A quick test. Herewith, four opening lines from four different stories. Two have been published, two will be shortly. Can you guess who they’re by?

1. When I was a small a steel monkey would come into my room.
   “The Dust Assassin”, Ian McDonald (The Starry Rift)
2. Kyle was the first to see the exploding cat
   “Kyle Meets the River”, Ian McDonald (Forbidden Planets)
3. Once there was a woman in Delhi who married a djinn.
   “The Djinn’s Wife”, Ian McDonald (Asimov’s)
4. I remember the night I became a goddess.
   “The Little Goddess”, Ian McDonald (Asimov’s)

Marianne and the girls are out today, or for most of it so far. Jess had unigym and Sophie had dance class, and I think they all then went for lunch at my mother’s place. Having had four and a half hours sleep in the past twenty eight, I finished proofing Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005 this afternoon and have sent it back to Oakland. Best Short Novels: 2006 is, of course, all but finished. I’ve done my main pass through, and answered some followups from Kathy at the Club. Marianne has been working on Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005 too. Depending on how she feels, I might start in on it too. Once that’s done, I have an introduction to revise for The Starry Rift, then I can get to the taxes. Once the taxes are done, on to Miscellaneous Project #2.  Lots of reading in June. Time I can, frankly, not afford, but such is the course of matters.  Along the way I’ve been doing some reading for the year’s bests for 2007. I’m a long, long way behind on that, and usually depend on the winter months (the Reading Months when it’s rainy and grey outside) to get that done. I’ll be wasting a month of that in the US though, so I have to take some of that with me somehow, otherwise November will be the same kind of madness as April has been.

I can see some respite up ahead. If I can just get close to deadlines through to Christmas Eve, 2007, I’m home and hosed. I’ll be taking at least five months off work, if not longer. And then, I can do some quiet things, unwind, destress, and take care of myself.  So, twenty one months. That’s not so much. I got through 20 years of the day job.

According to the program for the Nebula awards weekend (hi Margo!), the Nebula results will have been announced by 10pm Saturday Arizona time (or 1pm Sunday Perth time). I’ll be curious to see how long they take to trickle out onto the net. Good luck to Margo, Kelly, and others. I have my fingers crossed for Air in Best Novel, “Singing My Sister Down” in Best Short Story, “Magic for Beginners” in Best Novella, would be happy to see any of the novelette nominees pick up the prize (though Kelly’s a friend, so I’m a little biassed), and would love to see Holly pick up the inaugural Norton award (that’s Andre not Emperor).

Sean Williams returns to the fantastical alternate Australia that he created in his Books of the Change fantasy trilogy in his latest fantasy work, The Books of the Cataclysm. The opening book in the series, The Crooked Letter, takes readers to a world shattered into a million pieces, the second, The Blood Debt, moves on to a far corner of that world where blood is power and water is more precious than freedom, and the third, The Hanging Mountains, looks to ancient enemies stalking the ghostly fog forests of legend. The fourth and final book in the series, The Devoured Earth, is due out in Australia in June.

I’ve been reading Sean Williams work since the early 1990s, when he was submitting stories to a semiprozine that I was editing in Perth. While even then he was focussed on the science fiction that has made his name, he has passionately pushed his own personal envelope, working hard to create work that is engaging, entertaining, and challenging. You can see this in this quartet of fantasies, all of which I think will repay your attention.

As a special bonus, Sean has let me post the opening chapters from each of the four Books of the Cataclysm. They’re linked to as FlashPaper files. To read them you can either scroll through the files using the scrollbars on the side of the flash windows, or click on the page symbol at the top right of each toolbar to open the file in a fresh window. You can also zoom in or out using the zoom tool to read the text more clearly. Neat, huh.

I’d love to hear from Coode Streeters on how you like The Books of the Cataclysm and how you like the FlashPaper experiment. And remember, if you like the samples, the books are published by HarperCollins in Australia and PYR in the US, and they have cool Greg Bridges covers.

Read excerpts

1. The Crooked Letter

Read the sample

2. The Blood Debt

Read the sample

3. The Hanging Mountains

Read the sample

4. The Devoured Earth

Read the sample

Some reviews

I know readers like to hear what other people think of the books they’re reading, so I checked out some of the reviews for The Crooked Letter, the first book in Sean’s series. Turns out that Barnes and Noble’s reviewer calls it ” a page-turner of the highest order”, and it gets good notices here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

Note: So, WordPress doesn’t like embedding Flash movies. Darn. You can read these by clicking on the links. The files will then operate as described. Still cool, but only moderately cool.

This is it. The number one book that I am waiting to read. I’d like to lie to you, suggest that there’s another book that I’m waiting for anywhere near as eagerly as Terry Pratchett’s third Tiffany Aching adventure, Wintersmith, but I’d be lying. While this has been a good year, it’s already left me exhausted. Too many late nights spent sitting in front of a computer monitor, proofing PDFs, and not getting to fulfil commitments on time has left me feeling a little wrung out. Nothing, nothing, refreshes like Pratchett, and I really liked The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky.