Just The Caffeine Talking

Reading the Hieroglyphs

The Hieroglyph anthology gets its official release September 9, and the publishers are leaking some teaser material. You can go here to read a preview of the e-book version on Scribd. Or you can download a PDF excerpt here, including the introduction by Lawrence Krauss and the essay "Innovation Starvation" by Neal Stephenson which inspired the whole thing.

But if you want to see my story you'll have to wait two more weeks.

I Have Joined the Pod People

I have left the silent era and entered the world of podcasting. Rob Wolf interviewed me for his New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy podcast. You can go here to listen to me talk about A Darkling Sea, Aztecs, why roleplaying games are different from novels, Bone Wars, my obsession with getting stuff right, and my upcoming novel Corsair.

I've never done a podcast before; it was a lot of fun. My voice didn't sound nearly as odd as I had feared it would, and Mr. Wolf very kindly edited out some of my more egregious digressions. I look forward to doing it again some time. 

Congratulations Hugo Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 Hugo awards, and to all the nominees. 

The winners:

Best Novel: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Best Novella: "Equoid" by Charles Stross

Best Novelette: "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Kowal

Best Short Story: "The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere" by John Chu

Best Related Work: We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative by Kameron Hurley

Best Graphic Story:Time by Randall Munroe

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form):Gravity by Alfonso Cuaron

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): "The Rains of Castamere" by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Best Editor (Short Form): Ellen Datlow

Best Editor (Long Form): Ginjer Buchanan

Best Professional Artist: Julie Dillon

Best Semiprozine: Lightspeed

Best Fanzine: A Dribble of Ink

Best Fancast: SF Signal Podcast

Best Fan Writer: Kameron Hurley

Best Fan Artist: Sarah Webb

Campbell Award (for Best New Writer): Sofia Samatar   

 

Double-Barrelled Short Fiction!

It has been quite a while since I've published any short fiction, but now I have two stories coming out back to back.

In September the valiant War Stories anthology from Apex Books hits the beaches, and my story "Contractual Obligation" will be in the first wave. The operation is led by tactical masterminds Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak, and logistic support for the troops comes from a Kickstarter campaign. Keep 'em Writing!

A month later HarperCollins tries to change the world with the visionary Hieroglyph anthology, edited by Kathryn Cramer and Ed Finn. My story "Periapsis" is part of a strong collection of forward-looking tales. The whole project is the result of the Hieroglyph Project Web site, which in turn was inspired by Neal Stephenson's essay "Innovation Starvation." All of which means that if you don't read these stories you're a bad person who wants to ruin everything for everybody.

Watch this space for updates as the publication dates approach.