A Million Words

My story, "Mother Ship" is now up at Lightspeed Magazine!

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I also have a new reprint out -- "Time to Say Goodnight" (originally in Fantasy Magazine) is now available in Jason Sanford's anthology Million Writers Award: The Best Online Science Fiction and Fantasy. The book comes out June 14th, but pre-orders get a discount, so if you want one, order early!

AKA which books does my 2-year-old want me to read to her REPEATEDLY, and what qualities do these books share?

My daughter's current favorite books include:

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
Baa Baa Black Sheep
Hug
Good Night, Gorilla
Sheep In a Jeep
City Dog, Country Frog

The first two are popular (I think) because I sing them for her. She particularly likes me to sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" in Spanish. But the real key right now is words per page. Ideally, I should read about one sentence per page. Less is okay, but more than that and she starts to lose interest. Both "Hug" and "Good Night, Gorilla" have almost no text, although I fill in the story quite a bit. Sheep in a Jeep (and by the same author, Sheep in a Shop) is one of very few rhyming books that doesn't drive me insane, and I really like the illustrations. "City Dog, Country Frog" is a sweet but sad story that is a little bit beyond V right now, but she likes to look at the pictures and I think it's a great story so I wanted to include it.

Thankfully, we are finally past the stage where I was required to read "Goodnight Moon" absolutely every night at bedtime. (Not that there is anything wrong with Goodnight Moon. But every. single. night. gets to be a bit much. I'll probably be able to recite it from memory for quite some time, it is so firmly ingrained.)

For the parent-y types on my friends list, what do your kids like to read? (I'm particularly interested in preschool-age recommendations, since that's where we'll be headed soon, but I'd love to hear favorites for any age.)

Q: What is toasted cake?

A: Delicious! But more importantly, Toasted Cake is the new podcasting venture by tinaconnolly. Every week in 2012, she will be reading a dark, frosting-covered flash fiction story...and she's starting with one of mine!

Head over there and check it out: http://toastedcake.com

I had a fantastic time at the Nebula Awards in DC. I got to meet and hang out several of my fellow nominees, including Aliette De Bodard, Chris Kastensmidt,J. Kathleen Cheney, Eric James Stone, Rachel Swirsky, Vylar Kaftan, Mary Robinette Kowal and Paolo Bacigalupi. Plus I met many members of Codex (my online writing group), several fantastic editors, and two of my former Clarion West instructors. Phew! Lots of wonderful people and I'm sure I've forgotten some!

On Friday, Peter and I went on a guided tour of the Air and Space Museum. It was so much better than just wandering around the museum (which would still have been good), since our guide had plenty of information/anecdotes about all the exhibits. Friday night there was a reception for all the nominees, where I got a certificate and a pin (and free drinks!).

Saturday's activities included a SFWA meeting and a really helpful workshop by Mary Robinette Kowal on how to read your stories aloud for an audience. The web is no substitute for one-on-one feedback, but Mary has posted all kinds of helpful tips on her website.

And, of course, Saturday night was the banquet and awards ceremony. I didn't win, but I am genuinely thrilled for my friends Eric James Stone and Rachel Swirsky, who took home the awards for novelette and novella, respectively. And a big congratulations to all the winners!

A couple pictures from the awards ceremony on Saturday night:


Me and Peter (Photo by Ellen Datlow)


Nebula Award-winning author Eric James Stone, with Nebula-nominated authors Mary Robinette Kowal and me.

Overall I was terrible about remembering to take photos, but there were plenty of cameras around -- for tons of pictures check out these posts by Ernest Lilley and Ellen Datlow.

(1) I have a flash fiction story coming out at Daily Science Fiction on Monday -- if you want to be among the first to read it, head over to their website (http://dailysciencefiction.com/) and get a free email subscription. Otherwise, you'll have to wait a week for the story to be posted on their website.

(2) We're set to start remodeling our kitchen on Monday, which I am very excited about. The current kitchen is small, walled-off, and TURQUOISE. The new kitchen will be open, bigger, and NOT turquoise. More detailed pictures and postings about the kitchen remodel, but I don't have time now because...

(3) I'm headed out to Washington DC in a couple hours to go to the Nebula Awards weekend!

Only two days left to nominate for the Million Writers Award.

Click this link and nominate your favorite online story!

SFWA has posted the nominees for the 2010 Nebula Awards, and I am very excited to announce that my novelette, "Stone Wall Truth," made the ballot! Squee! It is a huge honor to be up for the award alongside so many amazing writers.

And the nominees for novelette are...

‘‘Map of Seventeen’’, Christopher Barzak (The Beastly Bride)
‘‘The Jaguar House, in Shadow’’, Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s 7/10)
‘‘The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara’’, Christopher Kastensmidt (Realms of Fantasy 4/10)
“Plus or Minus’’, James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's 12/10)
‘‘Pishaach’’, Shweta Narayan (The Beastly Bride)
‘‘That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made’’, Eric James Stone (Analog 9/10)
‘‘Stone Wall Truth’’, Caroline M. Yoachim (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 2/10)

The full ballot is here. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Seattle can get a little gray and dreary sometimes, but when the sun comes out it sure is beautiful!

The obligatory year-in-review post. Due to having taken some time away from writing after my daughter was born, I didn't do a lot of writing in 2010 (so I'm not going to post a list of stories written), but I did have four new stories come out:

Stone Wall Truth - originally in Asimov's, Feb 2010, but now available on my website
Blood Willows - Flash Fiction Online, March 2010
What Happens in Vegas - Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue #6
The Sometimes Child - Fantasy Magazine, May 1, 2010

The February 2010 issue of Asimov's hits newsstands today, including my novelette "Stone Wall Truth" (and also the novelette "The Wind-Blown Man" by fellow Codexian Aliette de Bodard).

An excerpt from my story:

Njeri sewed the woman together with hairs from a zebra tail. Her deer-bone needle dipped under the woman’s skin and bobbed back out. The contrast of the white seams against her dark skin was striking.

“The center seam makes a straight line,” Njeri told her apprentice, “but the others flow with the natural curves of the body, just as the Enshai River follows the curve of the landscape.”

Odion leaned in to examine her work, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Foolish boy, wasting his attention on her. Njeri set her needle on the table and stood up to stretch. The job was nearly done—she’d repositioned the woman’s organs, reconstructed her muscles, sewn her body back together. Only the face was still open, facial muscles splayed out in all directions from the woman’s skull like an exotic flower in full bloom.

“Why sew them back together, after the wall?” Odion asked. “Why not let them die?”


(You can also read a longer excerpt at the Asimov's website.)

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Also out this month is issue 42 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, with my short story "Pageant Girls." This one is available for download here.

And here's an excerpt from that one:

Kat holds my hand and pulls me across the street. Living kids ain’t supposed to cross the street by themselves, and I got appearances to keep up. I’m six years old, always six. I been dead about fifteen years now. Kat’s dead too. I call her Mama, but we don’t share blood. She’s just some dead lady, about the right age.