…ws, I have learnt more vocabulary by translating a fairy tale (Mỵ Nương and Trương Chi). I’m pretty sure mandarin ranks of Ancient Việt Nam are of no practical use, but “hát” (to sing) could conceivably come in handy. Still torn over words like “cung” (palace, temple), ngôi (throne), and “nhan sắc tuyệt trần” (exceptional, divine beauty), but who knows, I might need them some day……

…r becomes replaced by a stream of good American soldiers fighting the evil communists? (or the reverse. Not really saying one is better than the other) -On the same subject, Marie Brennan has a series of posts on Information Density and whether it is possible to educate the reader away from what they know while keeping a narrative going at full clip: here and here I guess that, for me, it all boils down to: worldbuilding doesn’t happen in a vacuum…

…ors and the bodhisattva Quan Âm to find strength, but that it would always come back to that core of dark thoughts within you, that fundamental fright you carried with you like a yin shadow in your heart. (the sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that I used “yin” instead of the more correct “âm”–Vietnamese yin and yang are âm and dương respectively. I would have used the correct words, but since this was a passing reference and was never ever e…

…wanting a huge uncut chunk of pork belly with the skin on were not exactly common… [1] Darn. Last time we moved, it took more than 3 visits to the butcher’s before I got flagged as “that girl who makes the weird recipes with our meat…” [2] Current mood: amused [1] Bit surprised though, because the neighbourhood is fairly cosmopolitan, and I can’t believe I’m the only one in need of that kind of ingredients on a regular basis… [2] It took about a y…

…checked the guidelines for the market I’m supposed to submit this to, and realised I’d misremembered and that it was going up to 10k (I doubt they’re going to be very happy about the 9k, but there’s clearly no way I can cut text out of this. If anything, it’s too short). Don’t have a title yet: it’s called The Turtle’s Citadel after one of the main characters, but it’s a really bad title and I need to change it as soon as my magical title generat…

…For those of you who speak French, this interview of me just went live on Elbakin.net, one of the biggest French fantasy websites. Many thanks to Emmanuel Chastellière for the time and trouble (and extra helpings to fellow Campbell Nominee David Anthony Durham, whose original post on me on his blog brought me to Emmanuel’s attention)….

The H, after we discovered I’m going to have to cut down on dairy consumption due to mild intolerances, “Kind of curious though, most Vietnamese don’t eat dairy. Where do they get their calcium from?” Me, after a quick spot of google and some thought given to the matter. “Well, uh, from seafood and algae and nuts, I guess? And, ha, I think I understand why they eat the shells on the shrimps now!” (I *always* eat my shrimp shells, which puzzles th…

…“Chín người, mười ý”: “nine men, ten opinions”. All I’m going to say is LOL….

Off to a short but well-deserved holiday in Brittany until Sunday late evening. Probably no internet, or at any rate much ice cream, swimming and cycling which will keep me off the Internet. There’ll be no hemi-semi-weekly cooking post on Wednesday, and the posts I had in the queue (on cultural appropriation and engineering in SF) are set back by about a week. Will be back next Monday. If you feel like you need a fix of Aliette de Bodard, may I p…

…Is? Nanomachines?” Me: “Ooh. I like nanomachines. Sold, now I have to think of a plot to go with those. Mmm…” Yup, this is how my SF gets plotted, which kind of explains a lot of things… (I usually get the setting from combining one societal thing with one science/SF thing; however, at this stage I’ll throw in a random element to provide the actual plot that goes with the setting. Lately, it’s been a fairytale motif, go figure)…