A Dribble of Ink

She called herself Audra, though that wasn’t her real name; he called himself Miles, but she suspected it wasn’t his, either.

She was young (how young she would not say), beautiful (or so her Emil had told her), and she had a keen interest in stories. Miles was old, tattooed, perverted, and often mean, but he knew stories that no one else knew, and she was certain that he was the only one who could help her get back home.

She found him among the artists, makers, and deviants. They called him Uncle, and spoke of him sometimes with loathing, sometimes respect, but almost always with a tinge of awe-a magician in a world of technicians, they did not know what to make of him.

But Audra saw him for what he truly was.

Christie Yant is one of the hardest working, most genuine people you’ll find in the publishing industry. She’s been a well of wisdom for me as I’ve pursued the publication of my own fiction, and so it’s an absolute delight to see her story, ‘The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories’, from the John Joseph Adams-edited The Way of the Wizard, featured in its entirety on the almighty io9.

Go check it out. And if you enjoy it, her story ‘The Gift’ is also available for free!

Charles Yu’s How To Live Safely In A Science Fiction Universe was released earlier this year to great critical acclaim and has begun showing up on Best of 2010 lists around the web.

Root canal is one fifty, give or take, depending on who’s doing it to you. A migraine is two hundred.

Not that I get the money. The company gets it. What I get is twelve dollars an hour, plus reimbursement for painkillers. Not that they work.

I feel pain for money. Other people’s pain. Physical, emotional, you name it.

Pain is an illusion, I know, and so is time, I know, I know. I know. The shift manager never stops reminding us. Doesn’t help, actually. Doesn’t help when you are on your third broken leg of the day.

His latest short story, Standard Loneliness Package is available from Lightspeed Magazine. He was also recently interviewed on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Hello May.

I haven’t written in a while and maybe it seems I only write when there’s bad news. Well, this is not the exception that proves the rule, if you know what I mean.

I lost almost all my business cards. If you got my last letter, you’ll remember I sent you one of them, so that you can see what your prodigal kid brother’s up to these days and maybe be proud, maybe just a little. If you didn’t get my letter—and who knows these days?—then they had my name, “Professor” Harry Ransom, “Professor” like that, in what they call “quotes,” because I always say I’m nothing if not honest, as best I can be, and at least I never claim to be anything I’m not. There were lightning bolts printed on either side of my name. Those cost extra. Under my name it said Lightbringer, then Licensed and then By Appointment, which weren’t exactly true but didn’t mean anything either way, as I saw it, and then below that Inventor of the Ransom Process for &c &c, which is true. A dollar for fifty at Tally’s Printers on Tenth Avenue in Melville City, and I bought two hundred-fifty, and in consequence went hungry for a week, and so did good old never-complaining Carver, my assistant, who I’m sure I’ve mentioned before.

Was chatting with a couple of folk on twitter about Gilman’s soon-to-be-released novel, The Half-Made World and, in my travels around the web to learn more about it and its sequel, came across a just-published short story set in the same universe. Lightbringers and Rainmakers is available as a free download on Tor.com.

If, like me, you’re curious about Gilman and his work, this looks like the perfect opportunity to acquaint yourself. If you like what you read, you can also find the first chapter of The Half-Made World.

It seems like just yesterday that we were in the middle of a media blitz for The Gathering Storm, the first in the Brandon Sanderson-penned Wheel of Time novels, and now we’re already getting a sniff at the release of the penultimate volume, Towers of Midnight. To go alongside the previously released prologue and Chapter One: Bad Apples, Tor.com has an audio version of the second chapter, just in time to whet your appetite for the official release, just a couple of weeks away! From what I gather, it’s a Perrin heavy chapter, so gauge your excitement appropriately.

You can listen to Chapter Two: Questions of Leadership on Tor.com. As always, to get the coolest features, you’ve got to be a member (it’s free, and easy to sign up!)

For those interested, the chapter is being discussed in full spoilerific glory here.

Apparently I am pretty. Magic is all I see, and magic tends to be beautiful, so I have no way of properly judging the mundane myself. I have to take others’ word for it. Men praise parts of me endlessly — always the parts, mind you, never the whole. They love my long legs, my graceful neck, my storm of hair, my breasts. (Especially my breasts.) Most of the men in Shadow were Amn, so they also commented on my smooth near-black Maro skin even though I told them there were half a million other women in the world with the same feature. Half a million is not so many measured against the whole world, though, so that always got included in their qualified, fragmentary admiration.

“Lovely,” they would say, and sometimes they wanted to take me home and admire me in private. Before I got involved with godlings I would let them, if I felt lonely enough. “You’re beautiful, Oree,” they would whisper as they positioned and posed and polished me. “If only — ”

I never asked them to complete this sentence. I knew what they almost said: If only you didn’t have those eyes.

I was blown away earlier this year by The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the wonderful debut novel from NK Jemisin, and can’t wait to get my hands on the second volume, The Broken Kingdoms, coming in just a few weeks. For those looking to whet their appetite for the second novel, Jemisin’s already released the first chapter, and has now added the second.

If you’re interested, I interviewed Jemisin a few months ago and she talks at length about the structure of the trilogy and how The Broken Kingdoms relates to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Read Chapter Two of The Broken Kingdoms by NK. Jemisin.