Also, now that it’s official: I will be doing a signing at Forbidden Planet London Megastore on Feb 12th, along with John Meaney (to be prolonged by a drinks/food session afterwards). If our company isn’t enough to entice you, you’ll also have the chance to win a replica Aztec calendar at the event (and to be Tuckerised in John Meaney’s next book).

Details here. (if you want to see a picture of the replica stone, go here to the Angry Robot website. And, while you’re there, you can gawk at their latest cover art, for Ian Whates, Maurice Broaddus and Dan Abnett’s upcoming books, which looks stupendous).

So, back from Vietnam. I am officially 100% jetlagged, and propped up mostly by caffeine at this point. Here’s what seems to have happened on the interwebs (regarding my fiction) while I was away:

-Gill Polack offers thoughts on Servant of the Underworld, particularly on why it’s a very male-oriented book (on which I tend to concur)
-Antony at Science Fiction and Fantasy reviews the book:

Servant of the Underworld is an intelligent, involving and very rewarding novel which I have no hesitation in recommendation to one and all.

-Val reviews it at his blog:

An interesting and unusual setting, a well rounded main character (did you ever meet a priest of the dead being the good guy in a fantasy novel?) and a brisk pace. This novel has a lot going for it.

-Couple of reviews showed up at amazon, mostly bewildered by the names (a sentiment I can share, though I have to admit being puzzled by some of the names that gave them pause)
-Over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, you can now listen to the podcast of my story “In the Age of Iron and Ashes” (it’s still up in issue 33 if you want to read it)
-Some love for “The Wind-Blown Man” (incidentally, the February issue of Asimov’s just turned up on my doorstep)

Po Na Gar Temple, Nha Trang

Street of Hoi An

(My camera died halfway through Hoi An–luckily I have my sister’s for the rest of the trip. Also, we’re definitely entering the Internet black hole from this stage on, as neither my grandma nor the friend we’re staying at while in the Mekong Delta will have any Internet connection)

Over at Dave Brendon’s Fantasy & Scifi Weblog, Servant of the Underworld (amazon.co.uk|waterstone’s|whsmith|bookdepository) gets VIP treatment:

All in all, Aliette’s Servant of the Underworld is an incredibly strong and promising debut, showing her talents at full effect – she can create amazing, believable worlds; her characters are solid and relatable, and she knows how to do interesting magic, great action and creepiness in spades. I’m definitely looking forward to Aliette’s next two books – now that the main players have been introduced and the scene set, I can’t wait to see what Acatl gets up to next!

Read the rest here.

Er, wow. I’m out there blushing…

Boats in Halong Bay

Halong Bay from the Amazing Cave

(also, Halong Bay is among the most amazing places on Earth. Four hours each way from Hanoi, but well worth the trip. Canoeing among the rocks is a truly incredible experience)

Temple of Literature, Hanoi

Old City, Hanoi

Your Sunday morning pimpage:
-Fellow WIBite Keyan Bowes has a story up at Cabinet des Fees, “Nor Yet Feed the Swine”, a creepy take on the Curlylocks nursery rhyme. Bet you’ll never see strawberries the same way after reading it…

-Fellow VDer Stephen Gaskell‘s “Aequestria” is in the current issue of Interzone: a neat SF take on colonisation, with a nice twist at the end (and gorgeous, full-colour artwork by Jim Burns).

-And, with some delay because I hadn’t got around to reading it until recently, Angela Slatter‘s “The Chrysanthemum Bride” in Fantasy Magazine, a horror story set in Ancient China, about a vain woman taken to be the bride of the Emperor. You know it’s going to end badly and suspect some of the ending, but you still can’t stop until the end…

(somewhat spoilerish)

So… attempted to watch Twilight yesterday with the BF, in English without subtitles. Gave it up after it became clear the BF was not following the English but could predict how it was all going nevertheless (a particularly hilarious remark was “are you sure Bella’s not a vampire already? I mean, pale skin, Gothic makeup, those kind of all add up, don’t they?” I had to explain the Twilight theory to him, which made him roll his eyes).

Settled instead for The Thirteenth Floor, a movie about guys who run a simulation of the real world and make an extraordinary discovery. Divergent opinions on this one. The BF liked it; I wasn’t so keen. I was ahead of the major plot points by 20-30 minutes. And I’m not prone to rewriting stuff ordinarily, but I thought my first hypothesis about the nature of the world was much more fun than what the movie turned out to be about: the Russian doll’s game of a simulation within a simulation wasn’t nearly as interesting as my theory that the simulation was bleeding into the real world and making everyone act crazy. The “oh, we all live in a simulation ourselves” was… lacking subtlety, I guess?

Still–way better than Twilight (yes, I know. Not hard).

It takes a LOT of time to write blog posts (not the ones where I tell you what I had for breakfast, but those where I discuss a particular topic). My whole week seems to have disappeared into those (the reason they’re not up on my blog is that they’re for guest blogs). So, no novel progress, but 5k+ words on various subjects that caught my fancy.

And, on a completely unrelated matter, in the series of major suckage that makes you want to kick the universe: writer Kage Baker is gravely ill, with metastasized cancer. An update here, and email and postal addresses to send messages and cards (she’s in no state to deal with phone calls, but she could definitely use messages and cards).

Arg.

So, starting from Sunday, I’m not going to be the world’s most available person.

That’s because I’m leaving two weeks for Vietnam with my family. Program includes Hanoi, Hoi An and Saigon. This is the first time I go to Vietnam, and it’s going to feel… peculiar.

Haven’t committed yet, but there’s a very good chance I’ll be taking my laptop (several of the hotels have wifi) and do some occasional email checking. Also, this isn’t going to be the last you see of me by any means, as I’ll be doing a series of guest blogs (more details on that later).