Second installment of Author’s Notes, this time for “Shipbirth” (in the February 2011 issue of Asimov’s).

Hmm, first off, this one requires an apology: the tonalli, the life-force according to the Aztecs, is of course not located in the heart but in the head. I realised I made this mistake only after the issue of Asimov’s went to the printers, when it was already too late to correct this.
The Aztec medicine system was fairly complicated, admitting the presence of no less than three entities in the body: the tonalli (in the head), which is the lifeforce, and, when chased out of the body by a fright or a spell, can result in catatonia; the teyolia (heart), which is the closest to what we think of as a soul (in particular, it’s the part that survives into the various afterlives), and the ihiyotl (liver), which is more numinous. See Mexicolore for more information, if you’re interested.

(more after the cut, though spoilery)

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So… in 2010, I published 9 short stories, 6 novelettes (one in collaboration with the inestimable Gareth L. Powell), and 1 novel.

I don’t keep as much track of my writing as I used to, which is really bad, but I wrote the following:
–Shipbirth (novelette)
–Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders (short story)
–Exodus Tides (short story)
–The Shipmaker (short story)
–Harbinger of the Storm (novel)
-Various non-fiction pieces, including “Science Fiction in Non-Western/Non-Anglophone Countries”, and three pieces for SFnovelists.
–Starsong (short story, currently in redraft)
-Nameless book 3 of Obsidian and Blood (56,000 words out of a projected 110,000)

A great year for sales and publications, but not so much for writing (see below for explanations of why). Hope to do better next year.

In non-drafting news, I got married (part of the reason for the non-productivity, since this was fun but a timesink for both my family and me); attended Eastercon and two Villa Diodati workshops (both in Germany), was translated into French and Romanian; and picked up for Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best SF.

So, apparently there’s a series of books about Genghis Khan and his descendants, written by Conn Iggulden . The first book was released in the UK as Wolf of the Plains, which is nicely evocative.

In America, they’ve titled it Genghis: Birth of an Empire. Just, you know, in case you don’t get it’s about Genghis Khan, or if you don’t have a clue who this guy named Genghis Khan was and that he would later rule one of the greatest empires in the world…

*headdesk*

Well, it’s traditional by now…
Blog going dark for a few days.

Hope you all have a fantastic Christmas for those who celebrate it, and see you next year!

(yes, Japanese Virgin Mary. Not exactly representative of the majority belief system in Japan, but isn’t she awesomely pretty?)

-Paul Cornell on ebooks: some terrific points (the one on reader vs. publisher expectations on hardbacks was one of those “oh, of course” moments). Well worth a read. And, if you read this blog, you should know I’m cheering on for point 14, and adding a few choice words specific to those poor, benighted people like me who want to read in one language different from the authorised one in their region. At least with DVDs you get a choice of subtitles. And dear God, point 16–yes. Definitely point 16. If I have to pay for an ebook, I want a proper table of content–at the very least.
-Courtesy of Roberto Quaglia (and Ian Watson, who was doing the filming at the time), the video of last year’s Eastercon panel on “Writing in English as a Foreign Language” (with Roberto, Gérard Kraus, Anna Ferruglio Dal Dan, and Claude Lalumière, who actually was with me on the exact same panel at the 2008 worldcon–except it was in French 🙂 )
-And now for something lighter (via Lee Harris and Mark Charan Newton): automatic Daily Mail headline generator. As Lee says, not quite 100% accurate, but still scarily on the mark.

Off to wrap the last Christmas present now. See you later 🙂

…if you’re going to put foreign words into an English book/movie/etc., can you please make sure the aforementioned foreign words are actually part of the language you’re purporting to transcribe?

Because, let me tell you, reading or hearing French that fails to take into account the most basic grammar (as in, gender of words and/or article use) doesn’t fill me with glee and enthusiasm.

(we can then move on to poor word choices, but I’m willing to cut a little more slack here, even though those things tend to sound like nothing a Frenchman would ever say).

Current mood:

cranky

…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).

Wasn’t sure how public this was, but apparently people have already been announcing their own acceptances over the Internet. So…

Gardner Dozois has picked up my Xuya story “The Shipmaker” (which is in the current issue of Interzone) for his Year’s Best.

Er, wow? Particularly pleased, as this was the first story where I attempted to put Vietnamese on the map of my alternate universe–there aren’t that many Vietnamese main characters in spec-fic[1], and it’s high time I did my bit to remedy this.

If you need me, I’ll be in the corner, jumping and squeeing…

ETA: and it looks I get to share a TOC with Yoon Ha Lee’s “Flower, Mercy, Needle Chain”, which is one of the absolute best SF stories I read this year. W00t.

[1]There’s plenty of Vietnam War stories, which tend to be told from the American point of view–so not really fitting the billl. Plus, while the war was definitely traumatic for the country, it’s not the only thing that defines Vietnamese culture…

In an effort to widen my reading habits, I was looking for examples of novels with well done non-Western futures (“well done” varies depending on your mileage, of course, but mostly what I wanted was books where the main characters didn’t feel like Europeans with slightly different names and better costumes).

I have read (and enjoyed) China Mountain Zhang, River of Gods, Brasyl, most Octavia Butlers (the Xenogenesis trilogy, the Parable duology, and all the Patternists) and am eyeing The Dervish House, Midnight Robber, the David Wingrove Chung Kuo series, and Who Fears Death.

Any others I should know about? Thanks in advance!

So we’re watching Farscape season 4, which definitely has its ups and downs–and we’d be more in the downs right now. Among my (many) sources of irritation is the way Crichton refers to the child Aeryn is carrying as “my child, my DNA”–which is so darn utterly selfish.

Why on earth is it so difficult to acknowledge that the being in Aeryn’s womb belongs to both of them?

And it’s struck me, even as I was ranting against this, that there are an awful lot of series/movies which feature precisely that trope: the male character finds out he’s going to be a dad, and runs after the woman while continuously referring to the future child as his and his only. Way to respect the mother, dude.

Current mood:

angry