Caroline M. Yoachim's Blog, page 9

Sunshine!

Seattle can get a little gray and dreary sometimes, but when the sun comes out it sure is beautiful!

New stories available!

The February 2010 issue of Asimov's hits newsstands today, including my novelette "Stone Wall Truth" (and also the novelette "The Wind-Blown Man" by fellow Codexian Aliette de Bodard).

An excerpt from my story:

Njeri sewed the woman together with hairs from a zebra tail. Her deer-bone needle dipped under the woman's skin and bobbed back out. The contrast of the white seams against her dark skin was striking.

"The center seam makes a straight line," Njeri told her apprentice, "but the others flow with the natural curves of the body, just as the Enshai River follows the curve of the landscape."

Odion leaned in to examine her work, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Foolish boy, wasting his attention on her. Njeri set her needle on the table and stood up to stretch. The job was nearly done—she'd repositioned the woman's organs, reconstructed her muscles, sewn her body back together. Only the face was still open, facial muscles splayed out in all directions from the woman's skull like an exotic flower in full bloom.

"Why sew them back together, after the wall?" Odion asked. "Why not let them die?"


(You can also read a longer excerpt at the Asimov's website.)

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Also out this month is issue 42 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, with my short story "Pageant Girls." This one is available for download here.

And here's an excerpt from that one:

Kat holds my hand and pulls me across the street. Living kids ain't supposed to cross the street by themselves, and I got appearances to keep up. I'm six years old, always six. I been dead about fifteen years now. Kat's dead too. I call her Mama, but we don't share blood. She's just some dead lady, about the right age.

Nebula Noms

Nominations have opened up for the Nebula Awards. I've just joined SFWA, so if there's an eligible story you think is nom-worthy (be it yours or someone else's), feel free to call my attention to it in the comments section.

And now for a little shameless self-promotion! I've got five award-eligible works this year:

Short Stories (2009)
"Tending the Mori Birds," Fantasy Magazine (September 24, 2009)
"Firefly Igloo," Shimmer (Issue 10)
"Setting My Spider Free," Electric Velocipede (Issue 17/18)
"Pageant Girls," Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (Issue 42) **

Novelettes (2009)
"The Land of Empty Shells," Beneath Ceaseless Skies (Issue 20)

** "Pageant Girls" appeared in an Australian magazine, so it is not eligible for the Nebula (but would be eligible for the Hugo).

Part of a healthy diet?

Vanilla-almond bread pudding topped with slivered almonds, raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream. A good source of . . .um. . .calcium.

Arts and Crafts

I was feeling artsy and or crafty the other day, and decided I would try my hand at making some beaded jewelry. One of the things I tried was something vaguely steampunky -- disassembling watches and reassembling them so that the mechanism shows. Sadly, many newer watches (particularly on the lower end of the price range) do not have the lovely metal gears that older watches have; but I think the end result was still pretty interesting.

Shots of some of my other projects are here.

Story at Fantasy Magazine!

My story, "Tending the Mori Birds," is now online at Fantasy Magazine.

Excerpt:

A Mori bird waited for him on the railing, its claws wrapped around the wood. The dying light accentuated the patch of red feathers at the base of its slender neck, the only color on an otherwise black bird. A bloody-throated Mori bird, harbinger of death.

I wrote this story while attending the Clarion West Writers Workshop back in 2006, and it is the very first story I ever sold. Due to an assortment of unforseen circumstances the story is not my first publication (it's my sixth!!), but I'm quite pleased that it is finally available for people to read :)

Ribbit!

Spent some time this morning cleaning up after yesterday's flooding. We found a frog hanging out in our garage puddles. Poor frog didn't seem too pleased that we were squeegeeing all the water out with an old mop. Eventually (after some gentle prodding with aforementioned mop) we encouraged him to head outside, and find a more natural puddle somewhere.

Now the sandbags are all stacked up in case we need them again later, most of the standing water is out of the garage, and things are generally back to a normal state of being.

And the rain rain rain came down down down...

After one of the driest, hottest summers Austin has had in decades, it has finally started to rain. It started raining yesterday, and it kept right on going overnight and all throughout the day today. Late this morning, it started raining much harder. And kept raining harder. The picture above was taken at around noon. An hour later, our yard looked like this:



Note that in the first image, the yard was made out of grass. It is now a giant flowing puddle instead. And the change took less than an hour. Don't get me wrong, I really like rain, even hard rain. I especially like storms. I don't even mind having a puddle yard.

What I don't like is the inch of water that is now covering the bottom of my garage.

Free Fiction!

Issue 17/18 of Electric Velocipede will be available in print soon, but in the meantime John Klima has made a selection of stories from the issue available to read for free online:

* The Bear Dresser's Secret by Richard Bowes
* Enmity by K. Tempest Bradford
* The Spaces Between Things by Matthew Kressel
* Setting My Spider Free by Caroline M. Yoachim

Here's a brief excerpt from my story:

Cool air swirled in through the window and carried with it the faint tapping of claws scratching against stone. A spiderling was climbing my tower.

Lilymiya stirred. She'd spent the daylight hours in her corner with all her legs fanned out across the floor, trying to ward off the summer heat. My poor spider. Her fur, so thick and comforting in the winter, was patchy and ragged. Clumps of it gathered along the base of the walls, and thick strands clung to the grimy sweat on my skin.

In addition to the stories posted online, there are lots of other great stories in the print issue -- so if you liked the free sample, head over to the Night Shade Books Electric Velocipede page and subscribe.

Chili

I decided this afternoon that I was in the mood for cornbread, and since cornbread on its own is not a very nutritious dinner, I made some chili to go with it. I suspect that according to some definitions, this actually doesn't qualify as chili (Texans can be very particular about chili -- I think around here it's only supposed to be meat in a spicy sauce, no beans or anything), but it was tasty. Mostly I just threw in anything I had on hand that seemed like a chili sort of ingredient:

- ground turkey, browned
- yellow onion, jalapeno peppers (seeded), red pepper; sauteed
- canned tomato
- chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (about half a small can)
- black beans
- pinto beans
- salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, and oregano

Everything went into a big pot and simmered for probably an hour. Then we topped the finished product with colby jack cheese and tons of sliced avocado.

Near the end of the simmering time I baked up the corn bread. I'm not much for baking, so I used Jiffy mix, which often comes out rather dry. tinaconnolly told me at some point that she puts a dollop of sour cream into baked goods to make them stay moist, so I decided to try a variation on that -- I didn't have any sour cream on hand but I had some nonfat yogurt, so I put a glob of that in along with the normal milk/egg that the package called for. And it worked! The cornbread came out with more of a cakelike texture instead of being all dry and crumbly.