Had a lazy weekend, which involved much writing, eating Russian food (thanks to a friend who made us discover borscht, dressed herring, pierogi, and grilled pork), and of course Vietnamese food (a rather copious shrimp curry, thanks to my grandma).

Entering my second-to-last week of the job; also, entering French summer, which means everything suddenly is going very slowly, and people are unavailable… (frustrating). On the plus side, this week is the annual picnic of the department; I volunteered for salad. I hesitate to make bò bún, but I think I’ll go for a more classical French or Italian dish, if only because leftovers are more easily recycled.

In other, more exciting news, slowly filling in the holes on the novella, and answering a couple questions about the French translation of Harbinger of the Storm. The new novel project is going to be, er, an old one, ie revising Foreign Ghosts [2] before it is sent out. (with a side order of brainstorming sequels).

*rolls up sleeves*

[1] Apologies for the inevitable spelling/usage mistakes: I’m doing my best to retranscribe from Cyrillic, but Russian is nowhere near my native language…
[2] Foreign Ghosts is the Xuya novel. In the words of the blurb I wrote a couple years ago:

The year is 2009–but the world is profoundly different. China’s discovery of America before Columbus has given rise to a West Coast ruled by Xuya, the former Chinese colony. Now, instead of San Francisco, the bustling metropolis of Fenliu is Xuya’s second-largest city, where Irish-Americans walk side by side with Aztec warrior-spies, and the vermillion-painted houses of Xuyan gentlemen-scholars contrast with the grime of Inca clan-compounds. Transportation is done by aircars and maglev trains; and technologies such as network sockets, communicators and weapons are routinely implanted into human bodies.

In this bewilderingly foreign world, PI Jonathan Brooks is desperately looking for a way to fit in. His latest gamble was to rent a flat in one of the posher Xuyan areas of town–but it backfired with the flat turned out to contain a cache of illegally imported mummies. Expropriated and considered a suspect, Brooks must discover the truth and clear his name before he is arrested and tortured.

But Brooks’ hurried and careless investigation may have unintended consequences: Fenliu is a city of many cultures, perpetually poised on the cusp of dislocation, and the racial riots of five years ago need only the flimsiest of excuses to flare up again…

You might have noticed I’ve been particularly distracted and/or busy lately. I wish I could say all that energy had gone into actual writing, but not so much…

Without going into gory details (there’s a bunch of things I’d rather save for private consumption), what I can say is that we have some big changes afoot. Namely, I’m changing jobs; and we’re moving flats, in order to be closer to where I will be working (and to my family).

It’s the moving flats that’s proving to be time-consuming, as we’re renovating the new flat pretty much from top to bottom, and of course you always spend so much time looking up what stuff you want to put there (and packing boxes).

At any rate, if you’ve been wondering, that’s where we are now; and why the attention span hasn’t been happening so much lately.

But I’m also in a position to confirm that both the H and I will be at Worldcon this summer. Looking forward to it; I’m on a few program items, and there are loads of friends I haven’t seen for a while there, too. We’ll be touring North California for a week or so before, doing the usual tourist stuff.

So… the humongous rice cooker has among its many functions a “cake” setting, and I’m intrigued… Any good recipes for rice cooker cakes? Are we talking about regular cake baking, or steam baking, or something in between? (I ask because I’ve got a bunch of recipes for steamed cakes, and was wondering whether they’d work)

Inquiring minds want to know 🙂 (well, OK, the H said he didn’t want to know, but I reckon it’s worth a try)

To Stéphanie Nicot (organiser of the French con Imaginales among many other activities), and her companion Elise, for tying the knot yesterday at the town hall of Nancy!

(you can actually see them both here, via big French daily Le Figaro, which covered this because of the–somewhat crazy–legal situation: homosexual weddings are still not allowed in France, but since they didn’t allow Stéphanie to change gender on the records, I guess it sort of worked out. Sort of…
ETA: don’t look at the comments on the article if you don’t want to get depressed at the general state of human tolerance and intelligence…)

It’s 6am in DC, and obviously I’ve been up for 30 minutes…

And it’s a very special weekend, which is tangentially related to our wedding–one of our friends gave us a shiny smartbox for a romantic getaway, which we booked for this weekend (the better to go around the countryside picking up lilies of the valley, the traditional gift to hand around on May Day). Destination, a very quiet place where we shall visit churches, walk in the surrounding countryside, and play boardgames (I favour Chang Cheng, a neat game of placement the H and I got for our engagement party but never really had time to try out. But we also have Atlas & Zeus, Dracula, and the perennial favourite, Settlers of Catan the Card Game).

Oh, and start planning out the novella, because I’ve finally worked out what the science fiction bit is (yes, I had a space station, but it’s always a good idea to have more worldbuilding elements to throw into the pot. Plus, it’s nice to have a space station, but I need to find out what it’s doing there and what its purpose is). Now all I need, in addition to sorting out my worldbuilding, is a decent plot (I already have a good 70% of the cast). Kind of puzzled by the novella form, I admit; I never wrote one before, so I’m unsure of how much complexity the story can bear. Guess we live and learn…

I’m reading Thích Nhất Hạnh’s commentary of the Lotus Sutra, and was struck by the following sentence:

“Buddhism is a living reality, and living things are always growing. A tree continually grows more branches, leaves and flowers. In order for Buddhism to stay alive, we have to allow it to develop.”

It’s about Buddhism and its different branches, but I’d be tempted to replace it by any religion. It gives… interesting results if you substitute Catholic religion here–resistance to change is one of the main things which I’m not so fond of in the current Catholic church. I recognise it’s not easy to keep the core of a religion and to allow it to move forward at the same time; but still, that quote struck me as right. Something that is widely practised and believed with fervour has to change, or it will ossify.

A thought for me to munch on, as we enter Good Friday and the final part of the leadup to Easter.

In less philosophical considerations, I’m leaving tonight for Eastercon. Hope to see some of you there. And yes, I have cookies. Chocolate is involved, too–come to the signing on Saturday, or the reading on Sunday for tasty bits…

Diana Wynne Jones is dead. Ugh.

The first book I read of hers was “Charmed Life (aka Ma soeur est une sorcière), in its lovely first French translation with cute line drawings. I later turned back to her while living in London as a teenager (and feeling a teensy bit bluesy)–discovering and loving all her books. Lately, I’d started reading the Chrestomancy books again, and finding them just as awesome as they’d been years ago.

As Chaz says “Books are magic, but apparently not magic enough”. I alternate between saddened and wanting to kick something.

…has struck again. I walked out of my house this morning to find a thick layer of snow on the ground; and immediately went back upstairs, to get my moon boots, a thicker pair of socks, and a backpack in which I stuffed my normal shoes (moon boots are well and good, but they don’t exactly make for a fashion statement).
You might wonder why. Well, see, the trains were running fine. The buses were not. I could get to my train station fine; however, that still left about 4km to walk. Uphill, in a snowstorm.

I made it, but it was a good 50 minutes, and I had definite similitudes to a snow(wo)man by the time I arrived–my backpack and I were covered in a thick layer of snow, and my gloves were starting to be on the wet side.

Fortunately, in the evening some of the buses were running, which allowed me to walk only 15 minutes before I caught one that was going to the train station.

Here’s to hoping tomorrow isn’t the same…

In the meantime, some links:
–Joe Sherry reviews Servant of the Underworld; Becky LeJeune does the same.
-Various people on the interwebs have also reported they’ve received ARCs of Harbinger of the Storm.
-The official TOC for the Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection. Among the awesome choices, there’s a few stories that have definitely stuck with me this year: Yoon Ha Lee’s “Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain” (Clarkesworld), Nina Allan’s “Flying in the Face of God” (Interzone), and Peter Watts’ “The Things” (Clarkesworld).
-And, in case you happen to speak Romanian, the translation of my essay “On Good Stories” has been posted on the Romanian SF & F society’s website (thanks to Cristian Tamas, as usual, and to translator Adina Barvinschi).

%%% The snowpocalypse has struck.
Have I mentioned my workplace is up a series of two hills? Buses are failing to run that particular route (and about 80% of Parisian routes, in fact).
Luckily, I got some work documents and will peruse them at home.