The writer took a day off for some administrative formalities–except that of course, we’re having a massive train strike here in France, and the person with whom we were supposed to do the formalities can’t make it to Paris. Well, at least I caught up on sleep, and am slowly catching up on email backlog and stuff.

Got BF’s crit of Harbinger of the Storm yesterday. Basically, lots and lots of problems, but most of these should be small fixes: the basic structure of the novel looks to be sound. I’ll brainstorm some extra fixes, and then go roll up my sleeves and tackle revisions…

Finished a short story for the upcoming Villa Diodati workshop. Temp title is “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”. Set in the same universe as “Memories in Steel, Feathers and Bronze” (upcoming in Beneath Ceaseless Skies), and “Prayers of Forges and Furnaces”.

Snippet:

The god
The weals on Coztic’s back have begun to heal by the time they reach Axahuacan. The marks of the chains on his ankles and wrists–the deep burn lines rimmed with red, puffed skin, encrusted with scabs–haven’t. At night, when the moon rises over the desert, its light as pale as the face of corpses, he shifts in the copper cage and feels pain lance through his limbs, as familiar and as welcome as an old enemy.

The hierarch walks ahead of the cage and of its guards, the metal of its face turned straight ahead. If it thinks of anything–if metal and cogs and wheels can have thoughts–it doesn’t say.

I have three major deadlines at the end of the month (the novel, one other sekrit one, and a work-related one). April is going to be loads of fun…

In no particular order:

-Cheese is considered a gel or a paste and, as such, is not allowed in a cabin luggage. It would be nice if a. They actually advertised this elsewhere than after your luggage got stuck at security, and b. they didn’t make you wait ten minutes while they search someone else’s luggage to tell you this. It would have spared me some careening through the airport trying to get the luggage checked in, in time to make my flight (for the record: I had to plead a bit with Air France, but I managed to check it in about 3 minutes before check-in closed). If I were feeling optimistic, I’d go for c. they should make it easier to check in your luggage with its “illegal” items (of which they are now so many I feel like giving up), at the very least by making it easy to go back to the check-in counters (I had to basically go out the airport and come back again), or even (God forbid) have a checkin counter at security. But, you know, that would be cheating.

-Jetse de Vries throws a mean launch party (but I already knew that). The Shine launch party was filled with good alcohol, good food (the aforementioned cheese), and plenty of awesome people. Got a chance to chat to some UK-based friends, as well as to Ellen Datlow (who was over for Worldcon), and a number of other contributors to the anthology: Gareth L. Powell, Eva Maria Chapman, and Alastair Reynolds (well, strictly speaking, I caught Alastair in the dealers’ room on Monday morning, but it still counts).

-It was good to see people again (in particular to be rooming with Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who is in the process of being co-opted into the convention circuit). Also had many great conversations about immigration, identity, and Asian immigration in particular with a number of people throughout the con (somewhat depressing that countries seemed to become more and more closed to foreigners from the “wrong” parts of the world, but overall it gave me a lot of food for thought)

-Went to a few panels, but not many. I survived my own (the one about Writing in a Foreign Language, which was very interesting, as we had a group of people with very different experiences of English), and I think I made it to two others (one about Clarke, and one about whether there was a time limit on SF novels). Spent way too much time schmoozing and drinking and talking, as usual 🙂

-I am not a night person. Was up early most mornings (8:00am-ish), tried to talk past 1:00am in the evening–and ended up going for what I assumed was a short nap Sunday evening at 8:00pm. Yeah, right. Woke up at 11:30pm and wandered down to find the con winding down. Grr.

-The dealer’s room is starting to be dangerous for me–but not for the reasons you’d think. Going to three Eastercons means I’m starting to know a lot of people, and as a result it was hard for me to wander down the aisles quietly (also, I’m a surprisingly chatty person in the company of like-minded people).

-Goodies. What I love about this eastercon team (same one that put together Eastercon 2008, both most impressive cons in terms of organisation) is that they give a mug in the goodies bag, which is awesome. I also got an extra mug courtesy of Carl Rafala of Immersion Press, who had printed out personalised mugs for all the authors in his forthcoming The Immersion Book of Science Fiction. And in the way of books, I got myself a copy of Ian McDonald’s King of Morning, Queen of Day (great urban fantasy), Mary Gentle’s Golden Witchbreed, Eric Brown’s Helix, Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv’s The Tel-Aviv Dossier (courtesy of the Chizine team), and Daniel Fox’s Jade Man’s Skin, the follow up to the great Chinese/Taiwanese-flavoured fantasy Dragon in Chains.

Well, looks like that’s all I have in the way of con reporting. Eastercon is still one of my fave cons: it’s big but not too big, it’s handy to get to (no transatlantic flights), it’s always very nicely run, and lots of awesome people are there.
So, until Birmingham…

So while I was at Eastercon (brief con report to come), the David Gemmell Legend Awards shortlist came up–and Pierre Pevel’s The Cardinal’s Blades (with cover by John Sullivan and Sue Michniewicz) did a clean sweep, being nominated in Best Novel, Best Newcomer and Best Artwork. W00t, let’s hear it for translated fiction!
(the website possibly has a textual version of the nominees, but I couldn’t find it. I direct you to this post instead)

And, of course, the Hugos were also announced Sunday evening–mega congrats to everyone, but special mentions for Eugie Foster for being on the novelette ballot with her fabulous “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” (first published in Interzone 220); to Rachel Swirsky with her equally fab “Eros, Philia, Agape” (Tor.com. I personally preferred “A Memory of Wind”, which is on the Nebula Ballot, but both are tremendous stories); and, finally, to Tony C.Smith and the StarShipSofa team for making the “Best Fanzine” category.

*happy writer*

My story “Desaparecidos” will be in the June 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy. You can see the cover here on facebook, via Doug Cohen (although “Desaparecidos” features angels, the cover is actually an illustration for the Bruce Holland Rogers story).

I finally get to share a TOC with tlmorganfield–which is so completely made of awesome. This is going to be a collector issue 🙂

Except that the day job has caught up with my brain again.

Seen this morning in the news:
–The Great Bank Robbery (in French): er, it would seem one of our most prestigious banks, a Paris branch of the Credit Lyonnais, was robbed movie-style by a bunch of thiefs who dug into the vault from one of the neighbouring cellars, tied up the security guard, and calmly proceeded to empty 200 safes–before leaving with their loot, setting fire to the whole building so they couldn’t be traced. The friend who pointed this out to me was reminded of Sherlock Holmes’ “The Red-Headed League”. Not entirely inaccurate…
-(via Charles Tan) “Falling from Grace”, a romantic comedy that apparently couldn’t sell in the mainstream–because the main character is Asian, and they’d have had to pigeonhole it under “Asian-American movies”. I have watched the trailer, and cannot for the life of me fathom why the Asian thing would be a problem. It doesn’t even seem like her private life is particularly and spectacularly “Asian” (whatever that would mean) in a way that might possibly disturb the faint of heart–sure, there’s a few specific quirks, but all in all you could imagine the same kind of movie with any colour for the main character, adapting the various sub-episodes. But, because the actress is not White, it becomes a special interest movie.
*headdesk* I think Hal Duncan is right when he calls the whole phenomenon “segregation”: it fits the definition pretty much bang to rights (not the “Black/White” issues, but the larger meaning of separation). It seems to me like a side-effect of quotas: you fit people into little boxes (like “please check the appropriate box: which race are you?”), and then you carry this over into, well, pretty much every aspect of daily life: “if you fit into such and such a box, then you’ll like this–we’ll put it into a special section so you can head right over and be among like-minded people”. And the über-box is for people who don’t check any of those boxes, who don’t have quotas, and who become (or rather remain) the mainstream. It’s scary as heck, from where I stand (admittedly not in the US, and in a country where intolerance has a whole different slew of expressions).

Ok, end of rant, I swear. Back to my Miles Vorkosigan reading (God, those books are so funny it hurts. Poor Miles).

Fellow VDer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s beautiful tribal story, “Hi Bugan ya Hi Kinggawan”, is now online at Fantasy Magazine. I first read it a year ago at VD4 in England, and just knew this awesome piece of prose would find a good home. Go read it!

If not for the Mama-oh’s quick actions, you would have grown up without a mother. With a bamboo tube, and a woven blanket, she captured your mother’s spirit just as it was leaving her body, and so your mother was restored to life.

Your father came to see you when he was told all was well.

He looked at you, and he looked at your mother, then he took you in his arms and he gave you your name.

“We will call her Bugan,” he said.

“A wise choice,” the Mama-oh replied. “The Sky Goddess will be pleased.”

There was a Canyao. A carabao was killed, two pigs were offered up, and rice wine flowed freely.

Read more.

BF and I watched this one this week. Clint Eastwood stars (and directs) as Walter Kowalski, a rather acrid Korea veteran who develops a relationship with his neighbours, a family of Hmong immigrants (the Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia, present notably in Vietnam). He takes the son of the family, Thao, under his wing, and tries to protect them from the depredation of a local gang.

The first two thirds of this are rather good: Walter is a pretty unpleasant character, bitter and casually racist, and the movie depicts rather well the culture clashes that follow as he attempts to cohabit with his neighbours. There’s some nice set pieces, with everyone acting pretty well, and you learn to know both Walt and the Asian family next door.

Where the movie falls apart, though, is in the last third. The “war” with the gangs comes to a head when Thao’s sister Sue (who initially introduced him to the family) is beaten up and raped on her way home, and things go downhill there. Walter concocts a weird revenge plan which basically amounts to getting killed in front of witnesses so the gang can be arrested by the police. What’s really annoying about that is that the movie seems to take it as a given that the police won’t arrest anyone unless a white veteran gets killed. By doing so, it dismisses Sue’s testimony as basically worthless, which is bewilderingly racist or misogynistic, or both. I know accusations of rape are a bit iffy sometimes, but when the victim has been beaten black-and-blue beforehand, I don’t think there should be much of a problem as to material evidence.
And, to cap it all, the last shot of the movie is Thao driving the titutar car along a stretch of beach–without his sister or his girlfriend–giving the viewers a very clear message as to what this movie really is: it’s about Man with a capital M, and virility and general chest-thumping, gorilla-style. The women are just accessories no one gives a darn about. They exist to be protected, to cook and to chatter in the kitchen, to be sisters and girlfriends and facilitators–and to be raped, when the script requires it. Even before the rape, Sue had completely vanished: as soon as she had performed her designated role of introducing Thao to Walter, she becomes insignificant, part of the background–and the rape is just the confirmation of that.

I’m sorry, are we in the 21st Century, or is this still the Wild West?

…I’m going to Eastercon at Heathrow. Starting to feel quite excited, as I’ll have a chance to see people I haven’t spoken to in a while. Sadly not able to take my Friday off as I originally intended, but I still hope to have a good time.

I can haz programming as well this year:
Saturday, Noon-1pm, Hotel Lobby: Open Autograph Session. If you want Servant of the Underworld signed… And if you don’t have the book, I have bookmarks to hand out.

Saturday, 2pm-3pm, 41 (Winchester): Writing in English as a Foreign Language. In which I meet up with Claude Lalumiere again (we were on a panel together on that very same subject at Worldcon–but in French and for a very reduced audience).

Saturday, 6pm, Royal C+D (Edwd/Vic), Book Launch Party – Shine. Drinks, French cheese and other munchies, and the chance to meet Jetse de Vries, Alastair Reynolds, Gareth L Powell and Eva Maria Chapman. Come join us for food and fun!

Otherwise, I’ll be hanging around, probably near the bar. Don’t hesitate to say hi–I should be relatively easy to spot :=)

So, meanwhile, the lack of writing updates… That would be because I’m not doing a lot of that at the moment. I’m catching up on a lot of books I wasn’t reading while writing Harbinger, dabbling in a couple short stories that don’t really want to gel, and reading up stuff on the Internet.

The BF and I have been following Peter Watts’ tribulations with the US system in a state of growing perplexity and anger–as far as I know, we have a sort of “refusal to comply” in French law, but it’s merely the fact of not stopping your car when you’re told to, and it’s punishable at most by 3 months of jail. That hesitating for a handful of seconds or even minutes before complying could land you in jail for 2-3 years is so weird as to be inconceivable (most people in France would laugh at you for suggesting such an idea, and any policeman who beats up a suspect is in big trouble. We regularly have people suggesting custody is demeaning and violates fundamental rights).

In the same vein, we’re very much bewildered by the reasons Cheryl Morgan was turned down when trying to enter the US (byzantine matters that basically boil down to the fact that when the State Department tells you that you don’t need a visa to enter the US, it counts as a refusal instead of a mere “application invalid”). I thought France had a Kafka-esque civil service, but clearly there is worse…

Really hoping things turn out for the best in both cases, but not particularly sanguine this morning. On the plus side, the healthcare law went through (again, the vitriol of some people against a government healthcare system is very much puzzling when you come from a country that has had it for decades. The ones I don’t understand are the women who are against it: men can at least pretend that they’re fit as horses and will never need health insurance for anything, but surely women know they’ll have to get into hospital at some point in their lives–to give birth?) As I said–very puzzled.

-Cheryl Morgan reviews Servant of the Underworld. I’m flattered by the comparison to Liz Williams’ Detective Inspector Chen series, which were a major inspiration (and as to the in-depth study of the society: I would love to write such a book, but it would probably require ten more years, a heck of a lot more research, and some very careful thought in order not to completely lose the reader before I even felt ready to do justice to this. The only book I’ve read which makes an attempt at such a scope is Gary Jennings’ Aztec, but I have a number of issues with it, most particularly its negative attitude towards Aztec religion and human sacrifice, which is annoying when your main character is supposed to have been steeped in said religion since birth)
–quippe at Livejournal, who’s looking forward to the sequel.
-Blushworthy one from jen-qoe on livejournal.
–SFX review, pretty positive altogether.
–Falcata Times likes a lot of things, but hates Acatl’s guts.

I remain fascinated by the range of reactions to Acatl–if he had one fault, I would have said it was his lustreless, wallflower side, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case: he ended up a lot more polarising than I thought. Interesting… (in a useless kind of way)