, small amount, cake, steam, soup, congee, casserole. We just don’t know which ones correspond to which…
Continue reading →

And in the wake of my title-spread for my Aztec steampunk “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”, here’s the complete TOC for Interzone 230, out in early September, with excerpts and art.
I get to share space with Patrick Samphire and fellow AR author Lavie Tidhar. W00t.

The one thing I often get told when I talk about the US/Anglophone dominance of the spec-fic market is some variant of “good translations are expensive, and the market is stretched so there is no money for it”. I’m sorry, that’s just not a valid reason.

Yes, I fully agree that a good translator is expensive. Translating, say, from French to English is more expensive than taking an English author direct. In this we totally agree. But…

But wanna take a guess as to how much a good translator from English into French costs, and how much cheaper it would be to buy a local author? ‘cos it’s known as a symmetrical problem, and we all have the same problems: the literary market is somewhat small (as opposed to TV, for instance), and overstretched.

Most non-Anglophone publishing houses have a fairly large Foreign Rights/Foreign Acquisitions department, which also handles translations. It’s an accepted part of the budget as much as paying authors for books and paying artists for cover art. Most Western Anglophone houses… don’t exactly seem to have the equivalent department. So the “we don’t have any money for translations” thing? Please don’t try to tell me that. It doesn’t stand.

I’ll accept the “there is no market for translations” as a valid point–but then I’ll ask you to start wondering: why is there no market for translations in the US/UK, and plenty in other countries?

The weather is, er, quantum. Very nice one day out of two, hellish the other one (as in, bucketloads of water). Currently we’re at the watery stage. Which, if everything continues in the proper quantum way, promises semi-decent sunny weather on Saturday. Not guaranteed, of course…
I’m at the stage of wishing all of this was over, too…

My essay on non-Western, no-Anglophone SF is now up on the Asimov’s website. Go here to read it.

Last one, for the road… (the BF/H is playing go, and I’m too tired to do anything else)

So, I just got myself a brand new CD, and I was looking at my playlists. I use music all the time (I pretty much can’t write without a familiar sound in the background), and I’ve got a medium consumption of stuff: once in a while, I’ll buy a new stack of CD to have new songs to add to the rotation. By the looks of it, the last stack of CDs I bought was more than a year ago–so it’s time to look for more. I thought I might share some of my favourites, on the off-chance some of you enjoy the same kind of songs, and could point me out to more artists I ought to be checking out. I mainly listen to female singer-songwriters (don’t ask, I have no idea).

-India Arie. First CD I bought for myself, years ago. I liked the first two albums (India Arie and Voyage to India to bits), but I haven’t been as big a fan of the later ones.

-The Innocence Mission. Karen Peris has such a wonderful voice. I don’t have everything by them: some of the old ones are hard to get hold of, and I stopped buying CDs after being somewhat disappointed by And Now the Day is Over, but the new ones sound good.

-Vienna Teng. Her first album had two songs that floored me (“The Tower”, and “Between”); the second one was pretty good, and I was somewhat disappointed by the third one, but I just got the newish one, Inland Territory, and it looks like a return to top form.

-Dar Williams. The first album I bought was The Beauty of the Rain, which is awesome (especially the atmospheric “Mercy of the Fallen”). I now have pretty much the entire backlist, and I’ve just seen there’s a newish album, Promised Land. Shiny.

-Tracy Spuelher. I downloaded a couple free songs from amazon, “Hummingbird” and “Where do we go now”, which I found pretty good–catchy, with good lyrics and a nice mood. I listened to her newer albums, which are even better–and I gave in and bought an entire album off itunes (which I never do, because I hate not being able to transfer music where I want).

So, any other cool singers in the same vein I ought to know about?