Quynh Ha had expected the Dust Queen to be… tall and large, filling the room with her mere presence. But the woman sitting before her was old and frail–breathing, it was clear, only with the help of the bots clinging to her throat; her skin as pale and translucent as the best jades; the skin of her hands bearing the peculiar tightness of too many rejuv treatments. A story set in the near future, dealing with the terraformation of Mars, the floodi…
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…and drink. The drink is herbs gathered from the surfaces of ponds, tears taken from the eyes of children, scales shed from old, wise dragons. To drink is to forget, for no soul can come back into the world remembering past lives, or the punishments meted out to it within the other Courts of Hell. No soul. Save one….
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…and Nezahual is sweeping the courtyard of his workshop when the dapper man comes in. From our perches in the pine tree, we watch Nezahual. His heart is weak and small, feebly beating in his chest, and sweat wells up in the pores of his skin. Today, we guess, is a bad day for him. The dapper man, by contrast, moves with the arrogant stride of unbroken soldiers—his gestures sure, casual—and he has a pistol hidden under his clothes, steel that shines…
…n), the little details dotted everywhere, and the rich plot, which doesn’t really too much on pyrotechnics to build an affecting ending for everyone involved. One small nit is that Kaede, who starts out as a strong character, becomes progressively more and more of a wimp (she even has to be rescued near the end), which made me want to scream and hit something. ETA (2012): looking back at this with a more jaundiced eye, I still think it’s got good…
…to write the first draft of the manuscript? A long, long time! I foolishly committed to it without any real idea of what writing a novella entailed–I expected something along the lines of a larger short story, whereas the truth is that it’s more like a short novel… I flailed for a long time because I couldn’t get the story structure right, and then I flailed some more because of one of my main character (Quyen) didn’t have a clear storyline. I thi…
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…Stay) -Mass signing afterwards -Saturday 3:15-4:45, London Room 1, Writing real and imagined cities (with Ben Aaronovitch, Suzanne McLeod, Bradley Beaulieu and Stephen Hunt) -Saturday 6:00-6:30: London Room 2, Would I lie to You (with Ben Aaronovitch, Suzanne McLeod, Bradley Beaulieu and Stephen Hunt) -Mass signing afterwards -Sunday 12:30-1:45: Introducing the class of 2015, the trials and tribulations of being a new writer (I’ll sadly have to sk…
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…w do we write about historical characters? Is historical fiction a form of Real Person Fiction if it features people who appear in the historical record? A panel of authors and fans discuss techniques of writing historical fiction and how writing about the dead differs from writing about the living. Food in Science Fiction 1.30-2.45 How do aliens eat? What do they eat? Do they eat at all? Will they want to eat us? Food is essential to human surviv…
…, aswangs and weddings–it’s the visceral and heartbreaking tale of a woman coming into her power. -And finally, J. Damask’s Heart of Fire, the third in her Myriad/Jan Xu cycle of werewolves in Singapore and how they uneasily coexist with Chinese dragons, jiangshi (reanimated corpses) and European fairies, has recently published. I love the mingling of influences in those, and the sense of real place evoked by someone who is a native of Singapore,…
