In possibly the fastest turnaround I’ve had from finishing the final draft to publication, you can now read my story “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” in Clarkesworld. Or, if audio fiction is more to your liking, you can listen to the podcast by the awesome Kate Baker. This is the pseudo-Asian SF story with bots, a dying colonial empire, and a prison orbiting a black hole–aka the one where I had to improvise four pseudo-Chinese poems before I…

…vely. The gates themselves were closed. It had not been so when I had last come here; I was no longer welcome. I stood before the gates, ran my hand on the smooth obsidian surface, felt its coldness travel up my arm and seize my heart. “I am Sahague, and I have returned,” I said to the shadows around me. I laid my hand on the panels and pushed. They ought not to have opened. The great gates of obsidian should have answered only to an immortal, but…

…inding Thorns (ebook, audiobook or physical book). It is now available for free online in issue 17 of Uncanny Magazine. Read Online! The Dominion of the Fallen Reading Order (Novels Only) Book 1. The House of Shattered Wings | Book 2. The House of Binding Thorns | Book 3. The House of Sundering Flames | Book 3.5. Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders The Dominion of the Fallen Reading Order (Complete) 0.2. “Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship” | 0.5. “In…

…thing similar? Or maybe just a question of intent? I’m not sure, but I’m uncomfortable with a lot of grimdark because it never even comes close to that level of intensity, while recognising that this kind of intensity in a book is something I couldn’t bear for very long (fortunately it’s a very slim book). -Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings. More a comment than a review, since I’m still working my way through this one. Lots of t…

…days, the phoenix, the phuong hoang, was a sign of peace and prosperity to come; a sign of a just ruler under whom the land would thrive. But those are the days of the War; of a weak child-Empress, successor to a weak Emperor; the days of burning planets and last-ditch defenses; of moons as red as blood and stars as dark as bile.   (for those who are wondering: I am indeed slowly working on the novel, but right now my brain is a bit frazzled and i…

…s that will enable it to generate any kind of wavelength (we’ll worry about miniaturisation later). Basically, I need pointers, because I don’t really know how to start researching this… Thanks in advance!…

…s!) thoughts out there… [2] Think for a moment on what “doesn’t engage the brain” implies, and you’ll realise that a necessary prerequite for this is “doesn’t challenge my deeply-held beliefs/doesn’t challenge the majority view I’m used to”. I’m religious, so anything that is actively hostile to spirituality has a much larger wall to leap in my hindbrain; but this is partly offset by the fact that the (French) society I move is largely atheist, an…

…is a nice machine for writing on and a crap one for making revisions on). This weekend I have a blog post to write, a story to revise, and various other things to consider that I had no brain-space for during the week, in addition to accompanying the H on a supply hunt to Chinatown (aka, where are my 5kg of rice?). Should be fun 🙂…

…And the Joanna Russ fairy said, “If you think that family and love and grief are not inherently important topics, you might as well put some zombies in your Pride and Prejudice and be done with it.” Yes, yes, and yes. (from owlectomy, via starlady38)…

…Fantasy. It’s a fantastic, magical story with Rochita’s wonderful and ethereal use of language. You can get a peek at the illustration for it here. -And now, for something I didn’t crit: Lavie Tidhar’s Osama is available from PS publishing and for the Kindle (US, UK). From the blurb: Osama tells the story of a private detective hired to locate the obscure writer of pulp novels featuring one Osama bin Laden: Vigilante. The detective’s quest takes…