Long-overdue updates

So a bunch of people are doing something with their blogs -- redesigning, adding new content... Paul Jessup of GrendelSong, for example, is posting a serial novel here

Mr. VanderMeer redesigned his entire online presence here

Me? I just neglect mine. Anyway, the good news: a story of mine that was scheduled to appear in Fantasy will now be in August issue of Clarkesworld Magazine.

The bad news: my air conditioning died and the entire system needs to be replaced.

The other news: Work on the novel (The Alchemy of Stone) continues apace -- at 50,000 now, which explains my radio silence.

Stating the obvious: BPAL=crack.

Amazon Pre-order

The Secret History can now be pre-ordered at Amazon. Much rejoicing!

Not much is happening otherwise -- working on the next book, and just working. Summer is the time to get science done. Yes, the summer is here, judging by the mugginess, and by the tropical growth in my backyard -- irises are about to bloom, and wisterias are taking over the... well, everything in sight. Summer!

Wiscon is fast approaching, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Zencore

My story, [Title redacted], will be appearing in Nemonymous 7: Zencore. This time the stories will be published without their bylines, as is Nemo's custom, but with the list of contributors included. I think trying to match stories to their writers will be great fun.

Cover!

The book now has a cover! Many thanks to Stephen Segal for his graphic design and Frederic Cayet for his mechanical crow art.

Sybil's Garage

Sybil's Garage issue 4 is now available. It has fiction by Leah Bobet, Cat Rambo, Rick Bowes and many many more illustrious individuals. There're also interviews with Jeff Ford and Stephen Segal of Wildside/Prime magazines. Nifty art, inside and out, make this mag a wonderful esthetic experience as well.

Admire it here.

Text: Ur Update

THE NEW BOOK OF MASKS is available on Amazon.

There's also a promotional video for this book.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Apparently, writing a novel is a huge time suck. I'm briefly surfacing with some updates.

My story, "Virus Changes Skin" will be appearing in Analog.

Heidi Lampietti informs that Barnes & Noble is going to carry Medicine Show in the stores.

"Seas of the World" will be appearing in issue 4 of Sybil's Garage.

MAGIC IN THE MIRRORSTONE anthology (ed. Steve Berman, Mirrorstone Books, coming in 2008) will feature a distinguished lineup of authors -- Eugie Foster, Gregory Frost, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Beth Bernobich, Cassandra Claire, Holly Black, Jim Hines and many many others.

Novel Sold

My second novel, The Secret History of Moscow, sold to Sean Wallace of Prime Books. It will be releasd in early 2008. Here's a brief description:

"Every city contains secret places, and Moscow is no different, its citizens seeking safety under the city during tumultuous times — a cavernous dark world of magic, weeping trees and albino jackdaws, where exiled pagan deities and fairytale creatures still whisper strange tales to everyone who would listen. Through their interlocking stories, a very different history emerges, full of betrayals and unseen hostilities, between the real world and the world below . . . and now, in the early 1990's, the conflict is escalating.

Galina is a young woman, caught like many of her contemporaries in the new economic uncertainty and apparent lawlessness of the country. In the midst of all this chaos, her sister Maria turns into a jackdaw and flies away . . . prompting Galina to help Yakov, a policeman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will take them to the underground realm of hidden histories and archetypes, to find themselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, truth and betrayal . . . The Secret History of Moscow."

Holiday Special for Fantasy Magazine.

For the first time, Sean Wallace and Paul Tremblay
are offering an online holiday special for Fantasy Magazine,
both for US and overseas subscriptions, which boils down
to ten dollars and thirty dollars, respectively, for four issues. 
US: click here
Overseas: click here

Get a subscription, get two; it's a great magazine.
Also, check out their upcoming sampler (which will contain
my story, "Zombie Lenin").

Pre-orders

Japanese Dreams, an anthology from Wildside Press, is available for pre-order at Amazon. It contains my story "Ebb and Flow".

"Skipping Stones" by Neil Ayres and E. Sedia can be pre-ordered from Jessup Publishing.

Another sale

"Out of the Element" (tentative title) was accepted for MAGIC IN THE MIRRORSTONE anthology (ed. Steve Berman, Mirrorstone Books, coming in 2008).

Plugs!

For the lack of actual content, some plugs:

Farrago Wainscot, a new and interesting place

Mythic 2 is now available

Medicine Show, Volume 1 of Liquid Laughter project will be available soon

Lotus Lyceum, a discussion group for fantasy writers, always jumping with interesting ideas and opinions

And, finally, Greenhorn, the geekiest comic around. Well worth checking out.

Updatery

"Ebb and Flow", a retelling of a Shinto myth, sold to JAPANESE DREAMS, an anthology forthcoming from Prime Books. This one will be distributed to chain bookstores.

An excerpt from my WIP will be published in December 2006 at Farrago's Wainscot, a new ezine. Link is forthcoming.

Another poem is upcoming in Goblin Fruit next spring.

Launch!

GrendelSong launch party is in full swing here: http://kapo.ws/wordpress/?p=559




Listen to the podcast by Jay Lake, and marvel at the art and the lineup. Oh, and buy a copy if you feel like it.

Sale # 16

"The Taste of Wheat" will appear in Issue 6 of Fantasy Magazine, spring of 2007.

Sale #15

"Redemption of Nepheli" will appear in Jim Baen's Universe, probably in April 2007. Hooray!

Review: Show and Tell and Other Stories

Warning: Some spoilers (But you know, a book that can be spoiled by a plot revelation is not worth reading)

I just finished reading Greg van Eekhout's Show and Tell and Other Stories , an elegant chapbook from Tropism Press. I really can't recommend it highly enough, and if you haven't yet bought a copy you're missing out. The most striking thing about these stories is their energy, the crackling and fizzing of words, and the way they combine an almost old-fashioned sensawunda with a very literary narrative.

Here're some thoughts on the stories. I tried to keep them as spoiler-free as I could, but some thoughts demanded context. So there.

My favorite of the bunch was "Native Aliens", hands-down. There are two parallel narratives. The first one details the experience of a Dutch-Indonesian family during the Dutch expulsion from Indonesia after WWII. The ugliness of the situation in Indonesia during WWII, when it was in the middle of hostilities between the Dutch and the Japanese and then during the Japanese occupation, is only hinted at, but that background is effective and horrifying. Same goes for the Dutch colonialism and the fallout of the independence movement. The protagonist and his family go 'home', to the Netherlands they had never seen before.

The other narrative, taking place in the remote future, mirrors the first; only this time the colonialists who go home are the Terrans. This story had a special resonance for me, because really, it was all about people who do not belong anywhere. They find happiness and little joys in the intersices of life, but they will never belong. And there's no going back home, and there is no home, and there never will be.

The rest of the stories do not disappoint. The scope of this collection is quite impressive for a chapbook of six stories -- they range from rather whimsical ("Show and Tell", a wonderful story taking place in the school for elaborated children) to somber ("In the Late December", which takes place after the end of the universe, and deals with Santa trying to carry on the present deliveries to the few remaining survivors, and it is scary and funny and Christmas-y).

We also have "Authorwerx", where a future company recreates dead celebrities (even the most obscure of them, including long-forgotten writers) for encounters with the living. This story starts out as pretty science-fictiony, quickly veers into really realy strange, and ends up being profound and moving.

Then there's "Anywhere There's a Game", a seies of flash stories about basketball. I didn't expect to like this one due to my deep indifference toward spectator sports, but fortunately the story was about weird and wonderful people who happened to play basketball. So I liked it.

"Far As You Can Go" is the only original story here, and it has a broken robot in it. I'm very partial to broken robots and traditionally inanimate objects as protagonists, so I enjoyed this one a lot. And it is hopeless in the beginning, and I really liked that it didn't get all happy in the end, but it ended with a possibility of something... more. Not necessaily better, or happier, or not-broken, but just more than grayness and poisonous air. And this is a fine way to end a book.

I've been really impressed so far with the magazine (Flytrap) and the chapbooks Tropism produced so far. And I have been a fan of Greg's writing for some time now, mostly because he's so unashamed about writing things. So this chapbook was a double treat for me. Oh, and almost forgot: there are also doodles. Tons of interesting and occasionally creepy doodles by the author; they don't exactly illustrate the stories but rather complement them. And there's squid on the cover.

Sale #14

Just heard from Paul Jessup, the esteemed editor of GrendelSong, that the SF novelette "Skipping Stones" co-written by Neil Ayres and myself will be published as a stand-alone illustrated chapbook some time next year. Weee! I'm very happy about that, because this rousing tale of malaria, time travel and a mechanical girl had the hardest time finding a publisher. And because I love chapbooks.

Sales

"The Clockmaker's Daughter" sold to Horrors Beyond II: Strange Devices (Ed. William Jones, Elder Signs Press). "One, Two, Three", a creepy little story of autism and house spirits went to GrendelSong (Issue 3).

Fantasy Magazine

Clarkesworld offers sample stories from Fantasy Magazine online. Check them out here.

Also, specmusicmuse.blogspot.com has published a review of According to Crow, and an interview with me.