And my own Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best SF: I have four (?!), for “After the Fire” in Apex, “Dancing for the Monsoon” in Abyss & Apex, “In the Age of Iron and Ashes” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and “Ys” in Interzone. Rather amusing that only one of those is SF 🙂

Your daily Aztec dose is this review of Servant of the Underworld. Not so much with the liking, but the book is being handed to someone else, so still pretty good 🙂

In other news, just a heads-up that the H and I are headed to Brittany to my parents’ until Wednesday, and that I won’t have internet access there. (but there will be tanning. Well, I hope. Currently I go all lobster rather than gracefully brown).

(there’s a scheduled blog post at the beginning of this week, too–just in case you’re wondering how it is that I manage to post without internet access…)
(I swear, next week there’ll be bona fide content here–with planned stuff on steampunk and Aztecs)

–Rochita Loenen-Ruiz has a great story in the new issue of Interzone, “Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life”, about exiles from Metal Town and the expatriate life of a woman unlike any others. I read two versions of this, and it kept getting stronger. I have no doubt the final version is going to kick some serious ass.

-Friend Christopher Kastensmidt gets interviewed by MG Ellington over at the Apex Blog about his fantasy series set in colonial Brazil, The Elephant and Macaw Banner.

-Many friends get HMs in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction (the HM section is visible on amazon.com). Notably Rochita Loenen-Ruiz for her horror SF “59 Beads”, T.L. Morganfield for her alt-hist “The Happiest Place on Earth”, Sara Genge for her much-noted gender exploration “As Women Fight”, Juliette Wade for her first professional sale “Cold Words”, Stephanie Burgis for her quiet frontier fantasy “True Names”, J. Kathleen Cheney for her family Chinese fantasy “Early Winter, Jenli Village”, Marshall Payne for his gonzo SF “Sausages”, and the unstoppable Mary Robinette Kowal for basically every short story she published in 2009. And others, too (my eyes started to cross after a while)–and many other familiar names. Slowly and inexorably, my f-list is taking over the world.
(I have mentions too, but I’ll save them for another post, the point of this one being shameless plugging of awesome people I know).

It would seem my short story “The Dancer’s Gift”, my story published in the Spring 2008 issue of Fictitious Force and repackaged as part of my short fiction sampler for the Campbell, has garnered an Honorable Mention on the long-list Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year from Nightshade (there’s a shorter list of 50 HM that’s in the book and that I didn’t make).

Er. Wow. The full list can be found here. It includes Patrick Samphire, Angela Slatter (who’s got a whole host), Sarah L. Edwards, Colin Harvey, J. Kathleen Cheney, Gord Sellar, Lavie Tidhar, Cat Rambo, John Brown, Mary Robinette Kowal, Lon Prater, James Maxey, Maura McHugh and Elizabeth Bear. (hopefully I didn’t miss anybody)