…ards finalists, aka I’m floored again; and just for a contrast, VarietySF’s take, which basically lists “Shipbirth” at the bottom of the list as completely incomprehensible and unreadable)…

…e Hung, more than twenty years ago… Chock-full of meaty details, of plot twists, and (more importantly) of good food. I’ve got the next volume, The Black Powder of Master Hou, which is set in Hạ Long Bay. Sounds nice. In other news, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and go running, in an attempt to do some sport. I’m learning lots of things about our new neighbourhood–so far, I’m down to three Asian groceries (a mostly-Chinese one, a mostly-Vietname…

…econd-person present tense written in the point of view of an AI in a futuristic London. Here‘s the complete TOC, and that of the supplementary chapbook, Fire–it all includes stories by Lavie Tidhar, Kaaron Warren, Adam Roberts, and Harry Markov. This is the one I workshopped on OWW in a bit of a hurry: many thanks to Oliver Buckram, Brent Smith, Larry Pinaire, Hugo Xiong, and Christine Lucas for their input! Snippet: At first, you make it easy fo…

…) level of spousal support in this household 😀 Now I’ve got the BSFA shortlist to read before Eastercon, and the voting for the Nebulas to sort out before, er, end of March? I’ve downloaded the Nebula Voters’ packet: I’ve read everything except the novels and the novellas, so that’s next (and the novel shortlist is very tasty, plenty of stuff in there I wanted to check out. Big advantage of being a SFWA member is, first, that I get those in the vo…

…An Apology. Due to the fallout of the ceremony (and the fact that several committee members were angrily accosted late at night in the bar, which is not a very pleasant experience), they’ve had a spate of resignations. They’re short of people now, for various reasons. If you want to volunteer, now would be a good time. ETA: fixed this, as fjm pointed out that I had been mistaken. -Foz Meadows on Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men. I’m actually not c…

…rts is up against The Wise Man’s Fear in Book Spot Central’s Annual tournament: vote early, vote often, etc. (especially since I suspect it’s going to take me a miracle to reach the second round given the competition…) Meanwhile, I think I have a first scene for the book, except that it doesn’t have enough magical fireworks. Will go add them in….

…… In the process, I reorganised my website a bit, and moved a few pages around (hopefully nothing traumatic), as well as set up missing pages (*cough* Obsidian and Blood omnibus *cough*). And the weekend was meant to be spent looking at my US taxes, but this has come to a halt because the H is acting as some kind of virus incubator, and is therefore not entirely up and about… At least I have brainstormed more Jade in Chains, and am currently readi…

…y preceding the consonant, which explains why I could never work out a consistent system (I naively expected that one consonant=>one pronunciation). To give you a couple of examples: -“-p” (like in “tập”: volume, tome, episode): mostly sensible, pronounced like a “p” -“-ch” (like in “thích”: love, like): always pronounced “t” -“-t” (like “tết”: New Year, “một”: one, “cắt”: cut) much less intuitive. If after “i” or “ê”, pronounced “t” (except for t…

…Still brainstorming and researching the history of Paris. And still tentatively making changes to the blog to have better recipe formatting: apologies, it might look a little broken down for the next week or so. And started counting down to Eastercon. Wow. Can’t quite believe it’s so soon….

…fashionably late), and I used the opportunity to drag him to Chinatown Olympiades for the first time, one of the biggest Chinese restaurants in the XIIIe (which turned out to be kind of busy a Saturday at noon, lol). I introduced him to their dim sum menu (which is extensive compared to what you get in a lot of Paris Chinese restaurants), and we had a very pleasant meal altogether. Afterwards, we joined the queue of people in the Asian food store…