Well, it’s time for an update. I may have mentioned some of this before, but to make sure I’ve mentioned it all:

• Carmelo Rafala has added my story, “The Broken Pathway” to The Immersion  Book of SF, Vol. 1, which is due out sometime this spring from Immersion Press. It’s a story near to my heart, because it’s set in the neighborhood where I live, but a little over a century ago, during the Sino-Japanese war (the bit that trespassed into what is now “Korean” territory). It features Korean monks, a Japanese geomancer, some government officials, and the mountain I hiked almost every day during most of a year between 2008-2009, Wonmi-san.
• My story “The Bodhisattvas” is now in print in Korean translation, thanks to Kim Chang-gyu, in the anthology of original work by participants in the Korean astronomy workshop I attended last February: if you’re a Korean reader, I highly recommend the book just on the experience of getting to know the authors whose work make up most of it — a very cool, interesting bunch of people. The collection is titled “백만 광년의  고독,” which translates as One Million Light-Years of Solitude, a clever pun on the  famous novel by Gabriel Garcia  Marquez. More information on the anthology is available here (in Korean, of course).
  Korean SF fans will also likely run across my words in a couple of interviews, one appearing in a publication by the Seoul F&F Library, and another  in an upcoming issue of Fantastique, both with translator and SF dude 장수제.As for you Anglophones out there, the original English version of the story is forthcoming (this spring, if I remember  correctly) in an upcoming issue of Subterranean Magazine edited by Jonathan Strahan, so for English-only readers, the story will be available to you soon, too…
• I have a story coming out in Jetse de Vries’ long-awaited anthology Shine.
  
  It looks like the Shine TOC contest is over, since Jetse’s announced the full title list, so it’s safe now to say just a little about the story. It’s sort of a collision between the “Pick-Up Artist” culture and environmental activism, where guys from the same underground society as  “Style” (aka Neil Strauss, famous author of The Game) and “Mystery” (of the reality-TV show The Pickup Artist) about a generation from now  decide to turn their powers of psychological manipulation — as well as the full panopluy of gadgets and tools they use in picking up women — to work their “magic” on the UN and save the biosphere.
• My short story “Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands,” featured at Apex earlier this year, is now in print in the anthology Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine Volume 1, edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth, which I mentioned not long ago, and which you can go get at Amazon, among other places. Another stunning cover:

  

In all, 2009 was somewhat unproductive for me, in terms of writing and publishing fiction. I sold a number of things in the second half of the year, but only had two new stories and a poem appear in print. This is partly related to how busy I was with personal things this year, but also is partly related to work. My job already involves a lot of work outside of normal work hours; with publication requirements added in, I am scrambling to produce publishable papers, as well as keep up with classes, and writing goes by the  wayside. (However, an unfortunate freelance job also ate up my time. I have learned my lesson, believe me.)

Anyway, I fully expect 2010 to be more productive. I’m going to make it be. But I’m not dismayed by how things are at the moment. I have lots of (pretty good!) short stories to tidy up and send out, and that’s my project for the next little while, as I research and reread what I’ve written already for my current work-in-progress (working-titled A Killing in Burma); then I can hunker down for the long novel-drafting haul.