…ut it up on OWW for crits, and waiting for the inevitable complaints about density. (to be fair, it’s very very dense, and I didn’t even get to cram enough food in it [1]). *sigh* I shall now go back to my novel and browbeat it into submission. So far, it hasn’t exactly been cooperative… [1] All stories should have food. It improves the plot immeasurably. Also, it compensates for those times when I’m typing on my computer and can’t have more than…

…Via xanthalanari and j_cheney: learnt that KD Wentworth passed away from complications related to cancer and pneumonia. I… um, am pretty much speechless. She was always generous with her advice, and did a beyond-excellent job of being the first judge for Writers of the Future, as well as an awesome teacher and a great writer. Gaaah. The world sucks….

…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 😀…

So… I never thought I’d ever say this, but it’s the second time in less than a month that I find myself cooking in a kitchen that’s not my own, and I have to say you don’t realise how well-stocked your kitchen is until you run into one that’s… less well-stocked? I was cooking for VD [1], and the things I missed the most were, by order of decreasing importance: -chopsticks. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m absolutely useless as a cook wit…

…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…

…y 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 about me and my fiction……

…expatriation in non-Western countries. Also, it has a plot that centres around a Vietnamese restaurant and a dish of lemongrass chicken 🙂 Thanks go to the Villa Diodati crew (Ruth Nestvold, Sylvia Spruck Wigley, Floris M Kleijne, Stephen Gaskell, John Olsen, Nancy Fulda); to Glen Mehn for volunteering to read it even after I told him it was unkind to White males; and, above and always, to Rochita Loenen-Ruiz for inspiring this and so many other th…

…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…

…… Bonus point for UFs in which the vampires/fae/werewolves remain a secret community, and people who don’t know about the existence of such communities are still not racist… Yeah, like that’s a realistic depiction of the world. Equally puzzling is that in the far future, humanity will magically have become this homogeneous mass that has let go of cultural conflicts. Honestly, so far we’ve shown remarkable capacity to pick new sets of prejudices as…