Quite happy to announce that “La Mère des Nefs” (lit. “Mother of Ships”, except “nefs” has a grandeur to it that “ship” doesn’t quite have in French…), the French translation of “The Shipmaker” will be appearing in the inaugural edition of Orbs, L’Autre Planète, a cross between a bound book and a magazine (“beau-livre magazine” as they say in French). Many thanks to Maxence Layet and Nathalie Barneix and the rest of the Orbs team for the opportun…

…Very very honoured that “Immersion” has been shortlisted for a BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction–and also very very happy to see Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s “Song of the Body Cartographer” is also on the shortlist, as well as a number of familar names 🙂 My deepest thanks to everyone who nominated it, and good luck to everyone! Full list here….

…y in V-space– Minh Ha says nothing. There are no words left, no message of comfort that she could give her. Instead, she takes Sarah’s hand, holds it tight until the last of the warmth has leeched from her body into her daughter’s–and braces herself for the future. # Even in the visitors’ V-space, Sarah looked awful–thin and wasted and so ethereal that Minh Ha wanted to take her daughter home and ply her with rich dish after rich dish to bring som…

…Been remiss in blogging lately, but please go congratulate good friend T.L. Morganfield on selling her Toltec novel The Bone Flower Throne to Dario Ciriello’s Panverse Publishing. While you’re at it, you can pick up her short fiction collection Night Bird Soaring and Other Stories on amazon (including the title story, which was shortlisted for the Sidewise Award)….

…Fund aims to bridge some of that gap by enabling more non-Anglo writers to come to major Anglo cons. The first recipient was Charles Tan from the Philippines, who travelled to the US for World Fantasy Con, and in 2012 the Fund helped Swedish authors Nene Ormes and Karin Tidbeck travel to Toronto for the same convention. If you’d like to contribute to this effort, please go donate here. (if you could signal-boost this as well, this would be much ap…

…1.5L of water, half an onion, 1 knob of ginger, a good teaspoon of five-spice powder, a good tablespoon of instant chicken broth powder, a LOOOT of fish sauce (1 or 2 tablespoons), a 1-inch piece of kombu, 8 shrimp with their shells, and 3 nests of egg noodles. And a dash of sesame oil before serving. Broth heaven. Yum yum….

Andy Cox let me know that he was buying my magical realism piece “The Angel at the Heart of the Rain” for publication in a future issue of Interzone. Always happy to be published in this magazine 🙂 Many thanks to Dom Conlon, Scott Kennedy, Christina Vasilevski and Glen Mehn for the crits–and to the usual suspects Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Tricia Sullivan for the invaluable encouragement and feedback. Snippet: At first, you believe it is only a matt…

…zation. This popular narrative belongs to the dominant culture, to cultures that have conquered and colonized without regard for the consequences to the culture that gets trampled underfoot. I really do wish more people would reflect on this (and the closing remarks of the column) before they so blithely spoke of colonists seeking adventures in space……

…al creatures relationships; neither are we featureless saints exhibited as examples of interracial/interspecies harmony. We are not special, magical or possessed of numinous powers by virtue of our non-white/non-human blood; we are not the tamed Other, made acceptable by an infusion of white blood and white customs, the “safe” option with only a hint of fashionable exoticism and none of the raw difference of “true” foreigners. We are not a handy,…

…ven’t gotten your nominations in, now is the time! My awards eligibility/recommendations post is here. I would add to those short stories already listed: Zen Cho’s “First Witch of Damansara”, a really funny and poignant story of culture clashes, wedding dresses and vampire grandmothers (published in E. Sedia’s anthology Bloody Fabulous, contact Zen directly for a copy; it’s well worth a read) Rose Lemberg’s “Seven Losses of Na Re”, about persecuti…