Via Andy Cox, the title spread for my upcoming “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders” (forthcoming in Interzone 230, the very next issue).

Er, wow? I am *so* glad Interzone is back to full colour. It looks awesome! (plus, mechanical men. And fallen gods. And Aztecs. You can’t really go wrong with any of those).

The awesome Jenny Barber interviewed me for the British Fantasy Society. You can find excerpts of the interview here at the BFS website: the full interview will be published in the next issue of Dark Horizons (the magazine of the BFS).

Also, if you scroll down to the very bottom of the interview, you’ll see you have a chance to win a copy of Servant of the Underworld–so hop on over there to get yourself some Aztec-y goodness 🙂

Mark Harding’s awesome music-themed anthology, Music for Another World, is now available (here on the Mutation Press website, or on amazon). It includes my novelette “Silenced Songs”, as well as contributions from friends like VDer Stephen Gaskell, LJ friend Vaughan Stanger, Neil Williamson, and Jim Steel .
You get discounted shipping if you order via the Mutation Press website, BTW.

Also, Carl Rafala’s The Immersion Book of SF is available for pre-order on amazon. It contains my story “Father’s Last Ride”, aka the one with aurora riders and weird aliens. Sharing a TOC with Tanith Lee (I will not hyperventilate I will not hyperventilate…), Lavie Tidhar, Gord Sellar, Chris Butler, Gareth Owens, Eric James Stone, Jason Erik Lundberg and Al Robertson . (OK, I’ve just realised I know, in one way or another, 70% of the TOC. Wow).
ETA: apparently, The Immersion Book of SF already ships from some booksellers like Barnes & Noble.
ETA2: it would seem the cover is inspired by my story. *speechless*

…to the reader-hivemind: if I call a soldier a “knight”, does this mean that he *has* to have a horse or be mounted on one?
The equivalent French and Spanish words are “chevalier” and “caballero”, which are formed from the root of “cheval” and “caballo” respectively, suggesting that possession of a horse is imperative. “Knight”, insofar as I can see, doesn’t have that connotation, but maybe it’s irreversibly acquired it by now?

Currently watching Angel (in Spanish, in an effort to keep my vocab up to date. So far, I’ve learnt lots of moderately useful words such as “stake”, “coffin”, “demon”, but you never know, I might need them somehow). I like the show, but the mythology is sometimes… particular. As in, you don’t want to dig in too deeply, because things might crack.

For instance, crucifixes and holy water are clearly harmful to vampires, whether they’re ensouled or not. But, conversely, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for Angel to stroll into a church, which is a. consecrated ground, b. the house of God (ie, the origin of the powers invested in crucifixes in the first place), and c. in a deliberate crucifix layout, like most traditional churches (the nave and the transept forming a rather characteristic shape…).

Interesting…

Mostly on non-writerly things, alas–including tables, mass booklets and tracking down of those last few guests who hadn’t yet answered us. Deluge continues. Hoping to have a quieter weekend with Juliette Wade, who is visiting Paris, and with my grandmother.

Books read: The Golden Key by Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson and Kate Elliott, which was awesome. A trans-generational tale of a Renaissance world where spells can be set in paintings, and where paintings are used to document everything from treaties to victories. An over-ambitious painter, Sario, discovers forbidden magic and sets about to remake the world, with disastrous results. Reminded me of all the stuff I loved in art history; I also loved the focus on women and how the kind of power they wielded evolved with time, as the world moved towards a more equal system.
Currently reading Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, which is mindless fun, but pretty well done.

And in other news…

Almost done with the tables–now for the actual table plan… I think we’ve sorted out most of the printing problems, even though we still have to drop the booklet at the printer’s.

Actual writing: er… Does research count? Preparing a story to complete the “Shipbirth/Shipmaker” set of stories, still not sure where it’s going other than the fact that it involves transport ships.

Reading: opened a random book taken from the library (Tess Geritsen’s The Apprentice), which had a serial killer raping and kidnapping women. Suppressed an urge to hurl it at the wall, and closed it. I really need to find a decent thriller that doesn’t have a serial killer torturing women in it, before my faith in the crime genre falters altogether…

And your Vietnamese word of the day is mặt trời: “the sun” (lit. “the face of the sky”). Meanwhile, I’ll go back to practising my tones. Still can’t get the level tone right (you’d think it would be the simplest one, but it seems I can’t maintain my voice level at all).

As part of her ongoing series of short writer/editor interviews (which have included fellow AR author Kaaron Warren), the lovely Angela Slatter asked me five questions. Find out what my favourite literary character is, and whether I prefer donuts or danishes here.

Calling on the combined wisdom of readers of this blog…

Would anyone happen to know good recipes which involve tortilla flour? (not tortillas, obviously :-p. We don’t own a tortilla press, and it’s a bit too much of a hassle without one).

Thanks in advance!

H and I are preparing the signs for the tables at the wedding reception. Just so you see the context: there are 24-25 tables, and every one of them has a name so people can find it. All the tables have related names, what is called the “theme” of the wedding (for instance: species of goldfish, islands, famous doctors[1]). Every table has a 4-page leaflet on it for orientation purposes. The first page bears the name of the table with about two paragraphs of explanations (example: if all the tables are named after famous doctors, every table has two paragraphs of doctor biography), and the inside has the menu (which comes in three flavours: French, English and French children’s menu).

Me: “So we’re agreed on this, I’m sending the layout to the parents so they can comment on it.”
H: “Yup, looks good to me with this colour choice.”
Me: “And then I’m stopping until we have the green light from them. I still have to write 23 bits of text for every table, and if we change the layout I’d have to go over all 24 documents and change the layout for every single freaking one of them. *pause* It’s kind of a shame you can’t apply a global layout across documents.”
H: “I bet you could use a Python script to generate an RTF file according to your specifications.”
Me: “I don’t speak Python. Maybe VBA? *pause* Hang on, theoretically, all we’d have to is look in the master document, find the anchors where the bits of text are, and then do a standard substitution from the command line, using sed or something like this…”
H: “…”
Me: “You’re right. Let’s not go there.”

[1]I’m not spoiling the “theme” of the wedding until we get closer to the date. You’re free to guess, though :=)