About 2 chapters and a bit into Harbinger of the Storm, and already struggling with continuity issues. For starters, I know I worked out all the dates for Servant of the Underworld using my trusty Aztec calendar–unfortunately, I lost the file somewhere in transit between my old laptop and the new mac. Bottom line, I’m rereading the manuscript and hoping for clues that will tell me when exactly everything was taking place…

Also, fun activity of the day: work out maths. If you know the European year for something (say, 1481), and the Aztec sacred day for something in the same year (say, One Movement), what is the European date? It’s trickier than it sounds, mostly because the Aztec system is so weird.

For starters, you have two calendars: one is the solar year, which is 365 days, and, like in most civilisations, is separated into months, in this case eighteen months of twenty days plus five “empty days”.

Then, overlapping it, you have the sacred or religious calendar, which is 260 days long. This is the one that has the cool day names like Seven Serpent, Two Jaguar and so on. It’s the one in which the divinatory records were made, and hence the one in which a lot of the dates come from. It doesn’t really have months: “Serpent” is a daysign that recurs every twenty days. The calendar goes something like this: you have thirteen numbers, and twenty day signs. You increment both simultaneously until you run out of numbers, wrap the numbers around to 1 while continuing to number the day-signs to 20, then wrap that around to 1, while continuing to count the day numbers to 13, and so on…
Simply put, if I use a second set of numerals for the day signs instead, the count goes 1-1, 2-2, … 13-13, 1-14, 2-15,… 7-20, 8-1, etc.
In full names, it goes all over the place: One Crocodile, Two Wind, Three House… Thirteen Reed, One Jaguar. Two Eagle, … Seven Flower, Eight Crocodile… It’s not quite as disorganised as it looks like: the key is not counting the months, but going instead for the trecenas, the groups of thirteen days that go from one to thirteen (in the example above, the first trecena runs from One Crocodile to Thirteen Reed, and the second trecena starts on One Jaguar).

Now, the Aztec Calendar lets you enter a date in Julian or Gregorian calendar, and gives you the Aztec date for this day (in this case, the solar year, the trecena, and the sacred day). The key is then working out where you are in the year, and how far ahead you have to advance to reach your goal of day One Movement in the year 1481 (which is solar year Two House). In practise, I worked out the trecena for the day One Movement, and how distant it was from the trecena for my random date (basically, for the maths geeks, count in increments of 13 modulo 20, which gives you the number of trecenas, ie the number of days, which you then convert back into months).

If that sounds painful and confusing, that’s because it is. But it worked–I now know where in the year the book is supposed to be set 🙂

My story “After the Fire” is now up at Apex Magazine, as part of the special World SF issue edited by Lavie Tidhar. It’s, er, sort of a post-apocalypse story, set in a China where the Empire never fell. Well, sort of set in China…

In her dreams, Jiaotan saw Father: hands outstretched, the flesh of the fingers fraying away to reveal the yellowed, tapered shape of bones, the deep-set eyes bulging in their sockets, pleading, begging her to take him away.

“You’re dead,” she whispered. “Rest in peace, with the Ancestors–watch over us from Heaven.”

But the Ancestors were bones and dried sinews, shambling upright from the wreck of their graves–anger shining in the hollows of their eye sockets as they walked past the devastated gardens, the withered trees, the dried-out waterfalls and rivers. And clouds marched across Heaven, a billowing mass of sickly grey spreading to cut the path of The Red Carp as it rose away from Earth…

The issue also includes Nir Yaniv and Aleksandar Žiljak, and an interview with Maylasian writer Tunku Halim (courtesy of the tireless Charles Tan)

I workshopped “After the Fire” (as “In Our Minds, In Our Hearts”) on OWW rather close to the deadline for handing it in–so many thanks to Mark Hünken, Tom Crosshill, Sylvia Volk and Max Griffin for helping me whip this into shape. And thanks to Lavie for the editing and the title help, as well as giving me the opportunity to write in a genre and a length I don’t often try.

And don’t forget that The Apex Book of World SF has been released, giving you a chance to read “The Lost Xuyan Bride” on paper alongside many other tales from cool writers such as Mélanie Fazi, Jetse de Vries and Kaaron Warren. You can read a sample of the book online, Aleksandar Žiljak’s “An Evening In the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia On My Mind”–as Lavie puts it, a mixture of Boogie Nights and Men in Black.

So, the blog is going dark this weekend, as the BF and I are going to Nantes for the Utopiales. First time ever, and everything was booked on a slightly rushed plan (ie, 15 days before the actual con), so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll have wifi at the hotel, but I don’t think we’ll actually be much at the hotel (I have a professional entry which lets me come in and out as I want, but the BF has a standard one, and he can only enter once. Weird con, if you ask me, but then again my only experience so far has been anglophone cons).

I’m slightly miffed, because a number of people I know are at WFC, including Ken Scholes, the whole Zeno Agency, WIBites Dario Ciriello, Juliette Wade and Janice Hardy (and lots more whom I’d really have liked to see). But one transatlantic con for two people a year is quite enough for the budget, sadly.

Fun experiences of the day: I ordered a book on a German bookstore’s website (volume 5 of the Utena manga, in case you’re curious–I’m not clear why there are so many copies of vol 1-4 around, and vol 5 just seems to have vanished from about every single English website I tried). Since I don’t speak much German, it was, er, interesting… Thank God I did have a few words in my brain, because going only by Google translator would not have worked. Now let’s see if it arrives. The last thing I ordered from Spain never did make it, though I did get refunded.

2,000 words on Harbinger today. Things are heating up (quite literally, in this case).

Busy, busy (a mainstay of my life so far 🙂 )
The big news of the day is that I have (finally) started on Harbinger of the Storm. A bit over 2,000 words so far (had to pause to do laundry, dishwashing and other fun things in the same register). Right at the part where the priests start insulting each other. Should be fun…
And only a bit to go before a fave character walks back in. Darn, I love sequels. It’s like putting comfy old clothes on.

aka very, very busy. Just realised that I’d failed to book tickets for the British Museum’s Aztec exhibition, and that they were disappearing relatively fast (basically, no weekend availability until mid-December). So booked myself and the BF for December 12th, early morning. First time the BF and I go to London, so I can show him all the nice places (giant Waterstone’s, anyone?). Still not sure on the travelling, so we’ll have to do that too.

Also just saw that Quai Branly, Paris’s ethnological museum, was holding a special on Teotihuacan. Is it Mexico year, or something? (not that I’m complaining, just figuring out when we visit with a huge slobbering grin on my face).

I am currently salivating over the catalogue of the British Museum exhibition and the various souvenirs (and the BF is already worrying about how he’ll have to drag me out of the place).

Meanwhile, I have printed out the synopsis for Harbinger of the Storm, and have been rereading Servant of the Underworld and made notes about how to proceed (mostly for character coherence). I’m also rereading stuff about Aztec power and the imperial court. Should be able to start the draft soon-ish…

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to go and fight the laundry into submission (and the ironing, and the critting, and the cooking…)

Books read recently:

• Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides: In the last days of piracy, Jack Shandy is forced to join the crew of pirate Phil Davies–never suspecting that this will lead him on an adventure on the high seas in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth, nor that his path will cross that of Blackbeard, voodoo sorcerers, and a nefarious Oxford professor. As always with Powers, tremendous fun underpinned by a tremendous sense of history and myth. The use of voodoo magic and of the Spanish myths of the Fountain of Youth is particularly effective, and it all comes to an awesome ending. (my favourite character died about halfway through the book, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the rest of the story)
  This is the one that was officially optioned by Disney for Pirates of the Carribbean IV. At the very least, it should have cool plot elements, if they don’t make too much of a mess out of it.
• Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space. Humanity has taken to the stars, and seeded faraway worlds such as Yellowstone and Sky’s Edge. On the isolated planet of Resurgam, archeologist Dan Sylveste conducts research into the extinct race of the Amarantin, extinguished by a freak sun flare before their civilisation could achieve spaceflight. But, unbeknown to him, plans are already afoot to dispatch him–for the truth that lies on Resurgam is far too dangerous to come into the light of the day…
  Written before, but set after the events of Chasm City (and having a cameo by Chasm City‘s main character), it essentially follows the same progression of unravelling a central mystery–this time much bigger-scale than Chasm City. Who or what is moving the various factions around Sylveste? Why did the Amarantin die? And who is Sun Stealer, the shipbound entity that drives people mad? The end did feel like it dragged on for slightly too long, but the worldbuilding is masterful, and the plot is impressively constructed and orchestrated. And it was Reynolds’ first novel, too. I am in awe. (and will go look for subsequent volumes in the series).
• Valerio Evangelisti, Cherudek (French translated from Italian): a really oddball novel, part fantasy, part historical, part SF. The main part is set in 14th-century France, and features pitiless main character Nicolas Eymerich, Grand Inquisitor of Aragon, who has to investigate the odd massacre of English troops by what seems like resurrected zombies. Another thread follows three Jesuits investigating a 20th-Century sleepy Italian city, where bleeding insects and burning men seem to be common hallucinations. And the final one is the narrator, stuck outside of space in some kind of eternal torment. It all comes together in the end, rather efficiently.
  It’s the sort of thing you tend to read in horrified fascination more than out of any real empathy: Eymerich seems to have few emotions except anger, which makes it hard to care for him, and the real tension is figuring out how the threads of the narrative fit together. Much less efficient than the Reynolds in this matter, though: Reynolds’s characters are not his strongest suit, but they are at least sympathetic; here, Eymerich is really a cool, efficient and intolerant bastard. The book, however, is full of neat if dark ideas, which form a strong part of its appeal; and Eymerich’s foil Father Corona ended up drawing most of this reader’s sympathy (I suspect part of the reason the other threads exist at all, other than for structural reasons, is because they feature other characters, far more sympathetic than Eymerich; he’s the kind of character you don’t really want to be with for long). Part of a very successful series in Europe, but I’m not really sure I can stomach another one of those.

(via Cat Rambo and Vonda McIntyre)

Today, October 21st, is the 80th birthday of Ursula Le Guin, and the 40th anniversary of The Left Hand of Darkness. I hope she has a great birthday. I don’t know her personally, but she’s one of my absolute favourite writers, and she changes my outlook on things on a regular basis (starting with A Wizard of Earthsea and The Language of the Night).

Over at the World SF blog, Lavie Tidhar has posted an awesome (and explosive) interview of Ashok Banker, courtesy of Charles Tan.

Exclusive Interview with Ashok Banker

there’s a huge amount of interest in “India” as an exotic foreign formerly imperial domain by western authors and publishers, and this is being milked for maximum profit, often at the expense of an entire culture, with little or no regard for our sentiments or values, and with utter insensitivity and sheer blockheaded ignorance and arrogance.

Brutally honest, but he does make quite a few points I agree with (notably that one above about exoticism, though it’s a tad forceful–I’m not in favour of exoticism, as it’s all too often a pretext to hide a lack of research and a lack of respect for the culture you’re picking from, but I don’t think every SF writer out there choosing India as a setting does it purely for nefarious motives).

So, this weekend, I have been a good little trooper: in spite of a busy schedule (errands to run, plus Sunday spent celebrating the BF’s PhD), I managed to finish the edits on Servant of the Underworld and to send off a synopsis to my agent for Foreign Ghosts. Now I get to angst on my cover (not that I need to worry overmuch, judging from the awesome one AR unveiled for fellow author Lavie Tidhar). Also working on Author’s Notes to go into the book–still waiting to hear on how long those are allowed to run…

I have also been reading Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space (very good so far), and it’s set me thinking a bit about what keeps me reading. Both the Reynolds novels I have read so far rely on the same way of maintaining suspense: you don’t know exactly what’s going on, through a combination of characters not revealing the secrets of their past, of characters having forgotten them (something that happens pretty easily in a universe where you can reconfigure memory at the snap of a finger), and of characters being plain ignorant of the implications of what they’re running into.

Some readers might find this dishonest (especially the bit where you’re not told about things characters know), but for me, it works pretty darn well. It keeps me turning the pages, and at a much faster clip than usual–I’m already halfway through the book, having started it yesterday.

It’s a very peculiar way of maintaining suspense: not through the characters or through the conflicts of the plot, but rather through gradually working out what’s at the story’s core.

It’s also a very SFnal one. This is just an extension of what we do when we ease ourselves into a new universe: we read the story, soaking up information as we go and figuring out the rules of the world on our own, rather than have everything handed to us in an exposition-glut. Except that here, the rules don’t stop at the quarter mark, but go on to encompass the whole story: the story effectively ends when you’ve seen all that underpins the universe in question, explained all the niggling details that didn’t seem to make sense in the beginning.

It’s also an extension of mysteries. When you think about it, the plot of a mystery (I’m thinking old-fashioned ones, not the thrillers that rely on knowing whether the serial killer is going to get the detective before he can be unmaked) also follows that same kind of logic: the story events only make sense once the detective (and by extension, the reader for whom the detective is a proxy) figures out exactly what was going on: who killed the victim, why so-and-so is lying, why extra murders are being committed, why so-and-so has been acting weirdly in the days before the murder… In cases like Revelation Space, you’re effectively removing the proxy: you, as the reader, are the one gradually piecing the bits and pieces of disparate information and working out what the heck is going on.

And, finally, and that’s probably the reason why it works so well: it’s an extension of scientific reasoning. You notice such-and-such a weird phenomenon, and you have very little idea of why you’re seeing it. As your research goes on and you gather more knowledge, though, you gain a better understanding of why it’s acting that way–until you finally reach the point where you can amend the existing laws or apply them to include your new phenomenon. (at least, that’s the ideal. I wish things would work out that way in real life. They do tend to be messier, at least in applied computer science). It’s a typical scientist/engineer paradigm: you want to get at the heart of why things are working that way–in the case of the story, you want to know why everyone is reacting that way, and why things turned out this way.

As I said: not for everyone. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a far more effective way of driving the narration than just conflicts (I’ve never been a big fan of conflicts, unless they’re between two sets of characters I care equally about).

So, a quick Villa Diodati report…

The house

This one was a Dutch co-production, courtesy of Floris Kleijne and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. Floris sadly had to bow out for personal reasons, but he kindly stayed around to ferry us around, and we enjoyed his company for Friday evening and Sunday morning.

The crit room, filled with food

The weekend was, as usual, filled with good food, cooked by Jeff Spock, Benevolent Dictator Ruth Nestvold, and Stephen Gaskell.

Incidents included: a plugged sink (fixed by the heroic Jeff), a rallye outside the house which boxed us for Saturday afternoon (watching cars zoom past the house was somewhat disturbing), and a fall of several tiles following a rather strong storm. Otherwise, though, it was made of awesome. As Ruth remarked, it’s funny how you can throw several writers together and have them get along like a house on fire.

The Surrealist Oracle (random questions, random answers). Highlight: Stephen: “What was your worst pick-up line?” Ruth: “I am the master of the universe!”

The writers present were Floris Kleijne (partially), Ruth Nestvold, Jeff Spock, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Sara Genge (who is steadily taking over the world), Deanna Carlyle, and Stephen Gaskell. We workshopped stories, ate good food, and discussed novel processes. Also, we made a second attempt at producing collaborative fiction, this time with more success (the key, I think, is that the more people there are, the shorter the piece you should try to produce. In this case, a 350-word piece looked about right for 7 of us).

See, the crits aren’t so painful after all…

Overall, tremendous fun, and as usual, looking forward to the next one.