LA, I am in you

It's Christmas Eve, in the northern hemisphere, and we have baking sunshine and barbecues.

I do not entirely understand this, but I treasure it none the less.

In other news, there may be a whole new book in my head. I blame Steve, for asking for it.

Seasonal round-up (awards edition)

Or you could go and listen to the Blues Brothers' cover of "Rawhide" instead; but it has been suggested that I might forgo my erstwhile reluctance and post a you-could-vote-for-me summary of certain works of mine that appeared this year and would qualify for numerous awardy things.

So allow me to draw your attention to the following:

Being Small - sometimes referred to as a novella, by official and historical nomination rules, this counts as a novel for award purposes. It earned itself an utterly charming review in the New York Times, if you want to scroll down to find it.

Bitter Waters is my first short story collection in twenty years, so it had a deep well to draw from. Criteria included "queer" and "spec-fic"; it speaks to my private obsessions that most of the stories in the bucket came up damp, one way or another. The book had starred reviews in both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, among other happy notices.

"The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini" is probably my favourite story of the year, and turns out to have been one of Gardner Dozois' as well; he picked it for his forthcoming Year's Best antho.


- So now you have all the artefacts you need, to assemble a splendid slate of awards nominations. Or else you have an earworm, to see you through the coming season. Either way, it's all good.

In the great and empty halls of our departed masters

(Is it perverse, to post a subject line without a subject? This is in fact in part what Mars Beneath is treating with, and may in part be why I'm so mcuh struggling with it, but right now it's just a phrase I cannot use, so I thought I'd fling it up here instead.)