Blithe House Quarterly

[desperance]

A little belatedly ('cos nobody told me it was out):

the new issue of "Blithe House Quarterly" includes the opening section of 'Nothing Broken', the first of my Taiwan novellas. Nip along and have a read - and then, if you want to read more, tell me. It's a piece that has "Resurgam" engraved on its heart; a couple of nights back I was at a ProudWords event and was buttonholed by someone who'd been asked just the evening before, if he knew whether this had been published yet. (Answer: not yet, except this excerpt here; I'm kind of holding it back now, until the full quartet is finished. Which will be next year, for I shall go back to Taiwan, Cinders, just to do that. Yes, I shall...)

Comments

[danjite.livejournal.com]

"Buttonholed" sounds like it should be a euphemism for something terribly naughty.

What three things would you recommend for the traveler who has three days in Taiwan? I live in Thailand and pass through Taipei at least twice a year and am damn well going to make it out of the airport, eventually.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ooh do, do...

I love Taipei with a passion. It was my first Big Asian City, and maybe you always feel differently about the first (I've been to Seoul since, and love that too - but largely for its contrasts, all those ways in which it is Not Like Taipei).

What to do? Hard to say, 'specially to someone who has the generic Asian experience already. I love the Night Markets, but they probably wouldn't seem so magical to you. The National Palace Museum is simply essential, if you have any interest in Chinese art & culture; basically this is all the treasures of the Forbidden City, that Chiang Kai-Shek took with him on his great retreat. They built this vast museum to display them, and can still only show a minimal proportion at any one time (but look out for the jade cabbage-and-cricket, which I think is always on show - it's the most extraordinary piece of jade carving I've ever seen. Oh, and go to the jade market, if you're in town at the right time. If jade's your thing...). Tihua St is my favourite place to shop-without-buying: it's a distillation of the old China, all dried foods and herbs. For the same sorts of reasons, I love the Lin Antai homestead, which is the oldest surviving residence in the city, just a snapshot view of how they used to live a couple of hundred years back. The temples are fun, a riot of colour and noise and theological confusion.

Getting out of the city is also good, but rainforests & mountains is probably familiar territory to you, and may be the same all over (I wouldn't know). Taroko Gorge is said to be extraordinary; I haven't been. Mostly, I just like to be a flaneur: wander round and look, watch the people, talk to anyone who'll talk to me.

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Here I am, snuffling and cold-y, on a filthy grey day - and I've been transported out of my self-pity. You made me see Taiwan. I do want to read more! When it's all finished, let me know which publisher I should badger enthusiastically to get the book out. I e-mailed Orbit recently to enquire sweetly when a British edition of 'Selling Water By the River' would appear and got a reply saying that it was only available from a US publisher (I can't remember if I've mentioned that to you - this cold is affecting my memory) - a rather po-faced answer, I thought. Arrgh, I'm rambling.

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

I think that, even if we have it, we should email Orbit and ask when the British edition of Selling Water is coming out... (Scuttles off to do it immediately...)

The email address, by the way, for those who can't be bothered to go to the Orbit website (and why should you? They don't publish Chaz'z books any more...) is: here (I think that piece of html linkage should work. If not, it's orbit.uk@twbg.co.uk)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

That's verrry nicely written.