…A mistake. Perhaps I would have been better prepared, had I thought of his coming. Read more. (free download at the Hub website) Many many thanks to Marshall Payne for his help on this one, as well as tlmorganfield, tchernabyelo, and everyone else who took a look at it on Liberty Hall (the crits date back to before I got smart enough to record who had critted my stuff for later thanks). And to Lee for prodding me into submitting it and accepting i…

…Tlaloc’s wife (SoU, HoS) Coyolxauhqui (She of the Silver Bells): Southern Hummingbird’s rebellious sister, imprisoned beneath the Great Temple (HoS) Cozamalotl (Rainbow): student at the calmecac (SoU) Cocochi: Mahuizoh’s mother (SoU) D Duality: supreme deity, residing in the Highest Heaven (SoU, HoS) E Echichilli: eldest member of the council; respected magician (HoS) Eleuia (Wish): the abducted priestess (SoU) Eliztac: priest of Chalchiutlicue (S…

…rworld, destination of most of the dead. In Aztec mythology, those who had died in peculiar circumstances–battle, sacrifice, drowning or in childbirth, for instance–rejoined various heavens. The remainder went into Mictlan. patolli: Aztec board game, played with beans as dice. priests: the priestly hierarchy had various ranks, the lowest ones being those of priestly aspirants, and of calmecac students. Then came the novice priests, who served a pa…

…fe, see ebooks). Until a recent post by Tobias Buckell alerted me to the existence of Last.fm. Basically, download the Scrobbler app for Mac, which links to itunes and analyses your recent playing history–and then offers you a choice of “radio stations”: either the stuff by people you already love and listen to (the “library radio”), or mixes between the familiar and guesses as to what you’ll like (the “mix radio”). And, like Pandora, you can like…

…ok), and will be released in July 2012. More details here (not much for the moment other than ISBNs, but there should be some cover art at some point). Costs £13 or $16, depending on whether you’re in the US or UK, and £8 as an ebook, about or less than the price of two volumes–so, if you’ve got fewer than 2 Obsidian and Blood books and want a complete set in a nice package, you know where to head… Meanwhile, if anyone’s read Master of the House o…

…New Year should be a time for familial reunions, ancestor worship, and consumption of an unhealthy amount of candied fruit. But when dragon prince Thuan brings home his brooding and ruthless husband Asmodeus for the New Year, they find not interminable family gatherings, but a corpse outside their quarters. Asmodeus is thrilled by the murder investigation; Thuan, who gets dragged into the political plotting he’d sworn off when he left, is less ent…

…at the bottom of the gardens–what’s left of you, pathetic and small and twisted so out of shape it hardly seems human anymore. The river, dark and oily, licks at the ruin of your flesh–at your broken bones–and sings you to sleep, in a soft, gentle language like a mother’s lullabies; whispering of rest and forgiveness; of a place where it is forever light, forever safe. You do not rest. You cannot forgive. You are not safe– you never were. I blame…

…hinese/Vietnamese kind), ghosts, charms and murders. Content note: no harm comes to the children. (Art and cover design: Ravven) Winner of British Science Fiction Association Award, Best Short Fiction Official blurb: From the author of the critically acclaimed Dominion of the Fallen trilogy comes a sparkling new romantic adventure full of kissing, sarcasm and stabbing. It was supposed to be a holiday, with nothing more challenging than babysitting…

…different than writing. As authors, we stand like Michelangelo before the lump of our incompleted stories, stupefied not by lack of ideas, but by their plethora. An unfinished story is full of potential. It might become anything: an action-adventure saga, a conflicted character story, an incisive satire. It is this potential that dazzles us. And it is this same potential which so often causes us to stumble. A story is defined, not so much by what…

…hild–when she lay in the snugness of her sleep-cradle, listening to the distant noises of station life–the thrum of the recycling filters, the soft gurgle of water reconstituted from its base components, the distant noises of the station’s Mind in the Inner Rings, a vast unreality that didn’t quite concern her, that she couldn’t encompass in words….