My London Worldcon (LonCon) Schedule

My schedule for London Worldcon 2014! These panels, you guys. So very excited to be a part of them. The Kaffeeklatsch will be my first – looking forward to seeing friends old and new there!

Kaffeeklatsch

Thursday 14:00 – 15:00, London Suite 4 (ExCeL) – Come talk short stories, novels, and cooking the books! I’ll have some shiny swag with me, including Cooking the Books ribbons, short story cards, and (hopefully) my growing map of London Literary stops. What are your favorite places?

Feeding the Imagination: Food in SF/F

Friday 11:00 – 12:00, Capital Suite 3 (ExCeL)

The food in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is described in such detail that cookbooks have been published in response. What other genre works have focused heavily on food to develop the world and characters? What does food say about an invented society? Are stories that lack an exploration of the diet of their characters lacking something?  With: Shana Worthen (M), Aliette de Bodard, Gillian Polack, Jo Walton, Fran Wilde.

Bear & Underwood Giveaways! A few words about Storium!

Earlier this week, Cooking the Books took a road trip - Michael R. Underwood and I piled everything in the car and headed out for new frontiers… 

We set up camp at GeekMom to talk about Mike’s latest novella Attack the Geek! Mike brought along a great pizza recipe, as well as a giveaway. There’s still time to enter to win – head on over there.

 

The next day, over at Apex, I interviewed the amazing Elizabeth Bear about Steles of the Sky, the third book in her Eternal Sky series. 

My God, it’s full of books

My first-ever podcast interview is up, thanks to Shaun Duke and Julia Rios! During ICFA, they interviewed me for the Skiffy & Fanty Show and it was excellent fun.  We talked about Cooking the Books, upcoming stories in Asimov’s and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the worldbuilding behind Bone Arrow… which led me to talk about:

(A) Clouds & wind
(B) Monsters
(C) Wingbuilding

       or

(D) Poop

If you selected D, you win! Great Job, Me! I blame this odd turn of events on my forebears, engineers all. But, truth be told, I do think about structural and engineering details a lot when I build a world. And one part of those details is often poop. Even if it’s not always front and center in the books (Which, thank goodness, it’s not,), thinking about it is important. Go on, have a listen.

“Like a Wasp to the Tongue” in Asimov’s April/May Issue

Hooray! The April/May double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is on its way!

My story, “Like a Wasp to the Tongue,” joins tales by my delightful Philly neighbor Michael Swanwick, the wonderful James Patrick Kelly, M. Bernardo , William Preston, Robert Reed (I loved his story “Katabasis” in Fantasy & Science Fiction last year), Matthew Johnson, K.J. Zimring, and Joe M. McDermott in the latest issue.

Rumor is the e-book version is already out. WHEE.

I’ve loved this magazine since I was a kid. It’s where I’ve found some of my favorite authors. To say I’m delighted and honored to be on the same table of contents with the writers above is an understatement.

Asimov’s is available in hardcopy from Dell Magazines. It is also available from multiple purveyors of e-magazines, including: Barnes & Noble | Amazon (kindle) | iPad | Kobo | Magzter | Google play.

Food of the Future at Tor.com

For a little over a month, I’ve been working on a bit of a secret project – a roundtable about food and the future – with amazing authors Aliette de Bodard, Ann Leckie, Elizabeth Bear, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. We created a virtual roundtable to talk about Food of the Future after a roaring discussion on Twitter last December. The resulting discussion was filled with give-and-take, and everyone posed excellent questions. We topped it off with a speed-round: Describe the Future of Food in 10 Words Or Less.

Food of the Future was a lot of fun. I’m grateful to be able to work with Aliette, Ann, Bear, Benjanun, and Rochita in the middle of what is a very busy time of year. Thanks to Aliette de Bodard for the framework idea, and to everyone for their great questions.

The comment section discussion over at tor.com is already quite delicious! I hope you’ll join in.

Great Dangerous Voices!

Leanna Renee Heiber reads; a dalek looks on.

The inaugural Dangerous Voices Variety Hour was this weekend, and I am certain there will be many more. Once we got the definitions clear, “featured author” being quite different than “tortured author” and made sure that the organizers had not, in fact, ordered a dunk tank for the event, we, and the audience, were on our way.

Reading with Leanna Renee Heiber was a blast – she read “Charged,” from the Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells anthology, which was wonderful to hear live. Leanna really knows how to light up a room, you guys. I can’t wait for her new series.

Sarah Pinsker asked tough questions! I got quizzed on food (totally set myself up for that) and didn’t do too badly. In fact, I did well enough that a lucky audience member won a copy of Unidentified Funny Objects 2, the speculative humor anthology that contains a short story of mine.

Michael Underwood provided more questions and prizes, and Leanna defended her fandoms admirably.

Here, There, and Baltimore

Dangerous Voices Variety Hour

Next Saturday, December 7, I’ll join Leanna Renee Hieber as a guest at the first-ever Dangerous Voices Variety Hour, put on by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.  I have it on good authority from hosts Sarah Pinsker and Michael R. Underwood that we won’t be expected to dance, sing or spin plates atop sticks… unless we want to. Also, there will be a quiz show. And Mayhem.

So! Should you be in the area and wish to learn, along with me, exactly what goes into a Dangerous Voices Variety Hour, please join us at at 3310 E. Baltimore St. in Highlandtown. You can read the press release, here.

Meantime, Apex Publications asked me to write a brief piece about Flash Fiction, as a run-up to their holiday flash contest.

And the folks at 27 Good Things asked me to talk about three things to read, watch, and use. That was a lot of fun.

Where will you be in the next month? What are you reading? Let me know about your events and posts – I’d love to share them.

NYRSF Wrap-up and Picspam

photo by Sam J. Miller

Last week was super busy. First, the NYRSF reading, then a very heavy writing week, and finally, Philcon. Today, I bring you picspam from NYRSF. I’ll talk about Philcon a bit later.

On Tuesday, I drove up to NYC with my friend Melissa Maddonni Haims. We met authors Nancy Hightower (check out her amazing book, Elementari Rising, fresh off the presses!), Ilana Teitelbaum, and D.T. Friedman for some great conversation and excellent food before we all trooped around the corner to meet up with more of the Altered Fluid gang who came with Rajan Khanna. Because Rajan and I were reading together, we flipped a coin to see who would go first. Rajan won. Meantime, Melissa (a professional fiber artist and yarnbomber) got distracted… but more on that later.

Crazy List of Happening, part 1

You guys! So much going on!

I am feeling rather like both of these folks over to the right: 

Here’s the rundown:

Cooking the Books is the Reddit/fantasy AMA Site of the Week this week. Come on over and ask me anything for one whole week.

Over at GeekMom, I interview Campbell-Award Winning author Mur Lafferty, and she said amazing things.

In a little over two weeks, on November 5, I’ll be reading at the New York Review of Science Fiction, with Rajan Khanna – would love to see you there!

There are more things happening in November and December, which I’ll post about soon. And there’s something else, which I’m totally forgetting right now… I’ll remember it. Or you’ll remind me…. Who was in charge of remembering what I’m forgetting?

Now I Can Finally Tell You…

Last October, I wrote about my novel, Bone Arrow, as part of the Next Big Thing meme. I alluded to the story and the world in October 2011, as part of a post called The Thing. You see, Bone Arrow began as part of a story written during a 1-day challenge at a workshop called Viable Paradise. From the very beginning, there have been bone towers, wings, secrets, and dangers. There have been fierce young women and men who lived their lives above the clouds. When the story was read aloud to the writers on Martha’s Vineyard, I knew I wanted to keep writing in this world. And so I did.

Bone Arrow came up again in May when I introduced you to my amazing agents, Russ Galen and Rachel Kory at Scovil, Galen, Ghosh, Literary.

The world of Bone Arrow has been on my mind a lot over the past two years. There’s so much about this place and the people who live in it that I want to share with you.

And now I can finally tell you that you will get to see it all.

Books, you guys! There will be books!

Today, with the help of Russ, Rachel, and my ultra-fabulous new editor, Miriam Weinberg, I can finally tell you that I’ve sold Bone Arrow and two more books to Tor!

You’ll be seeing them over the course of the next three years.

Here’s a little peek at Bone Arrow:

On a morning like this, fear is a clear blue sky emptied of birds. It is the smell of cooking trapped in closed towers, of smoke looking for ways out. It is an ache in the back of the eyes from searching the distance, and a weight in the stomach that is as old as this city.

The early light filters through our balcony shutters as my mother selects her wings. She turns her back to me so that I can cinch the woven straps tight against her shoulders. When two bone horns sound low and loud from Mondarath, the tower nearest ours, she stiffens.

I pause, wanting to look through the holes in the shutters, but she urges me on while she trains her eyes on the sky.

I’m so grateful to my friends from Viable Paradise, Taos Toolbox, the Liars’ Club in Philadelphia, and to my family and my friends for their support.

I’m grateful for you too.

I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens next.

(If you are of Facebook, here’s a very early author page to like. If not, no worries. You know where to find me.)