My recent story “The Halberdier, by Moonlight,” out in the current (Fall 2011) issue of On Spec, got a great review on Locus online.

Lois Tilton, long-time short fiction reviewer, is well-known for being hard to impress and stingy with her praise.  So I was delighted to see her review of “Halberdier” include comments like this:

A tragic, moving tale, an effective portrayal of the horrors of war, as well as an individual’s yearning for atonement.

The halberdier yearns for atonement for a past incident in his life.  The story includes an odd concept for the afterlife, and I was quite pleased that Ms. Tilton said: “The afterlife is well-conceived.”

Not much of my fiction has gotten reviews, especially by a top-level reviewer such as Ms. Tilton. I’m delighted to be noticed and to get such good praise.  Thank you!

Last night, during the recording of a roundtable discussion on swords & sorcery for an upcoming podcast at SF Signal, Hugo-winning editor and huge S&S fan Lou Anders made a really neat comment about urban fantasy.

Modern urban fantasy, as Lou said, is almost a type of swords & sorcery.  It has tough protagonists.  They are usually outsiders in their society, in one way or another; “rogue” sort of characters, if you will. They have weapons, often swords or daggers, and they kick ass on monsters. They are even often depicted in cover art as somewhat scantily clad.

The settings are different, of course–paranormal modern worlds instead of fantastical pre-tech ones. Although I’m told that urban fantasy set in historical settings is starting to come out.

The far cooler difference is that most all the protagonists in urban fantasy are women, whereas of course most all of them in swords & sorcery are/were men.

The parallels are fascinating.  Clearly the female protagonist kicking monster ass resonates with millions of readers. I wonder if that means we might see a renaissance in female-centered swords & sorcery? Or is there something about S&S, its innate D&D sort of vibe or the lingering vibe from its classic rather female-unfriendly days, that is never quite going to resonate with the female-majority readership?

I don’t know, but it’s neat to think about.  And I know I’ll never look at a badass vampire-slaying heroine quite the same way again. :)

“The Halberdier, by Moonlight,” my “slipstream plus armor” story, is now out in the Fall 2011 issue of On Spec.  With my name on the cover!  Pretty cool.  And a gorgeous cover it is:

The story comments on death and the afterlife, and features icewine: a unique wine made using grapes that are still frozen.  This removes a lot of the water, because it’s ice crystals, which leaves all the other stuff–sugars, alcohol, flavor compounds–much more concentrated. That results in a wine that is thick and syrupy and sweet.

On Spec, a long-standing literary SF/F journal out of Canada, was great to work with.  And I enjoy the irony that a ‘zine from Canada, one of the biggest producers of icewine, gave the story a home. :)

(Yes, for anyone who’s wondering, I did buy a bottle of icewine as  “research” for the story. :) )

I had a great time at Capclave, a couple weekends ago.  (Except for the con-crud that delayed my postlude…)

Highlights included moderating a small press panel with Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Mike Walsh of Old Earth Books. Meeting BCS authors Adam Corbin Fusco and David Milstein; hanging out with Jen and Melissa. Chatting again with BCS author and novelist Genevieve Valentine. Seeing co-GOH Cat Valente again (I met her last year at World Fantasy, when the BCS party woke her up at 2 AM :) ).

Speaking with James Morrow, who lectured my year at Odyssey. His novel about Darwin’s lady assistant flying a steampunk airship over the Amazon, which he read from at ReaderCon 2010, is in rewrites and hasn’t yet found a publisher. Which is sad because the excerpt was great. He really liked the cool BCS flyers I had.

Chatting in the bar for hours with co-GOH Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad and bestseller who I had never met in person.  She is mostly known for her urban fantasy, but she’s read tons of epic fantasy and published several dozen short stories, and knows a ton about the field.

The Terry Pratchett surprise visit. I’m not familiar with his work, but I know he’s a very clever and engaging guy. The excerpts that his assistant read from his new book were quite droll (although the assistant read for way too long and interjected his own opinions too often).

They only made enough time to take one question, and it wasn’t about his books but about a BBC documentary he had helped make on assisted suicide for terminally ill. He talked for twenty minutes about that, made even more profound because of his own health situation, and it was utterly fascinating. (I will be blogging about that specifically later.)  Someone in the crowd put it on youtube, and Capclave posted an mp3 of the audio.

The GOH interview. I didn’t know how they would do it with two GOHs. It turned out that Carrie and Cat know each other, so they interviewed each other and took pre-written audience questions.  It was the best GOH interview I’ve ever seen. They were engaging, witty, and profound. Topics included the sociological underpinnings of the mythoses of vampires and werewolves; writing for shared-world anthologies; writing goals and achieving them; where they live and the sense of place in their writing.

I was only at the con for a day and a half, but I had a great time seeing these cool people and having great conversations. That seems to be what I mostly get out of cons–talking to clever people about interesting things.  I’ll definitely be back next year.