My review of the June issue of Analog is now up at The Portal.

http://sffportal.net/2011/06/analog-june-2011/

Drabblecast are going to do an audio version of my story Hokkaido Green.

Jerel Dye has created an absolutely beautiful piece of art to accompany the story.

On his blog, Jerel describes the process he used to create the image:

I wanted to pay tribute to the artistic tradition in which the story is based, Japan. Some may know that I mostly use Sumi-e ink in my drawings, this is more based on the qualities that the ink has, and not so much on tradition. (I actually use an ink well, not the stick that it traditionally comes in) Sumi-e ink has a wonderful liquidity, never gums up, and smells like earth in a light summer rain (it’s made from soot). But I almost never use the bamboo brush (i’ve played around with them, but haven’t produced much with them), and my work definitely isn’t zen like. The true sumi-e tradition is one of calm and a spare hand. The challenge in sumi-e ink painting is to evoke a scene, usually of nature, with the fewest number of marks possible.

As final proof that the computer gaming community has come of age, I submit this evidence – a recent snapshot of the most popular articles on the gaming web site Kotaku.

A couple of weeks ago I went up to Sydney for the Aurealis Awards.  My short story, Inksucker was nominated in the YA short story category.  It didn’t win, but it was wonderful just to be nominated, especially given that the winning story was by Margo Lanagan, one of my Clarion South tutors.

Two of my fellow Clarion South students won awards – Angela Slatter for Best Collection and Lisa Hannett and Angela for the story they co-wrote.

The judges report has some nice things to say about the stories.
http://www.aurealisawards.com/judgesreports2010.pdf

The best part of the weekend was catching up with lots of writing friends and making some new friends.

I haven’t written many new short stories in the last year, my focus has been on writing my YA novel, The Way of Dragons.  Last weekend, I finally finished the first draft.  There is still a lot of work to be done revising it, but it’s a great feeling to get such a big chunk of the work out of the way.

The first draft came in at 105,000 words, which is a little long for a YA book.  The story’s basic premise involves a young man joining a monastery in order to find the cure for his sister that has been poisoned by a dragon.  It features encrypted dragon eggs, cloud painting monks and forbidden numbers.

After I’ve revised the novel I’ll be sending it out for crits.  After that I’ll have to decide what to do with the novel.  The traditional route would be to send it to an agent or publisher, but of course these days there are a plethora of web sites discussing the merits of self-publishing for ebook readers.  Although self-publishing options through Amazon are looking increasingly attractive, I’m still going to first pursue publication through one of the major houses.

My review of Analog’s May issue is now up at The Portal.

http://sffportal.net/2011/05/analog-may-2011/