Stuff I’ve enjoyed recently:

• Stephen Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen (at book 6 now, trying to justify the expense of buying book 8 )
• Girl Genius (a fun Hugo-nominated comic, featuring Mad Scientists, a kick-ass heroine, and armies of evil robots)
• Pride and Publishing: why editors are like suitors
• Slowly but steadily getting back into the short story swing: rewriting a collab story with weird aliens
• Ordering the (almost) complete Battlestar Galactica (missing the last season, but it was such a bargain we can buy the last season later)

Stuff I have not so much enjoyed recently:

• The leak in the kitchen ceiling, which has resulted in the pain peeling away, plus various water-related damage (and the bit where it doesn’t stop isn’t cool)
• General fatigue, spurred on by the workload
• Matlab, mex files and the %%% syntax rules for those, which don’t allow anything beyond ANSI C. Code compiles fine in Eclipse, but not in mex, which is ironic when they use the same compiler… (obligatory geek bit # 1)
• Fighting with php to put my latest blog post on my homepage. Ended up retrieving my own rss feed (obligatory geek bit #2)

Finally got myself motivated to download the Hugo Voter’s Packet. Wow, lots of good stuff here. Even discounting those books I’ve already read (Acacia, Thunderer and Little Brother), there’s still plenty to sink my teeth into. I’m becoming an adept of Stanza, nifty software that allows me to read ebooks on my ipod. Not optimal in a sunlit bus, but kind of neat all the same.

I’ve seen that the ballot is now online and that you have until the 3rd of July to vote. Almost finished the short fiction; now I need to get cracking on the novellas and the novels… (and boy, does it feel very weird to see my name down there for the Campbell, even if it’s not a Hugo).

The packet includes three of my short stories (“The Lost Xuyan Bride”, “Obsidan Shards” and “Autumn’s Country”); I’ve also reordered stuff on my website to put stories directly online (the Packet ones, and two extras, in addition to the stuff I’ve published in online zines).  I’m still looking for a way to list subpages within a post (I’ve found the wordpress syntax, but it seems to be working only in the sidebar).

I also have an author page up on Facebook, mostly following the example of Gareth. I suppose every little bit helps 🙂

And, as said above, I’ve finished up my Cambpell reading by the two novels I’d ordered a while ago: Thunderer and Acacia. Two very different beasts: a urban secondary-world fantasy with hints of Dickens and fabulous worldbuilding (indeed, the city of Ararat itself is as much a character as the people passing each other on the street), and an epic fantasy of political intrigue, a clever reflexion on how history is written by the winners until even the old myths become forgotten. For my money, I preferred Acacia, mainly because I’m a history buff, but both are pretty good books.

Currently working my way through Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori, superlative fiction set in a world inspired by Medieval Japan. Very well-researched, very well-written, and obviously told by a master.

And, since I’m between novels at the moment, I’m hammering away at an alternate history that involves a lot of weird science. 3000 words in, halfway through.