Category: Victory

New story coming in License Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond

jamesbondI’m thrilled that editors David Nickle​ and Madeline Ashby​ have accepted my novelette The Gladiator Lie for the upcoming ChiZine Publications​ anthology License Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond. Actually, I’m double-thrilled, because my darling Alyx’s story has also been accepted. This will be the first time we’re sharing a TOC. Ain’t that romantic?

My story is an alternate ending to From Russia with Love, focusing on Tatiana Romanova and Rosa Klebb. Though the title is from Lord Byron and the story starts with a quote from Childe Harold, let me assure you this is no highbrow contemplation of Bond’s inner manpain. It could properly be subtitled James Bond and the Lesbian Dwarves.

The story is deviant as hell. Why deviant? Well, it explores a few things I believe with all my heart:

1. Women are not inherently nicer or kinder than men. With the right opportunities, women are capable of committing every possible crime and indecency.

2. Just because a woman is gorgeous and charming doesn’t mean she’s nice (I’m looking at you, Tatiana Romanova).

3. Beautiful romances can happen between unbeautiful people (I’m looking at you, Rosa Klebb and [redacted]).

I love this deviant freakshow of a story with all my heart and can’t wait for the antho to come out in November.

The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill

Art by Atilgan Azikuzun
Art by Atilgan Azikuzun

Clarkesworld issue 101 (February 2015) includes my Science Fiction story The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill. I’m just over the moon about it.

Three Resurrections is my most recently completed story, and thanks to the magic of the Internet, it’s the first to see publication. I have three other stories coming out this year, and am terribly proud of each one. But for a variety of reasons, Three Resurrections is very much a screaming, raving, ranting child of my heart.

I’m very much looking forward to hearing what people think of it.

My first Asimov’s

Asimov's magazine January 1984I just heard that my SF story The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill will be appearing very soon — in Clarkesworld‘s February issue.

I’m thrilled to death, of course. Three Resurrections is my most recently completed story, and strangely, it will be my first published piece of fiction. Thus is the magic of the Internet!

And something else exciting has happened recently. I haven’t yet made much of it publicly (though I crowed on Facebook* because I just couldn’t help myself). So here it goes:

I just sold a story to Asimov’s Science Fiction.

And when I found out I cried my little eyes out. Bawled like a baby in my cubicle at work. Silently, I hope.

Why did I cry? Well, Asimov’s changed my life. Specifically, the January 1984 issue changed my life.

I bought it on a long road trip from Kelowna to Hinton. I’d been reading SF, of course, all my life, but this issue of Asimov’s introduced me to the cutting edge of contemporary SF at my tenderest of teenage years.

I have vivid memories of sitting in the front seat of our 1977 Suburban, reading Connie Willis’ Blued Moon and feeling my mind expand as I laughed and laughed. Connie’s story is about linguistics and happenstance and romance and coincidence, and the sponge of my little teenage brain just sopped it up. I’d never experienced anything like it.

From then on I went to the local drugstore about three times a week to check for the next issue of Asimov’s. I bought Analog and F&SF too, of course, and enjoyed them, but Asimov’s was special. Asimov’s introduced me to the writers who would form my adult mind — to Octavia Butler, James Tiptree, Michael Bishop, Nancy Kress, Maureen McHugh, John Kessel, Jack Womack, Pat Cadigan, of course Connie Willis, and so many others.

Asimov’s made me who I am. And in July my story Two-Year Man will appear in its pages.

 

 

*And on the SFWA forums, too. Because now I’m a SFWA member! Which is another thing to cry tears of joy over.