I’m having so much fun with this book blog

/ RCRuiz

We’ve got a new post up on Chie and Weng Read Books. Ekaterina Sedia gave us a fantastic interview and I just loved reading her answers. Do drop by and read when you have time. 

I’m enjoying this book blog a lot and I think it’s because reading books has always been a magical experience for me, and getting to know authors and interview them is a treat. 

Jan asked me why I thought up this idea to have a book blog and I realized that the book blog has its roots in the things I shared with my big sis. 

It was born from a desire to keep the ties that bind my sis and I together and sprung forth from the memory of sharing a room, fighting over the same books, debating the merits of whatever we’d read, and long conversations over the dining table. 

Each time I read something fantastic, I want to share it with my sis. Each time I visit a historical city, I wish my sis were there with me (because she is such a history lover). Growing up, we argued a lot. We were only a year apart. She didn’t like rock music, but she endured the season when I felt it was absolutely necessary to play Queen at full volume over and over again. And then there was the time she walked home all the way from the bank in sweltering heat because I’d hidden her bank book and replaced it with mine. (I was an evil sister).  When I said I was leaving for the Netherlands, she shouted at me: Well then, go already. 

My sister and I love books. We’ve just chosen this book blog as the space where we continue to conduct our conversations about books and the people who write them. And because it doesn’t get said enough, I love you, Sis. 🙂 

Nine Worlds Geekfest 2013

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Three more sleeps and it will be Friday. I’ll be leaving for Nine Worlds Geekfest and it promises to be an interesting and exciting weekend. 

Nine Worlds has published a full programme and you can see what’s going on during the entire con on Lanyrd. Of course, you can also follow the con by track on the Nine Worlds website. 

Where I’ll be at: 

Friday, 9 August:

10:15-11:30 pm. New Voices Slam Session: Friday edition

Location: Lobby Room, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

With Adam Christopher, Emma Newman, Barry Nugent, Danie Ware, Jennifer Williams, Hannah Chutzpah, Liz de Jager, Rochita Ruiz, Lou Morgan andStephanie Saulter

Saturday, 10 August:

11:45am to 1:00pm. Why is the Future so Binary?

Location: Britannia, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

with Tori Truslow, Alex D MacFarlane, Rochita Ruiz, Jude Roberts and Cel West

5:00-6:15 pm. Women’s Worlds: Feminist Utopias in Literature

Location: Caravelle, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

with Alison Morton, Tricia Sullivan, Alex D MacFarlane, Rochita Ruiz and Cel West

6:45-8:00 pm. Science Fiction Double Feature: Gender and Sexuality in SFF

Location: George I, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

with Rochita Ruiz, Roz Kaveney, Tricia Sullivan, Weirwolf (Jon Weir) and David Tallerman

Sunday, 11 August

10:00-11:15 am. Better History=Better Fantasy: Writing outside the Binary

Location: Britannia, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

 with Alex D MacFarlane, Rochita Ruiz, Koel Mukherjee and Hel Gurney

11:45-1:00 pm. Racefail 101

Location: George I, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

with Zen Cho, Tade Thompson, Anne C. Perry, Rochita Ruiz and Stephanie Saulter

3:15-4:30 pm. Writing the Other

Location: Britannia, Renaissance London Heathrow Hotel

with Stephanie Saulter

If you’re going to Nine Worlds, please feel free to say hi. 

An excerpt from Return to Metal Town

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Here’s a very first drafty excerpt from Return to Metal Town. This was one of the short stories that came to me during the Clarion West Write-a-thon. If you’d like to sponsor me, my write-a-thon page is here. 

Next week, I’ll post a first drafty excerpt from the novel in progress. 

Excerpt: Return to Metal Town

An alternate child will be a good addition to your home. Memomach industries works to create the perfect child to suit your needs. 

-Memomach Industry ad- 

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Father wears the face of a numbered man. He wears the suit, he carries the briefcase, he drives the car.

 At home, he morphs into someone Mother argues with over their dinner.

 “I don’t see why you feel the need to indulge him,” Mother says.

 “He thinks it will be a good experience, and I agree,” Father replies.

 They are discussing Adventure Boy’s desire to visit Metal Town.

 Mother doesn’t wish them to go, but Father sees no harm in it.

 “I don’t understand why you want to see that place again,” Mother says. “I shudder when I remember how I almost lost you there.”

 “But you didn’t lose me,” Father says. “And we can’t deny him this. If he wants to know it for himself, then he should know it for himself.”

 “I won’t go,” Mother says.

 “If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to go,” Father replies.

 Adventure Boy lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling. He had bought a picture of the Remembrance Monument and Father had hung it from the ceiling. At night, the lines of the monument glowed in the dark.

Mechanic’s words rang in his ear.

“You can still hear the voices of those who have gone before.”  

The stories we write. . .

/ RCRuiz

This year’s write-a-thon seems to be really good for me. In the past two weeks, I’ve written close to 10,000 words including words from two new short stories.

One of the stories takes place during a period of Ifugao history that is surprisingly well-documented. I’m talking of the period when American colonizers took a large number of Ifugao to the US where they were put on display as living exhibits. I remember visiting the Folk Museum in Seattle and seeing newspaper clippings about this period there. I wish I’d taken the time to ask for copies of these clippings but I was feeling quite upset at the time. I thought of growing up with men and women who were very proud of the culture and to see it being written about in a condescending manner– I had no words for what I felt. I still don’t.

This is one of the most intense stories I’ve written and I find that the more I delve into history, the more it becomes impossible to be unmoved by it. I find myself wondering what it must have been like.The years when we lived away from the mountains were like years in exile. Now I live in the Netherlands, but for all that I am surrounded by green things, I have moments when I feel very much like an exile. My personal narrative contains that longing for home and the desire to return. I suppose it’s inevitable that this finds its way into story.

The second story I wrote, which is still in full first draft glory, intersects with Alternate Girl’s life story. For quite sometime now, this character named Adventure Boy has been lingering in the back of my mind. I kept trying to write his story, but kept coming up with the wrong words for it. Then, last week, I sat down and in two days, the first draft for Return to Metal City was written. I need to do a bit of tweaking and probably need to do a major overhaul on one section, but aside from that, it’s the story I’ve had in my head for quite a long time.

Right now, I’m back to working on the Body Cartographer novel. I’m hoping to write at least 5,000 more words to it by weekend. I’m terrible at updating but I will post excerpts sometime soon.

I should be able to title posts more creatively…

/ RCRuiz

I’ve started reading stories from the Paul Harland Competition. For the non-Dutch SFF crowd, the Paul Harland Competition is a Dutch-languaged Short story competition in the SFF/H genre. I read for this competition last year and agreed to read again this year, mainly because I find myself quite impressed by organizer Martijn Lindeboom’s vision for Dutch SFF scene. I’ve divided the stories into batches of ten and am reading them on alternate days. That’s all I’m saying at this point. 

Thanks to everyone who supported What Fates Impose. We reached full-funding on Friday. It’s been quite an experience and I enjoyed being part of this kickstarter.

Another anthology that I hope reaches full funding is “Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond”. I remember seeing the call for subs sometime ago and thinking: I don’t care if they pay or not, I want to be in that. Looking at the toc, I feel very very lucky. So many people I’ve admired are on that ToC. I can’t believe I’m sharing it with them. Bill Campbell has put up an indiegogo campaign to pay for Mothership. I hope the campaign meets with success. Please feel free to signal-boost.

Finally, my elder sister has resigned from her job and is taking a sabbatical year. I’ve asked her if she’s up for reading and reviewing books. I have a load of books that I’ve been meaning to review, but never get around to doing and my sister is quite the bookworm and an excellent critic to boot, so I thought I’d ask her if she’d be willing to do that. Happily, she said yes. 

I’m working on the design for a book blog called Chie and Weng Read Books where we basically talk about books and why we like them or why we don’t like them. Since my sister has got this strong personality, I anticipate some clashing in the future. When we were younger, we always fought over who got to read what book first. It should be interesting.

Finally, I continue to write words for the Clarion West Write-a-thon. I can’t believe it. I’m in a three-way duel with Dutch SFF writers Floris Kleijne and Bo Balder and I am lagging behind. Oh well…you know what they say: slow and steady. Feel free to cheer us on and sponsor one or all of us. 

Thanks to my sponsors. I’ve been very inspired and your names are immortalized in the fictions that were born during this battle. 

News on the Writing and Publishing front

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I’ve signed up for this year’s Clarion West Write-a-thon. This year, we want to have 300 writers signing up to participate in the write-a-thon as CW has received pledges of support for when we reach that number. The write-a-thon is a great motivation to add wordage to that work you’ve got in progress, or simply to get the words on the page. Last year, I had lots of fun writing pieces for individual sponsors. I don’t know if I can do individual stories this year, but I really loved writing my fun stories and I am thinking of doing something like that incorporating as many creatures/characters in a couple of shorts for those who choose to sponsor me. 

One of the stories I wrote in Clarion West has been selected for inclusion in Mothership:Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. Waking the God of the Mountain is strongly influenced by the struggle of the tribal people in Surigao against mining corporations. It also involves some of the armed conflict between government and anti-government forces. The failure of government to protect the rights of tribal people is something I feel strongly about. I’m pleased this story has found the right home.

In a previous post, I wrote about Body of Truth being accepted for Nayad Monroe’s What Fates Impose anthology. Do drop by and visit the kickstarter page. Check out the toc and the incentives on offer. 

Publisher’s Weekly has published a great review of We See a Different Frontier edited by Djibril Al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes. The anthology is coming out this August, so keep an eye out for it. 

Updates and where I’ll be at

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I’ve committed to attend Nine Worlds Convention which will be on the 9th to the 11th of August in the UK. I’ll be attending as a guest and will be on panels and involved in discussions. I feel privileged that I can attend this con as a guest. I confess I’m a bit nervous but I do look forward to meeting and making friends, catching up, chatting and making new connections.

UK Author, Nina Allan made this list of 101 #women to read. It’s an honor and an encouragement to be on the list. I find myself quite amazed by the legs on some stories. I loved writing Song of the Body Cartographer it makes me happy to see how it’s resonated with different readers.

With regards to upcoming publications, if you’ve been waiting for news on the We See a Different Frontier anthology, I’ve been told it’ll be out soon. I’ve seen the proofs and am quite in awe of my toc-mates. 

To punctuate this post, I’m posting a link to my Movements column which came out last week. “So what do you think of my story where I made use of another person’s Culture?” 

Writing and Publishing news

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Speculative Fiction 2012: the best online reviews, essays and commentary volume I is now available from Amazon.com. My essay, Decolonizing as an SF writer (first published on The Future Fire editor’s blog) is also in this volume. It makes me happy to know that this piece resonated with the editors and I hope that it resonates with readers of the anthology. The proceeds from the sale of this anthology go to Room to Read.

Amazon now has a listing for The End of the Road anthology. It’s available for pre-orders and the Book description makes me hungry to read the entire anthology. 

In yet more writing news, my short story, Body of Truth, has been accepted for inclusion in the upcoming What Fates Impose anthology edited by Nayad Monroe. When Nayad sent me the guidelines for this anthology, I was immediately intrigued by it. I’ll write more about the background of this story in another post.

In the meantime, here are some links to where Nayad talks about the process of editing an anthology. It makes for very interesting and thought-provoking reading.

What Fates Impose: Inside the Anthology

How Choosing Stories is, and is not, like making a Mix Tape

Five Important Reasons to Worry about Divination

Why “Maybe” is harder than “Yes” or “No”

I’m happy about the stories that have been accepted for publication, and I hope they resonate with readers as well. 

Dagiti Timayap Garda

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My short story, Dagiti Timayap Garda, will be appearing in an anthology edited by Jonathan Oliver and published by Solaris Publishing. I’m pretty chuffed about this story because it’s inspired by the Tikbalang. It’s not exactly the Tikbalang as the Timayap Garda goes beyond shapeshifting. My thanks go out to Victor Ocampo who read this story and sent me critical feedback on a section that I was in doubt about. Thanks, Victor.

The timayap garda made its first appearance in a short story I wrote during Clarion West. Someday, I will publish that story, but for now, the creatures in that world are making their way into print and that makes me happy..

Here’s a preview of the stunning cover art for End of the Road. I’ll be doing tons of squeeing when it comes out.

Image