So I have been super-lucky recently and I have three pieces of awesome news to share here on the blogosphere.
First, I’m going to be published in Asimov’s!!! This September!!! Can you believe it? I’ll have full story notes out when it hits in the September/October issue, but this is a story about ah artist living with her family in a mining colony and the world (and colors) she sees around her – it’s called “The Greys of Cestus V.”
Second, I got my first ever translation! My story “Sour Milk Girls,” which was in Clarkesworld this January, was translated into Vietnamese by SFVN, a fanzine bringing SFF to Vietnam. I mentioned this on Twitter, but one of the first things I did was to look up how the girls names translated – in English, the story’s main characters are Ghost, Flash, Whispers, and Princess. All were basically the same except for Flash, who became Lightning. I asked the translator about it and she said that Flash (meaning a quick moment) in Vietnamese is a word that implies a bit of softness, which the character does not have much of. Lightning keeps that sense of speed, but also adds a hint of the character’s somewhat destructive nature. I have always known how much work translators do to keep the meaning of the story alongside the words, but it was amazing to see it for my own work.
And third, I have my first piece of commissioned artwork. I decided a few months ago that I wanted to celebrate short story sales somehow, so that I feel like I’ve accomplished things when I’m in the midst of an ugly revision or haven’t written anything in a week and feel like I Never Will Again. So I got an amazing artist, Sarah Macklin, whose website you should go to and check out here to do a piece of art for my piece coming up in April from The Dark, “Snake Season,” which is about a woman on the bayou and the ghosts of her past. So excited to share it here!