The indefatiguable Charles Tan interviews Jetse de Vries as part of a series on World SF. More interviews to come, all week long.
And friend Marshall Payne interviews Angela Slatter (frequent Shimmer contributor, awesome reteller of fairytales) over at the Super-Sekrit Clubhouse–interviews, funny cartoons and more.
My story “After the Fire” is now up at Apex Magazine, as part of the special World SF issue edited by Lavie Tidhar. It’s, er, sort of a post-apocalypse story, set in a China where the Empire never fell. Well, sort of set in China…
In her dreams, Jiaotan saw Father: hands outstretched, the flesh of the fingers fraying away to reveal the yellowed, tapered shape of bones, the deep-set eyes bulging in their sockets, pleading, begging her to take him away.
“You’re dead,” she whispered. “Rest in peace, with the Ancestors–watch over us from Heaven.”
But the Ancestors were bones and dried sinews, shambling upright from the wreck of their graves–anger shining in the hollows of their eye sockets as they walked past the devastated gardens, the withered trees, the dried-out waterfalls and rivers. And clouds marched across Heaven, a billowing mass of sickly grey spreading to cut the path of The Red Carp as it rose away from Earth…
The issue also includes Nir Yaniv and Aleksandar Žiljak, and an interview with Maylasian writer Tunku Halim (courtesy of the tireless Charles Tan)
I workshopped “After the Fire” (as “In Our Minds, In Our Hearts”) on OWW rather close to the deadline for handing it in–so many thanks to Mark Hünken, Tom Crosshill, Sylvia Volk and Max Griffin for helping me whip this into shape. And thanks to Lavie for the editing and the title help, as well as giving me the opportunity to write in a genre and a length I don’t often try.
And don’t forget that The Apex Book of World SF has been released, giving you a chance to read “The Lost Xuyan Bride” on paper alongside many other tales from cool writers such as Mélanie Fazi, Jetse de Vries and Kaaron Warren. You can read a sample of the book online, Aleksandar Žiljak’s “An Evening In the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia On My Mind”–as Lavie puts it, a mixture of Boogie Nights and Men in Black.
Over at the World SF blog, Lavie Tidhar has posted an awesome (and explosive) interview of Ashok Banker, courtesy of Charles Tan.
Exclusive Interview with Ashok Banker
there’s a huge amount of interest in “India” as an exotic foreign formerly imperial domain by western authors and publishers, and this is being milked for maximum profit, often at the expense of an entire culture, with little or no regard for our sentiments or values, and with utter insensitivity and sheer blockheaded ignorance and arrogance.
Brutally honest, but he does make quite a few points I agree with (notably that one above about exoticism, though it’s a tad forceful–I’m not in favour of exoticism, as it’s all too often a pretext to hide a lack of research and a lack of respect for the culture you’re picking from, but I don’t think every SF writer out there choosing India as a setting does it purely for nefarious motives).
Two novels by friends have recently come out:
Come back to the Named Lands in this compelling sequel to Ken Scholes amazing novel Lamentation.
It is nine months after the end of the previous book. Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo’s first-born child. Jin Li Tam, his wife and mother of his heir, lies in childbed.
As the feast begins, the doors of the hall fly open and invisible assassins begin attacking. All of Rudolfo’s noble guests are slain, including Hanric, the Marsh Queen’s Shadow. And on the Keeper’s Gate, which guards the Named Lands from the Churning Waste, a strange figure appears, with a message for Petronus, the Hidden Pope.
Thus begins the second movement of The Psalms of Isaak, Canticle.
Young Talen lives in a world where the days of a person’s life can be harvested, bought, and stolen. Only the great Divines, who rule every land, and the human soul-eaters, dark ones who steal from man and beast and become twisted by their polluted draws, know the secrets of this power. This land’s Divine has gone missing and soul-eaters are found among Talen’s people.
The Clans muster a massive hunt, and Talen finds himself a target. Thinking his struggle is against both soul-eaters and their hunters, Talen actually has far larger problems. A being of awesome power has arisen, one whose diet consists of the days of man. Her Mothers once ranched human subjects like cattle. She has emerged to take back what is rightfully hers. Trapped in a web of lies and ancient secrets, Talen must struggle to identify his true enemy before the Mother finds the one whom she will transform into the lord of the human harvest.
Now go forth and read. I know I will 🙂
Time for Villa Diodati again: starting from tomorrow, I will be sharing a house with Sara Genge, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Stephen Gaskell, Ruth Nestvold, Jeff Spock, and Deanna Carlyle
(and Floris Kleijne, albeit briefly, as Floris is currently awaiting the birth of his first child and can’t make the whole weekend). As usual, we will eat like princes, share gossip and learn from each other.
However, the house does not come with an internet connection, so expect to see very little of me on the web until Monday (there might be a brief interval of connectivity while I’m in the Thalys, as they have wifi). Blog’s going dark again.
Meanwhile, if you happen to be anywhere near London on Saturday, my publisher Angry Robot is having their UK launch party at Forbidden Planet from 12:30 onwards. Authors like Colin Harvey, Dan Abnett and Andy Remic will be there to sign books and answer questions (the AR crew will be there too, as well).
(I only found out about this after VD was already booked, otherwise I would have had to think long and hard which of the two events I was going to…)
Hum, it would seem to be plug day…
Check out the trailer of Stephanie Burgis‘s upcoming A Most Improper Magic:
Stephanie is holding a competition with a Regency pack as the main prize (and “Everything’s better with highwaymen!” buttons). Check the rules here!
Big congratulations to Written in Blood crit buddy Janice Hardy, whose middle-grade novel The Shifter has been released today!
Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker—with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healers’ League apprentices, Nya’s skill is flawed: She can’t push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she’d be used as a human weapon against her own people.
Rumors of another war make Nya’s life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she’s faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?
The book is also featured over at John Scalzi’s blog at The Big Idea, where she talks about the genesis of the novel and of how to salvage bad ideas. Go check it out (and buy your copy if you’re lucky enough to be in the US. Me, I’ll have to wait until amazon ships mine…)
You can go over to Janice’s series blog if you want more information; or to her writing blog, where she has regular posts about writing, rewriting, editing and the publishing process.
In the tradition of SF Signal‘s Mind Melds, the World SF blog is hosting a series of round tables by authors. The first topic, “On environment and background”, just went up, with answers from fellow AR author Kaaron Warren, fellow Shimmer author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Vandana Singh and me. Thank to Lavie Tidhar and Charles Tan for starting this!
In other news, Lavie Tidhar’s World SF Blog is moving over to WordPress. So if you want to keep receiving the latest news about World SF (and I’d definitely recommend you to, because it’s chockfull of fascinating overviews of SF in the non-anglophone world), here’s where you should go:
http://worldsf.wordpress.com/
LJ syndication (not entirely sure this is working yet)
Lavie has also posted something I should have thought of earlier: Elisabeth Vonarburg’s planned GOH speech for Worldcon, which is a very interesting overview of her relationship with English. Read it here.
My name is Elisabeth Vonarburg and I don’t speak Klingon.
I do speak English, though, more or less. But just in case, I brought my Faithful Igor, who will translate the less intelligible parts if needs be.
In fact, I love the English language. I loved it first, and learned it much on my own because it was the language of Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (whom I didn’t know was a Canadian and a Montrealer, at the time, when I was living in France. In that respect, France is not very different from the States : lots of Canadians get lost in the shuffle. Hey, they speak & write in English, don’t they ? More or less.)
Today is the release day for fellow Angry Roboter Colin Harvey‘s Winter Song:
The planet had fallen off the map.
When Karl Allman’s spaceship crashed, he had only one question:
“HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE?”
Rock-hard SF adventure. No one here gets out alive.
FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Starship Crash / Abandoned Colonists / Alien Slaughter / Hell Planet]
I haven’t read it yet (will order it with next month’s amazon budget), but I had the good fortune to read a draft of Colin’s next book, Damage Time (also coming from Angry Robot), and I can tell you that Colin excels at dark, atmospheric world building, as well as the handling of a strong, diverse cast in unusual situations. Go check it out! (or, failing that, go congratulate him here🙂 )
