I am more than excited that the news is now out that my first novel, The Quantum Magician, will also be published in China!

And I've been invited to Chengdu this November to be one of the Guests of Honour at the 4th International Science Fiction Convention!

This is a big conference (I heard more than 10,000 attendees) and this is the first time I've ever been a Guest of Honour. Details are in the link below:

www.solarisbooks.com/post/2256

Very happy. This writing this is working a bit...
​

Tomorrow morning, I'm road-tripping to Toronto with Matt Moore and Brandon Crilly (and additionally bringing Alexandra Renwick home on the way back). I'm really looking forward to seeing the Toronto writing and publishing folk whom I often only see twice a year. Here's my schedule. If you're at Ad Astra, please say hi! 

Ecology for World Building: Saturday 10:00 AM - having been trained as a molecular biologist and writing hard sf, I had to suggest this panel! Ecology is the thing missing from a lot of otherwise good sf. Location: Richmond A 

Unsettling the Reader and Creating Fear in Horror: Saturday 11:00 AM - If you've been following my posts at Blackgate.com, you know I've been trying to better understand horror. I suggested this panel and will moderate. So basically, I get 4 experts to tell me what I'm missing! Location: Richmond A

Space Opera and New Directions, Saturday 1:00 PM - I obviously love me my space opera. I happen to be attracted to the British influences, but I wanted to assemble a panel with writers with different viewpoints. Where to we define the limits of space opera? Who's doing cutting edge work on space opera now? Not to be missed! Some arguments and possibly British accents! Location: Richmond B

Space Launching and Asteroid Mining for Fun and Profit, Saturday 2:00 PM - This is the only panel I'm on that I didn't recommend to programming, but I'm delighted to be paneling with real space and rocket scientists! Location: Richmond B

Biologists on Aliens, Saturday 4:00 PM - I have a lot to say about aliens! That is all! Moderated by the brilliant Liz Westbrook-Trenholm! Location: Richmond A

Reading: Wait! Derek doesn't do readings! It's true! I don't. I always assume no one wants to hear me read. But, I'm breaking tradition because I'll be reading from a new work that's been under a news embargo for 6 months, and I'm finally letting the cat out of the bag! Title to be revealed at Ad Astra! Saturday 7:30 PM. Location: Markham A

Looking forward to seeing you!

Derek

I've been blogging a lot at the Hugo-nominated (and nomination-declining) online magazine BlackGate.com. 

I'm happy with a lot of the posts, but realized that my semi-directed ramblings never show up here. 
I'm going to start making quick notes of my posts here so people can see what's in my head. 

In the case of this week, I was thinking comics and horror, specifically the first dozen issues of Marvel's Carnage. 

Click here for the post. I hope to have some writing news to post in the near future!

Life change in T-minus three months: I'm delighted to say that on June 25th, I'll be starting the first day of 26 months of leave from my job.

I've been working hard for 15 years, but even though I really do only three things in my life (Joshua, work and writing), I still feel like I am short-changing him and me. So, I made a budget, reduced my expenses and concluded that, with only savings, I would be able to take 2 years off work.

So, come the end of June, no more daycare for Joshua, all summer long or during the school year. I'll pick him up at school everyday at 3pm and we'll ski or skate or sled or read or whatever we want. On his mother's days, I'll drop him off with her after my patented papa daycare.

And when he's in school or with her, I'll write. I have far more ideas and writing plans than I can do anything with, so I'll try to take advantage of these two years to write 2,000 words per day, 5 days a week, 10 months a year. If my math isn't wrong, that could be anywhere from 500,000-800,000 words in two years. And if I make any money from that, it's just bonus.

I'll also catch up on reading and TV (I haven't really paid much attention to TV since the year 2000) and socializing and volunteering. I've wanted to become far more involved with SFWA for a while, and I'd really like to help continue to grow Ottawa's literary speculative fiction community.

I'm excited about this, as is Joshua. I'd rather have time than money and some job will be waiting for me when I get back :-) 

SFWorld has just translated and published my 2nd and 3rd stories in Mandarin - "Way of the Needle" (hard sf from ASIMOV'S Science Fiction) and "The God Thieves" (fantasy from Beneath Ceaseless Skies). My Google-translate name has two forms - in one issue, I am "Derek Kunshi Ken" and in another "Derek Kunshen Ken." Google is inching closer to it, or the Chinese are. I'm in great company, though: appearing in the same issue as Heinlein, OS Card, Robert Reid, and M.K. Hobson 

http://www.sfw.com.cn/?p=5413
http://www.sfw.com.cn/?p=5314

It's been a busy and exciting spring with lots of excitement for any writer, enough to lose track of, so I count myself really fortunate. It started with a few foreign sales after "Schools of Clay" came out in Asimov's in the winter. A magazine in Poland (Nowa Fantastyka) and China (SFWorld) both wanted to buy the rights, and asked for more of my stuff, which is exciting. The Chinese version is already out and apparently my Google-translated version of my name, from Mandarin, is Derek Kunshi Ken. I've got to use that as a pen name sometime when the loan sharks are after me.

As well, "Way of the Needle" and "The Dog's Paw" appeared in Escapepod and Pseudopod, respectively. That's very exciting, because in the space of a year, I went from not having sold anything to the amazing Escape Artists group (of which I have been a longtime fan), to selling to all three :-)  

I also sold I story I love called "Buddha Circus" to the anthology Darke Fantastique. It's a story I really like, because how often does the narrative offer the possibility of Buddha riding a unicycle? 

And then came a couple of firsts and a fifth. I can now say that I sold my fifth story to Asimov's, which is also my first one to have humans on screen. Up until now, it's all been unrecognizably modified humans, non-humanoid aliens and monkeys. It's a science fiction ghost story, so I hope it flies with the readership.  

The other first is that I sold my first story to Analog. I've been trying for years to hit the sweet spot for the Analog readership, and hadn't yet made it, but what finally worked for them was a survival tale set in the clouds of Venus, starring the Québécois. I'm descended from seven generations of Québécois, and live in Québec, and it finally occurred to me that a fringe benefit of being a writer was to give whomever I wanted heroic adventures in strange places, so I got to give some of space to the Québécois. I also got to make up the native life of Venus, so that was a ton of fun. It's called "Persephone Descending" and it will appear in the November issue of Analog (on the stands in early September).

I have lots of things still to work on, and never enough time, but everyone feels like that, right? :-)

The nominations for the 2014 Aurora Awards and the World Fantasy Awards have opened.  I  don’t normally send around my stuff for people to consider, but two fantasy  stories of mine were published in 2013, both of which I’m proud of.  
 
I’d like to draw your attention to the first, though.   “The Dog’s Paw” is a dark fantasy  story about a North American diplomatic corps trying to increase the number of  honour killings in a country very much like Yemen.   I’d been appalled about honour killings in general for a long time, but  didn’t find a way to actually put on paper what I wanted until I reversed all  the morals.  “Dog’s Paw” was chosen  by Ellen Datlow for her Year’s Best Horror Volume Six. 
I believe she called it “wonderfully disturbing.” It will also be podcast  in June at Pseudopod.org.

If you are interested in reading “Dog’s Paw” I would be happy to send you a pdf.  And if  you feel it is something you would want to consider as you think about  the Aurora and the World Fantasy nominations, I would obviously be delighted. 
 
If you are interested in thinking about some other amazing fiction, might I suggest a few stories below that are in my balloting consideration?  If you think there are others I should be thinking about, please let me know! 

How to Nominate – Aurora:  You need to be a member of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA), by being a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and paying $10, but this money supports the awards themselves and provides a small cash prize for the winner in the novel category.  You can become a member by clicking here: http://www.prixaurorawards.ca/membership/join-csffa/  If you’re already a member you’re golden.  After payment, you can click on the “Aurora Awards” button at the top of the screen and then you’re good to go.  The nomination deadline is April  12.

 How to Nominate – World Fantasy Award:  If you attended the World Fantasy Convention 2012 or  2013, or are going to attend the World Fantasy Convention in 2014, you’re eligible to already.  The link and  instructions are right here http://worldfantasy2014.org/awards.php. The nomination deadline is May
31. 

Thank you for any thought you give to this. 

  Derek
 
Aurora Ballot – some on my “consider these” list:

Helen Marshall “The Hanging Game” http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/03/the-hanging-game
Michael Matheson “The Last Summer” http://www.ideomancer.com/?p=2637
Geoffrey Cole “Song of Mary” http://www.electricvelocipede.com/2013/12/song-of-mary-by-geoffrey-w-cole/
Indrapramit Das “Karina Who Kissed Spacetime” http://www.apex-magazine.com/karina-who-kissed-spacetime/
Gemma Files “A Feast for Dust” http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-feast-for-dust/
Geoff Gander “White Noise” http://aescifi.ca/index.php/fiction/35-short-stories/1998-white-noise
Kate Heartfield “A Pair of Ragger Claws” http://blacktreacle.ca/2013/04/02/a-pair-of-ragged-claws-by-kate-heartfield/
Cory Doctorow “By His Things Will You Know Him” http://www.iftf.org/fanfutures/doctorow/
Marie Bilodeau “The Kevlar Canoe” http://tychebooks.com/books/masked-mosaic/
Hayden Trenholm and Elizabeth Westbrook Trenholm “Chasing Happiness” http://www.neo-opsis.ca/Twenty-Three.htm

There’s a much bigger list of eligible works available
for nomination at: http://canspecfic.com/2013-can-sf/

World Fantasy Ballot – the ones above, plus some works by
non-Canadians:
Sofia Samatar “Selkie Stories are for Losers” http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/20130107/selkie-f.shtml
Christopher Barzak “Sister Twelve: Confessions of a Party  Monster” http://www.apex-magazine.com/sister-twelve-confessions-of-a-party-monster/
Kenneth Schneyer “Selected Program Notes from the  Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” http://mythicdelirium.com/?page_id=1137


 

It seems that every day just flies by. I've got a newer, bigger job, have been managing to keep up with parenting and writing/editing, as well as the blogging at Black Gate, and for some reason, I'm making a lot of reprint sales, including Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Volume Six.  All this is very exciting, but doesn't leave time for much else. I am working on a bit of a short fiction monstrosity - a novella (my first) called "Pollen from a Future Harvest," which is more overtly a time travel story than my last ("Schools of Clay"), and even during editing, is weighing in at 19,000 words.  We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I will direct you to a few of my blog posts at Black Gate. I've been having fun with that opportunity :-)

Voices in Fantasy Literature, Part I
Voices in Fantasy Literature, Part II
Voices in Fantasy LIterature, Part III and
Is Fantasy Inherently Not Political?

Enjoy!

I'm still trying to get the hang of blogging regularly at Black Gate.  My friend Hayden Trenholm, of writing and publishing fame, suggests that the discipline of blogging every two weeks will build a sense of which ideas are bloggable and which ones lack meat on the bone.  Hayden himself carries on quite an insightful series of blogs at http://bundoransf.wordpress.com, and I highly recommend them.

So, this week, I decided to blog about Space: 1999, because, when you're blogging for an adventure fantasy website, nothing screams relevance like musings on a poor-quality science fiction show that was cancelled while John Lennon was complaining about the vapidity of disco.