“The Bernoulli War” appeared in the August 2012 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

A funny thing happened on the way to the publisher…

No, really. This story was all but accepted in mid-2011, but there was some issue with the way the characters were named. Originally, I used strings of characters from various writing systems: Khmer, Chinese, Hangeul, Greek, Roman, Sanskrit, and so on.

For example, the iterations of the major Bernoulliae character in the original were named things like:

• Bernᑝ-佳-䷟-‫פֿ‬
• Bern 牛-微
• Bernᑝ-平-Ѥ-Ͷ
• Bernᑝ-平-Ѥ-Ͷ1

“Empty of Words, The Page” appeared in Black Static 27, the February/March 2012 issue. I’ve been a fan of the magazine almost since its beginnings (I missed a few issues at the start), and I am proud that Andy Cox gave the tale a home there!

One of those things that’s very hard to get a handle on in writing — much more, I think, than in music — is the effective development of a unique, highly personal voice. Some of my writer friends somehow quite naturally seem to have done it (or maybe they just make it look natural), though even they sometimes need to push it to make it grow in new directions.

This story appeared in the anthology Shine, released 30 March 2010, and edited by Jetse de Vries. It was written specifically in response to de Vries’ call for near-future, optimistic SF. An excerpt of Sarging Rasmussen is available here, as well as other stories in the anthology; if you like what you see, information on the many ways to get a copy can be found here.

I have been interviewed by Charles Tan in relation to this story. There’s lot’s of background on this story there, so check it out. However, I will list off some of the texts and media that influenced the story, at the end of this post.

“Of Melei, of Ulthar” appeared in the October 2009 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, which was thrilling for me. (And even better, it appeared on the Locus 2009 Recommended Reading List! And got an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection, and was on the long-list for the British Fantasy Awards 2010!)

The story was also reprinted in Ross Lockhart’s Lovecraftian anthology The Book of Cthulhu II in September 2012.

“Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands” appeared in Apex Online‘s issue for February 3rd, 2009. You can read the story here, or pick up the anthology in which it was republished, titled Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol. 1, edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth.

This story received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 2009 (Vol. 2), and in Gardner Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection.

Reviews:

“This is a vivid, engrossing tale, told in wrenching detail. Its subject matter is brutal, but its heroine rises above her situation with a strength and grace that is apparent in her voice from the beginning.”
– Kimberly Lundstrom (@ The Fix)

“Dhuluma No More” is the second story I’ve published in Asimov’s SF so far, and if I have my information right, it’s on newsstands now. (The Fictionwise eMagazine edition is up as well.) The advance notice of its forthcoming publication (in the September 2008 issue of Asimov’s) read,

the acclaimed Gord Sellar returns with “Dhuluma No More,” a counterpoint to Robert Reed’s novella from the perspective of a desperate African terrorist in an uncertain future

Here’s Pahwakhe online at Fantasy magazine, along with the Author Spotlight (me being interviewed by K. Tempest Bradford) that went up around the same time.

My first real fiction sale to a real fiction market,”Pahwakhe” was the first of my two Clarion West Week 6 stories, and received a thorough critique by Vernor Vinge and my classmates. Fantasy magazine bought it shortly after I sent it to them, and it’s currently forthcoming sometime in 2007 early 2008.

What was really amazing was that I wasn’t the first to know. News of the acceptance was posted after I was emailed but before I woke, so I discovered, that morning, some email from Clarion West classmates congratulating me.

This story was the second story I wrote for Week Six of my stay at Clarion West — the week when Vernor Vinge was instructing us — and I was incredibly excited to see it accepted by Sheila Williams at Asimov’s SF for publication in July 2008. The issue is no longer on newsstands, but you can still buy a downloadable copy of the Fictionwise eMagazine edition here. The story also appeared in Gardner Dozois The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 26.

As of March 25, 2009, there is a wonderful podcast of this story at Starship Sofa, read by JJ Campanella, and illustrated by Skeet Scienski.

“The Egan Thief” is a funny little (~2100 word) story that appeared in issue #4 (Fall-Winter 2007) issue of Rudy Rucker’s online sf zine Flurb.

The story is here.

There’s a funny story behind it, too. While at Clarion West in 2006, one of the writing-related anecdotes I shared with my classmates was my ill-fated second attempt at a novel, a draft called “Irreducible,” which I started working on in 1998 in Montreal, and didn’t give up on until after my trip to India in early 2004. It was a tale of frustrating discoveries of unknowingly rewriting stories already published by a certain famous SF author, and my mother’s (really rather uncharacteristic) SFnal explanation of how it could be more than just coincidence. My classmates pointed out that this would make for some amusing reading, and succeeded in bugging me enough that I finally got around to writing it.

I was waiting for the lineup to be announced on the website, typically timid, but hey, a little hype can’t hurt, and since a few others have announced their stories’ acceptances, I figure maybe it’s kosher, especially since I’m excited!

I am happy to have sold a story to the very unique and bizarrely wonderful anthology Machine of Death, which is based on about the weirdest anthology concept I’ve come across in a while: