Connie Willis, our newest SFWA Grand Master

Yes, I am very behind on my blogging, my email, you name it. Just posting a quick note to say I am alive and I will be posting some new posts as soon as I catch up on sleep. This weekend I was at the Nebulas and got to see Connie Willis made a Grand Master. Now Connie is a wonderful, generous person. At this awards weekend, when she is the most honored guest, it was hard for us to find time meet up and spend any time together. Nearly all of our meals were booked, so we just decided to meet in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday - the day of the Awards banquet - and we sat and talked for over two hours.

Connie was my Clarion West instructor, and no one I know teaches better than she does (which is no insult at all to any of the rest of my fantastic teachers). In the course of just a few minutes' conversation, she'll say things that I digest over the next few hours and days, so you can imagine how a two our conversation was like drinking from a firehose from the font of knowledge. I'll be sorting through and picking apart what she said for months. We had a great conversation about books, plotting, and specifically romances because the book she is working on right now has a romance storyline in it.

At the Awards Banquet, she was fantastic, giving an acceptance speech that brought everyone to their feet in a big standing ovation. And yes, I did get to see her Grand Master Award. It looks very much like a Nebula - and for the uninitiated, a Nebula is a block of lucite with spherical planets made from I don't know what and glitter galaxies suspended in it. Connie is our fourth female Grand Master and one of the youngest. She has most definitely earned it, though, having won more Hugos and Nebulas than any other author, with stories that are classics.

I can sense my consciousness slipping though. I need to crash. Hope what I wrote was coherent!

The Dragon and the Stars nominated for the Aurora Award!

 I got news today from Eric Choi that The Dragon and the Stars (Daw Science Fiction) has been nominated for the Aurora Award. Kudos again to Derwin and Eric for doing such a fantastic job with this anthology. Since it was published, they've worked hard to garner sales and get onto the radar of critics and award organizations.

I'd love it if this anthology won. Eric has posted an exerpt of his story, The Son of Heaven, and Derwin Mak has posted details about the award. Please go and vote for us if you like our stories. 

For those who haven't read it, I'm going to post an exerpt from my story, Across the Sea. To read the whole story and others from the Chinese diaspora, buy the book :-)

Across the Sea

by Emily Mah

           Chopsticks made from bone or ivory, a piece of jade carved into the face of a dragon, and a piece of a lacquered bowl. The objects were laid out on a weathered plastic tray set on an unsteady card table at one end of the dig site. Kate Hu stared at them, her stomach churning.

            “We'd put these at about six hundred years old,” one of the archaeologists said. “So, beginning of the fifteenth century.”

            “Right,” Kate replied. “So you called --”

            The sentence was cut short by the arrival of a shiny black Hummer that pulled up to the dig site and stopped short enough to spray everyone with gravel.

            “-- Michael Scott,” Kate finished.

            “Well, yeah,” said the archaeologist, a pencil thin grad student with thick spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. Kenderson was his name, Doug Kenderson. “He's been talking about writing another book.”

            The Hummer door swung open, and out stepped a man in his early forties with silvered hair and a perfectly tailored sport jacket over jeans. Kate wished she could turn away, but her traitorous eyes stared at him openly.

            He caught sight of her at once and blinked.  “Kate?” At least he remembered her name.

            “Mr. Scott,” she replied.