…the forest. I paused, disbelieving. She had left us, many years ago, to become a hermit. She had abandoned both my husband Nayen and me, and we had never heard from her afterwards. We had thought her safely ensconced within the forest, weathering monsoon after monsoon in some crude hut, serenely meditating on the gods of the Triad. And now she was walking towards me, as if she still belonged in my house. She had changed. Her hair was white, her f…
…Just a heads-up that Athena Andreadis’s fabulous anthology of female scientists, To Shape the Dark, is now available from Candlemark and Gleam. Contains my Xuya short story “Crossing the Midday Gate”, about intergalactic plagues, vaccine developments, and the cost of pride and principles… Where to Buy Candlemark and Gleam Amazon US (paper) Amazon US (ebook) Amazon UK Buy Now…
…eping Pearls is a finalist for Best Novella “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” is a finalist for Best Short Story My deepest thanks to everyone who thought my work worthy. The complete list of finalists is here–it’s got some great stuff/people on it so why don’t you check it out if you haven’t already?…
…that list (Black Wolves!)–if you’re so minded to drop by, it’s here. (I’m really pleased at that, because part of the reason I’m writing epic fantasy is because I found David Gemmell’s books as a teenager: The King Beyond the Gate and Tenaka Khan made a profound impression on me, and I subsequently devoured all the other Gemmell books I could find in libraries. I was really sorry I came into the UK SFF scene too late to meet him and tell him how…
…Just in time for the weekend!…
…cinating how many empresses Russia had in the Eighteenth Century, when you compare it with the other European countries”. A quick foray into Wikipedia revealed that out of three Empresses, two had seized power through military coups, and that the third had been designated as figurehead Empress, but soon decided the Privy Council was an inconvenience, and established an autocratic regime of terror to make sure no one would get in her way… Uh. Women…
…l-war Paris not being a really friendly place *grin*). More details here….
Snippet: This is the room where The Snow like a Dancer dies, year by year and piece by piece. When they wheel in the cradle where she rests, she always thinks–for a bare, suspended moment–that it will be all right, that it will all end well–and then nausea tightens around her, and the white and stark walls seem to press down on her, unbearably sharp, a faint memory of Third Aunt and Cousin Lua asleep, and the incessant noise of machinery monitori…
…storms on a particularly unpleasant planet. This is the story for which I brainstormed important life milestones on Facebook–many thanks to everyone who answered, and especially Kari Sperring for coming up with the “huge climatic event” that inspired this story. Thanks as well to Stephanie Burgis who helped me fix the ending. Also, I hadn’t actually thought I’d ever dust off Kepler’s Laws for short fiction :p (as in actually jotting down numbers…
/snark on So, for his birthday, I gave the BF a shiny present: the gold edition of Age of Empires III by Ensemble Studios. It included this nifty-looking set of extension called “The War Chiefs”, and “The Asian Dynasties”, which add Native American and Asian civilisations to the game, respectively. Now, the basic principle of AoE III is that each civilisation has a home town, and a great leader: the French have Napoleon, the Ottomans have Suleima…
