Technical Difficulties

I debated back and forth with myself whether I was going to make a post reminding people about my award-eligible fiction from 2010, but then I realized what a short post it would be, so the hell with it.

I published exactly one thing in 2010: "After the Dragon."

Q.E.D.

I have started blogging for Tor.com; I'll be doing book reviews, and also analyses of various things, like I've done over here in the past for Dorothy Sayers and Due South and the like. I'm starting with Ellery Queen (yes, building on some of the posts I've made here), and the first post is live over there.

Last night was Lovecraftian: unspeakable, abyssal, and possibly squamous. Maybe batrachian. Not so much with the eldritch, though.

The RLS teamed up with my insomnia, so I was uselessly awake until four. I hate the fact that all the drugs and supplements and everything else have really been able to do is make the RLS unpredictable. So I don't have it every night--which is great, don't get me wrong. That part I have no quarrel with. But when I do get it, I have no idea why. Why last night? Why not Saturday night? Or last Thursday night?

*ahem* Obviously, I'm just a tad bit cranky today. Move along, nothing to see here. We are a hedge.

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And, in fact, I have something shiny and distracting to offer:

Mad Norwegian Press has announced the full list of contributors and the table of contents for Whedonistas, which is slated for publication March 15, 2011. My essay, "The Kindness of Monsters," is about the struggle of monsters in Whedon's various worlds to learn to be human, and why the finale of Angel made me cry.

(If you'd rather not deal with a .pdf, the table of contents is here below the cut:

( here! )

Lots of cool women, including coffeeem, matociquala, yuki_onna, rm, priscellie, seanan_mcguire (whose essay is online here at Tor.com), and many others whose LJ handles I do not know.* And, ne plus ultra, rarelylynne.)

I, personally, am geeked beyond words about the Juliet Landau interview.


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*If you are one of them, or you know their handles, comment on this post, and I'll add them in.

1. mrissa says something important.

2. Despite exercise and medication, the RLS was awful last night. It kicked me out of bed twice (once around midnight and once around 3 a.m.). I have called the acupuncture clinic because this is Just. Not. On.

3. A faithful reader has asked where the Booth stories since The Bone Key can be found.

Two are online: "The Replacement" (which appeared originally in The Willows 2.3 (September/October 2008), pp. 48-54) and "White Charles" (link takes you to its original publication in Clarkesworld 36 (September 2009); it has also been reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010, edited by Paula Guran (Prime Books, 2010), pp. 388-405.

"The Yellow Dressing Gown" was published in Weird Tales 63.2 (March-April 2008), pp. 63-69.

"The World Without Sleep" was published in Postscripts 14 (Spring 2008), pp. 40-64, and my current hopeful plan is to reprint it in Somewhere Beneath Those Waves.

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My 5 things are only making it to 3 today. It'll have to do.

Around the interwebs:

• Via maryrobinette, there are some Icelandic horses in Zillah, Washington, in desperate need of rescue.
  
• John Scalzi has some rational things to say about last night's elections. I personally feel that if my county could secede from Wisconsin, we could elect Russ Feingold our Grand High Panjandrum, and that would be excellent.
  
• jimhines, awesome as always, is posting about sexual harassment at conventions.
  
• Today's moment of zen from jaylake was pretty much exactly what I needed. See above re: election.
  
• And, as another corrective to the general fucknuttedness of humanity these days, Apex Magazine's special Arab/Muslim issue is online.
  

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Short version of last night: the legs were fine, but the respiratory system was awful. Curse you, con crud.

Today I need to run--well, walk--errands, including paying the cat sitter and picking up a couple of prescriptions. This has the added advantage of providing at least some of the daily exercise I need. Since one of my goals, aside from staying off the narcotics, is to decrease the amount of Requip I'm taking (and hopefully escape its unpleasant side-effects--nothing like a little nausea just before bed), daily exercise is transitioning from a should to a must. Which, on the one hand, does provide motivation to stay fit, which is a plus. On the other, I hate being told what to do, even by my own body.

Still not able to drive, which is frustrating (cats need to go to various vets, I need to get back to riding, etc. etc. etc.), but I flinch just thinking about having to stomp on the brakes, so it's clearly not time yet.

On the career side, I can tell you that The Goblin Emperor is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2012, although obviously this is still mostly vaporware, and I'll have a short story collection coming out from Prime in November 2011, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves. (Don't worry, I'll be posting about that again--and probably again and again--closer to the publication date.)

Also, at WFC I got my contributor's copies of The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010, edited by Paula Guran, which includes the Booth story, "White Charles." (I would offer you a link, but Prime's website is currently not cooperating.)

So, taken all and all and despite the con crud, I'm doing okay.

1. The Mirador is going out of print in paperback. It's still in print in hardback, though.

2. I have an essay forthcoming in Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them, edited by Lynne M. Thomas (co-editor of Chicks Dig Time Lords and a.k.a. rarelylynne) and Deborah Stanish. My essay is tentatively titled "The Kindness of Monsters."

3. Also, if I forgot to say, "White Charles" will be reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, edited by Paula Guran.

4. Speaking of reprints, "After the Dragon" will be reprinted in Breaking Waves: An Anthology for Gulf Coast Relief, edited by Tiffany Trent and Phyllis Irene Radford.

5. And .mp3 files of Drabblecast's production of "Mongoose" are available: Part 1 and Part 2.

1.
Q: What does Felix see (or what is he able to see) when he looks off the battlements?

A: I'm not quite sure what you're asking: what the view is, or how good his eyesight is. The view from the battlements is of all the rooftops of Mélusine, as the Mirador is both the tallest building in the city and on high ground; Felix tends to gravitate toward the view to the south: the Lower City.

If you're asking about his eyesight, he can certainly see well enough to pick out major landmarks like the cathedrals and the Judiciary. (My shorthand for Felix's eyesight is that he can see about as well as I can without my glasses on--which, as legally blind goes, is actually pretty good.)

2.
Q: Did you research Labyrinths for this series or did you make up your own ideas about them and if you did have particular books, can you tell us books you read or books that you recommend.

A: Mostly, I made up my own ideas, as I could not find any books on labyrinths that were not cloyingly New Age (for my tastes). I suspect I was also heavily influenced by Barbara Hambly's Dog Wizard and M. R. James' story, "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance." And there's a certain amount of the Minotaur and the actual ancient labyrinths on Crete as well. But mostly, sorry, it's just me.

3.
Q: How old are Steven, Victoria, and Shannon at the end of "The Mirador"?

A: Victoria was born in 2242, Stephen in 2244, Shannon in 2257. Mélusine starts in 2279, at which point Shannon is 22, Stephen is 35, and Victoria is 37. The Mirador takes place in 2283, so Shannon is 26, Stephen is 39, and Victoria is 41. Assuming my math is correct, which may or may not be the case.

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And, from the Department of "If Locus says it, it must be true," I have sold a short story collection, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, to Prime Books. I will provide more details when and as I can, but for now, let's go with, this will be a collection of my published non-Booth short stories. Also, I'm very psyched.

But.

"A Light in Troy" is up at PodCastle. Rated PG for feral children and the winners who write history. It is sponsored by N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, sample chapters of which can be found on her website.

There's an interview with me about "After the Dragon" (in which I also pimp matociquala and elisem) up at Fantasy Magazine.

As a New Year's present, here is the foreword I wrote for the forthcoming Chinese edition of Mélusine:

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( click here if interested )