Writer. Scientist. Thoroughly Disappointing Flesh Muppet.
If it weren’t for Tor.com, where this story first appeared, I wouldn’t have known about this.
But thanks to this post, I’ve just learned that “What Doctor Gottlieb Saw” (a standalone piece set in the Milkweed universe of Bitter Seeds) is included in Locus’s list of recommended short fiction reads from 2010.
And, gosh, now that I look at the actual list, I see that Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale) is up there, too. Wow!
Well, gosh, this is a wonderful surprise.
The venerable Pat, of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist fame, has included Bitter Seeds in his list of the Top Ten Speculative Fiction Titles of 2010. And over at Fantasy Book Critic, Bitter Seeds is listed among the Top 25 Novels of 2010. And the Mad Hatter has included Bitter Seeds in his list of the best genre books of the year.
It’s a great relief to see that people still remember a book that came out way back in April. (Holy cow. Has it really been that long already? Seems like yesterday, yes it does.)
Okay, so, I’ve been gone a while.
No surprises there, since I’m generally pretty awful at keeping my blog up to date. This time, at least, I have an excuse for the long silence— I was fortunate enough to get to spend all of September down in Australia. And generally having the time of my life. (Tasmanian Devils are TEH KYOOT.)
Worldcon made a good excuse for my first trip to the Southern Hemisphere. And I figured that if I was going to travel across the International Date Line for maybe the only time in my life, I ought to make the most of it. Hence the month-long vacation.
Also, the timing worked out very well, because I turned in the manuscript for the third and final Milkweed novel, Necessary Evil, a couple of weeks before I left for Melbourne on August 30 (it was due on my editor’s desk September 1). Which meant that the trip coincided with the first time in over four years when I could enjoy down time—actual, honest-to-goodness down time with no obligations or deadlines pressing on me—and relax and veg out without being stricken with the crippling guilt that I wasn’t working on Milkweed stuff right now. Which is sorta how I’ve spent all of my free time since I started planning the Milkweed Triptych, way back when.
So I spent the month traveling around Australia while not thinking about Marsh, Will, Gretel, Klaus, Eidolons, Enochian, and all the rest. And it was awesome.
I’ll try to say more about my antipodean adventure in upcoming posts. (No promises. Because as we all know, I suck at keeping the blog up to date.) But, while at Worldcon, I did get to sit down with my editor at Tor. So, speaking of Milkweed, some updates below the cut…
Hurrah! The audiobook version of Bitter Seeds is now available from Audible.com! The narrator, Kevin Pariseau, did a terrific job. And I have to admit he surprised me with how closely he had read the novel, when it came to the details of how various characters spoke. We had an email conversation about Marsh and Will, and Kevin actually reminded me of a detail I’d forgotten. Yowsers!
And, unlike me, Kevin can actually do accents and different voices. So if you’re curious about how the novel is supposed to sound, check it out.
Over on her blog recently, Susan Dennard has been giving some thought to one of the heaviest of writerly burdens: research. Since she’s written her own historical spec-fic novels, it’s a topic to which she has given a fair bit of thought. (Her posts are a good primer for folks who find themselves contemplating a project that requires its own research, but who haven’t done something like that for a while, or who don’t know how to tackle it.)
Believe it or not, the Milkweed books required a bit of research. (It’s true! People even ask me about this from time to time.) So this is a topic of no small interest to me.
Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated turn of events, I bought a new camera this weekend. And find myself completely incapable of using it effectively. (Big surprise). So I thought it would be fun to post a few photos of the bookshelf where I kept many of my research materials while working on the Milkweed Triptych.
Below the cut: blurry photos and puppet robots.