UPDATED and republished: if you’ve seen this post before, skip to the last paragraph! Just now my friend Maura pointed out that the wonderful folks at Locus were kind enough to include two of my stories from last year on the Locus Recommended Reading List for fiction from 2008: the novelette, “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues” (from Asimov’s SF, July ’08) and the novella, “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang” (from Tesseracts Twelve). To see my name listed among so many I respect, and my stories among others that just blew me away this year, is a tremendous …
Tag: WRITING
Locus Recommended Reading List,
Cai Live!
As of today, my story, “Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands,” is now live at Apex Magazine. Check out the contents for the whole February 2009 issue here: there’s some great stuff, including SF Murphy’s “Tearing Down Tuesday” (which I saw in Interzone a while back, and really enjoyed at the time), a couple of things by Lavie Tidhar (this guy is everywhere!), and I got a particularly good kick out of a little nonfiction (I think) piece by Alethea Kontis titled “Monster in the Closet.” (Oh, the flashbacks from childhood!) In addition, Apex is launching a subscription PDF version …
Back to the Nose to the Grindstone
I’m finally back on the wagon in terms of writing: I put in 1000 words on “Moe Yuki Ona,” my J-fetishizing-expat-in-Japan horror story, and I spend an couple of hours slowly working my way through “A Killing in Burma,” a project I left by the wayside a while back to focus on other things, but which I want to get out of the way before I start anything new. If you search the latter title in my blog, you’ll see babblings about it going quite far back, and since I like the vaguely cartoon-like quality of the characters and story, …
Random Things
Over the last eighteen months or so, I’ve become pretty good friends with my co-worker Gwen and her husband Mike. Well, they’ve just had their first baby, a little boy! (I’ve yet to visit, for various reasons including a niggling cold I wouldn’t want to pass on — though don’t babies have a strong immune system? Er, I dunno. I’ll call and ask Gwen.) Anyway, congratulations to them! And suddenly, the balance of weight has shifted back to me being the one who looks more pregnant. This afternoon I’ll be heading across campus to sign my contract for my current …
Slow and Fast Shifts
Something I’ve been thinking about is that moment in certain Philip K. Dick novels (for me, UBIK and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said come to mind first for some reason) where reality just suddenly shifts, turns itself inside out, and you–the dear and much-blessed reader–follow along, feeling the “Woah!” and maybe some of the “Huh?” but not so much that you feel disoriented beyond the effect of, say, a few glasses of wine. Now, a lot of SF does this from page one, I know, and a lot of stories don’t necessarily involve any second-stage WTF?–though I think the …
Fiction News & Reviews
Well, while I was busy whittling away at a couple of stories in the past few days and weeks, a lot of stuff went on, including some reading and reviews of my own stories that have appeared here and there. I’ll group the links as logically as I can, and I hope I haven’t missed anything. Award Eligibility and Stuff: Robert J. Sawyer was kind and generous enough to mention on his blog that I am one of three Canadian authors eligible for a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year. (That is, for 2009’s WorldCon.) The …
Closer To the Mark
You know you’re getting closer to the mark when your story is rejected by the editor, at a magazine where I’ve only always been bounced by the Guardian at the Gates of Slush. It’s not a sale, but yeah, it was a rejection letter that made me smile. And no, I’m not posting it here.
POV and Sins Worth Risking
So I mentioned recently having, er, “finished” work on my story “Ten Spikes and a Hammer.” Which is a story about a man, following two timelines in his life: one during his days towards the end of World War II, and another towards the end of his life. The interesting thing is that something, something, just wasn’t working with this story. I worked it, I worked it some more, I massaged, I fiddled, and somehow there was something wrong.
Missed It?
If you missed it in the print edition, you can check out my Korean SF story “The Country of the Young” in the Fictionwise eMagazine edition of Interzone 219, available now.
Fantasy Poll
Here’s another best-story-of-2008 poll I’ve got a story in, the Reader’s Poll at Fantasy Magazine. Those who’ve been following along should vote. (I’m not saying you should vote for my story… whatever hit you hardest would be the best choice! I’m not caught up, so we’ll have to see whether I manage it. I’m working through my neglected stack of issues of Asimov’s first.)