…n (at least), a glorious retelling of the Tristan and Yseult legend. With battle scenes, magic, and you know, sex scenes 🙂 I read bits and pieces, and Ruth excels at making the past come alive, as well as giving life to a variety of complex and sympathetic characters. Check it out! It’s only on amazon (KDP exclusive)….

…etail, but this year was disastrous for me in terms of productivity. I did complete Master of the House of Darts, but then things ground to a halt, and I wrote very little short fiction for a good eight or nine months. Things started tentatively looking up again in September, after the move: I finished 3 pieces of flash fiction, and completed or extensively revised 4 short stories (“Breath of the Nine Dragons”, “The Bleeding Man”, “Starsong”, and…

…, of course–and you’re obviously free to say if you didn’t like it). First come, first served. I’ll sign and personalise them if you so require. Memo: you don’t have to have read the previous books in the trilogy to make sense of this one; it’s a standalone like an episode of a crime series, though obviously character arcs get wrapped (last book of the trilogy, yadda yadda). Post here or in the LJ mirror if you want to give a copy a good home. Goo…

…yone will agree with me RE copyright laws, piracy and ebooks. Feel free to comment/argue/refute in the comments. This is very much something I would love to hear discussion on). [1] I know, it’s a complicated problem from a business point of view, especially with the permeability of boundaries: it was fine to set prices in the US for the US; and then to deal almost on a case-by-case basis on export problems, but today the market and the demand hav…

…for instance, which seems the majority vote). The truth is, like most accidents, this was a combination of improbable and serious events that led to the plane plunging downwards, and it’s impossible to pinpoint which incident “crashed” the plane. They all did: had even one circumstance gone differently, the plane would still be there. But people prefer the single-factor explanation. It’s simple. It makes sense. Why look for more? Except, of cours…

…rch the contents of Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction on Amazon.com, and, hum, in addition to publication of “The Shipmaker” in the volume itself, I have 4(!) Honorable Mentions: for “Father’s Last Ride” in The Immersion Book of Science Fiction, “Desaparecidos” in Realms of Fantasy, and my two Asimov’s stories, “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” and “The Wind-Blown Man”. Particularly happy for “The Wind-Blown Man”, which was a hassle to writ…

…nd very much NOT your average urban fantasy. Plus, we definitely need more Brits trying out their hands at this sort of thing (I for one am getting tired of all those US settings and mindsets, and very much welcome stuff like Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London/Midnight Riot, and Suzanne MacLeod’s Spellcrackers.com). So, if you feel like checking it out, now’s the time… I’m off to preorder my own copy….

…d would still like it to be considered, please email me (slushmaster@gmail.com) and tell me the name of your story. It will save Shawna the trouble of reading a story that has since been withdrawn. It also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to let me know you’re officially withdrawing your story or that you’ve already sold it elsewhere. So here’s where you come in, Internets. Blog about this. Tweet about this. Facebook about this. Help us ou…

…Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction (the HM section is visible on amazon.com). Notably Rochita Loenen-Ruiz for her horror SF “59 Beads”, T.L. Morganfield for her alt-hist “The Happiest Place on Earth”, Sara Genge for her much-noted gender exploration “As Women Fight”, Juliette Wade for her first professional sale “Cold Words”, Stephanie Burgis for her quiet frontier fantasy “True Names”, J. Kathleen Cheney for her family Chinese fantasy “Early W…

…emons, conniving high priests and generalised political plotting. Oh, and more ahuizotls, because fingernail-eating monsters always make everything better. Pre-order on Amazon.co.uk|Amazon.com|Barnes and Noble|Book Depository|Amazon.fr And while I’m at it, another (very nice) review of Servant of the Underworld at Cold Iron and Rowan-Wood….