First off, a big round of thanks to everyone who entered–reading all those Aztec recipes was awesome (and made me really hungry), and it was really interesting to see who your favourite Obsidian and Blood characters were. I hadn’t expected Acatl to be quite so popular, but I guess it makes sense because his is the only POV within the book… At any rate, thank you so much. You made me so proud 🙂

So, the sorting hat has performed its magic, and the winners are:
1st prize: Lee Hallison
2nd prize: starlady38
3rd prize: Cécile Cristofari, who hit about every way to get points 🙂

I’ll be in touch with the winners to get them their prizes.

So, in order to celebrate the impending release of Master of the House of Darts (small reminder: you can see the trailer here), I’m holding a little competition.

Prizes are as follows:

–1st prize: your choice of EITHER:
-a glyph artwork (it’s from Guatemala I think), which will look fabulous with a frame and hung upon your wall, a signed copy of Writers of the Future XXIII, which has the very first Acatl short story with the original Marcus Collins artwork, and a signed copy of Master of the House of Darts.

OR:

-a signed copy of Writers of the Future, a signed copy of Master of the House of Darts as above, and a tuckerisation. I will put a character with your name (adapted for correct ethnicity if the story requires it), and a few telling details in the next work I tackle. I’m hoping it’s Unclean Spirits, the Foreign Ghosts sequel, but if the series doesn’t sell and I never end up writing the sequel within a reasonable amount of time, I’ll shift it to an appropriate novelette. In addition, you will also get a sneak peek at the Vietnamese space station novella.

–2nd prize: whichever of the two prizes above the 1st place winner doesn’t choose.

–3rd prize: your choice of signed book, either Writers of the Future, Servant of the Underworld, or Harbinger of the Storm.

The rules are as follows: I will put everyone’s names in a hat, and draw at random. Your name gets put in the hat as many times as you have points. Get points in the following manner (they’re all cumulative, so you can do several of those things at the same time):

1. 4 points for creating and posting your favourite Aztec-inspired dish (a few hints here, and you can also google “Aztec food” for plenty of other websites. Basic staples include maize, cactus, turkey, various spices and chillies, and cacao beans). I will NOT judge how authentic the recipe is, or even check to see that it’s eatable, but mainly how creative you are!
(however, do not try to sell me a hamburger as your favourite Aztec food…)
ETA: sorry, wasn’t clear. Post the Aztec dishes in the comments of this post or its LJ mirror.
2. 2 points for telling me, in the comments, your favourite character in the Obsidian and Blood books, and why. There’s a handy list of characters here if you’ve forgotten their names (which can always happen with Nahuatl tongue-twisters…)
3. 1 point for simply commenting, either on this blog post or on the LJ mirror
4. 1 point per repost of this on FB, LJ, Twitter, etc. (comment with a link to the post(s)/RT and I’ll credit you).

ETA: sorry, my brain went on holiday… You have until next Tuesday (Nov. 1st) to enter.

This is open to anyone, wherever you are in the world–so get cooking and reposting 🙂

So, first off, my many thanks to everyone who entered–I didn’t imagine I’d have so many people showing up for this, and I’m delighted I get to pick the winner from so many guesses.

My thanks also to everyone who signal-boosted this over FB, twitter, or their own blogs, getting an absolutely gob-smacking amount of traffic my way.

Broadly speaking, the guesses fell in two geographical zones: Latin America and Asia. Which, er, is unfortunate, because I’m much, much closer to home: specificaly, in Malta (ex-home of the eponymous order).

So the winner is, by a rather large margin, Kulsuma, who suggested Algeria.

Runners-up: three people suggested Turkey, which is the nearest neighbour. I don’t have prizes for everyone, so my magic hat awards the prize to Shirley.

Khajidu and Benjamin DeHaan, you nevertheless get a surprise runner-up prize.

Congratulations to everyone!! I’ll be sending mails to everyone awaiting a prize, but if your name is on this list and you don’t get email from me, don’t hesitate to nag me.

Meanwhile, I’m back to lounging by the swimming pool…

PS: I do owe you guys an apology for the clues. I did say English was not an official language, and it turns out I was wrong. My bad. I was going in good faith from what the H told me, but I made one assumption too many, as it turns out English is an official language in Malta–just not the one most widely spoken (people speak Maltese. English seems to be mostly for gvt. business). People have varying mastery of it, especially in some of the more remote places…

The awesome Jenny Barber interviewed me for the British Fantasy Society. You can find excerpts of the interview here at the BFS website: the full interview will be published in the next issue of Dark Horizons (the magazine of the BFS).

Also, if you scroll down to the very bottom of the interview, you’ll see you have a chance to win a copy of Servant of the Underworld–so hop on over there to get yourself some Aztec-y goodness 🙂