…Just a heads-up that I’ll be in Sussex for four days for the Villa Diodati workshop; there might be wifi there, but I’m not really going to be inclined to keep blogging much… See you on Wednesday 😀…

…rnt my lesson: take chopsticks with me next time I have to cook in a stranger’s kitchen 😀 [1] In case you’re wondering, the actual Villa Diodati workshop was great; I got tons of work done, edited “The Two Sisters in Exile” into submittable form, and made a head start on revising “Immersion”, aka the globalisation piece in space (with social networks! And Vietnamese! And lemongrass chicken!)….

…I guess, and my fingers are crossed it doesn’t fail me again. And I have found my synopsis and my first chapter, so I’m ready to roll! I obsessively proofread the upcoming “Immersion” in Clarkesworld; I think I’ve got everything, but probably I haven’t 🙂 Kind of worried how it’ll come across: I seem to have moved in a new phase where I attempt very ambitious and very personal things, and end up always worried I’ll get something wrong or get howled…

…ly “Immersion” or “The Two Sisters in Exile”, which barely anyone has seen yet!). You can find more information about the event (in Romanian) here [1]. And for those of you who can make it, I look forward to seeing you there! (and, hum, aside from this, if anybody has recommendations on what the H and I should see while in Bucharest, go ahead) [1] I don’t speak a word of Romanian, but google translate tells me it says very blush-inducing things ab…

…ou want to see—eyes that feel too wide, skin that feels too pale, an odd, distant smell wafting from the compartment’s ambient system that is neither incense nor garlic, but something else, something elusive that you once knew. You’re dressed, already—not on your skin, but outside, where it matters, your avatar sporting blue and black and gold, the stylish clothes of a well-travelled, well-connected woman. For a moment, as you turn away from the m…

…venir, because it gets eaten and doesn’t clutter the house). As usual when coming back from a VD, I then had the zombie shuffle, accompanied by a desperate need to sleep, because I had a wedding on the following weekend. Not much productivity; though I did set a world record by selling “Immersion” a scant few weeks after the workshop was over! That’s all from me. Happy five years, Villa Diodati–you’ve been awesome so far, and I have no doubt there…

…Grandma for that one 🙂 Two plus sides: I’m slowly starting to make myself understood by other people; and as a related issue, I’m also reading much faster (obviously, since Mom doesn’t scream every two words that I got the pronunciation wrong). Not really perfect yet, but he, I’ll take what I can get. Funny stuff: I used to have an awful lot of trouble with the descending accent (the one in “nào”) because I confused it with the neutral; now I *st…

…US confirm or infirm that?). Also. Wow. Now that I’m looking at the whole list I’m becoming quite depressed about some aspects of genre. I think I need a stiff tea… Feel free to comment/discuss/disagree below, I’m off to write some novel chapters… [1] Aka: globalisation and the disparity of power it brings, but that’s a whole other blog post! [2] The encroachment of humanity on, say, fae lands goes back to one of the points above: it presents an e…

…got for me, which is fairly good at family interactions. (and yes, “older sister” and “younger sister” are two different words in Vietnamese, so you’re out of luck if you only remember one of them…). I don’t do this very often, but I deliberately picked the names for the story: Galen is the physician, the man who thinks he can fix everything. Tam is Tấm, from the fairytale Tấm and Cám–the resourceful girl who always gets her way in spite of everyt…

…at’s heavily annotated, and it was really interesting to see the notes and compare with the text (not, you know, that I understood more than a few words here and there, but I could see some of how it was all pieced together). Huỳnh Sanh Thông’s scholarship is fairly impressive, and it’s full of fascinating tidbits (also very fascinating to see how the novel echoes the original Chinese work while clearly forging its own specific identity). Also, ev…