Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I am delighted to announce that Wizard’s Tower has been asked to publish the ebook edition of Adventure Rocketship! #1. This resulted in a significant amount of squee in these here parts. After all, I can now claim to have published a book containing work by Lavie Tidhar, N.K. Jemisin, Minister Faust, Liz Williams, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Tim Maughan and many other fabulous people.

The book is currently available from the Wizard’s Tower store, and will also be available through the usual outlets over the next few days.

You want this, people, you really do. It has Liz Williams’ story about David Bowie; it has Minister Faust writing about George Clinton and N.K. Jemisin writing about Janelle Monáe; it has interviews with China Miéville and Michael Moorcock. In addition to Liz’s story there is fiction by Lavie Tidhar, Nir Yaniv, Martin Millar and Tim Maughan. And there’s lots more. What are you waiting for?

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Yesterday’s radio show was a lot of fun. I spent the first half hour of the show talking to the very talented Jack Wolf about his amazing new novel, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones. The book is full of fascinating 18th Century history, and some rather nasty faeries. Have a listen to learn more, including how Britain has been changing to fit in with Europe for hundreds of years. And if you happen to be part of the Crawford Award advisory group, I’ll be bugging you about this one.

The second half of the show opens up with a discussion of the forthcoming Union Cup gay rugby tournament. After that I chat to Annie Heatherson of Bristol Academy about the team’s forthcoming FA Cup Final against Arsenal. Go Vixens! It was a great half hour, with much silliness. Listen here.

Of course now you will be wondering about that team song. Here is the full version of the video, which includes the Mayor doing the shoes off thing in front of City Hall, and a guest appearance from Michu.

So, Monaco Grand Prix and Bristol in the FA Cup Final. Sunday is going to be mad.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Those of you who are entitled to the Hugo Voter Packet should by now have got a copy of Aliette de Bodard’s fine novella, On A Red Station, Drifting. However, if you can’t get it that way, you might just want to buy a copy. Fortunately you can find it in a certain ebook store, for just £2.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Those of you who are entitled to the Hugo Voter Packet should by now have got a copy of Aliette de Bodard’s fine novella, On A Red Station, Drifting. However, if you can’t get it that way, you might just want to buy a copy. Fortunately you can find it in a certain ebook store, for just £2.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Those of you who are entitled to the Hugo Voter Packet should by now have got a copy of Aliette de Bodard’s fine novella, On A Red Station, Drifting. However, if you can’t get it that way, you might just want to buy a copy. Fortunately you can find it in a certain ebook store, for just £2.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I’ll be on the Women’s Outlook show on Ujima tomorrow. We have a busy show for you.

My main guest will be Jack Wolf, author of the fascinating Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones. It is a debut fantasy novel, but you probably won’t find it on the SF&F shelves because it sold to a mainstream publisher and has already been sold on for translation in France and Spain. The image is of the French cover, featuring the faerie queen, Viviane, in all her glory. The book also features a lot of interesting material about the history of medicine, and is written entirely in 17th Century dialect, which works brilliantly. I’ll be writing a review after I have had a chance to talk to Jack.

Also on the show with me will be representatives of the Bristol Academy soccer team who are playing the FA Cup Final against Arsenal at the weekend. The BBC has just launched a new show specifically about women’s soccer, and last night’s show featured a preview of the match. It is available on iPlayer. It’s great to see the game getting so much attention. Hopefully I can add usefully to the buzz.

I’ll also be talking about the Union Cup. And if we have time Paulette might chat tome about my trip to Finland.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

This week the UK media is full of stories about how aggressive gays will be sneaking into your bedroom at night to wreck your marriage, corrupt your kids, turn your wife into a feminist, force you to marry your dog, and otherwise promote their evil agenda, at the behest of the masters in Brussels. Will no one think of the rich, white, cis, straight Englishmen? Surely they are the most put upon minority in the country.

On the bright side, Norman Tebbit has clearly been watching too much Doctor Who.

All of this, however, pales into insignificance to what will be going on in Bristol over the next few days. If you want to see aggressive homosexuals, we have hundreds of them. The city will be playing host to the 2013 Union Cup, the European Gay Rugby championships.

Let me say that again. European. Gay. Rugby. Championships.

So yes, this weekend around 500 gay rugby players and their fans will descend upon Bristol from all over Europe. There’s a grand opening ceremony on Thursday evening, and two full days of competition on Friday and Saturday. The official broadcast partners of the event are Shout Out, and guess who is helping cover the event for them?

OK, I know they are all gay. But that just means I get to spend the weekend with a bunch of super-fit guys without Kevin having to worry. It’s perfect. I will, of course, be cheering for our local heroes, the Bristol Bisons, though I may also find time to encourage the Cardiff Lions. My parents always wanted me to play rugby for Wales, and I am a serious disappointment to them in that regard, but this weekend I get to make my debut as a rugby commentator. I’m pretty happy about that.

Sorry, what was that, boys? Yes, of course there is a calendar.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I am so behind on podcast listening. There are episodes of Coode Street, Galactic Suburbia, The Writer & The Critic, Shout Out and For Books Sake that I need to listen to. I have, however, managed to catch the latest Outer Alliance podcast. Yes, that’s ego-driven. I’m on it.

In episode #31 the fabulous Julia Rios talks to a number of Outer Alliance members on a variety of subjects. I get to pontificate about awards, recycle an old joke about the difference between Raiders and 49ers fans, and enthuse about Caitlín R. Kiernan, Gail Simone, Stephanie Saulter and other great people. The other guests have really good contributions as well, and the variety of reactions to QUILTBAG as a term is fascinating. You can listen here.

By the way, the recording was made a couple of week ago, so neither Julia nor I was able to react to the Aurealis Awards being just as much of a vagfest as the Ditmars.

Thanks as always to Julia for having me as a guest.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t have to give you a run-down here, because the good folks from Locus were on hand to do so. Here’s the list.

I am, of course, disappointed that The Drowning Girl didn’t win, but it is an interesting collection of winners. Also the Nebulas go 50:50 to men and women, and one of the winners is French, so we are doing quite well for diversity. (The Bradbury and Norton are Not Nebulas, of course.)

The best bit of news, however, is another win for Clarkesworld. That’s two this weekend. Thoraiya Dyer’s “The Wisdom of Ants” in the Aurealis Awards, and Aliette de Bodard’s “Immersion” in the Nebulas. Yay!

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Australia’s juried awards were announced at a ceremony in Sydney today. Based on their Twitter feed, here are the winners.

• Children’s Fiction (mainly words): Brotherband: The Hunters by John Flanagan (Random House Australia)
• Children’s Fiction (mainly pictures): Little Elephants by Graeme Base (author and illustrator) (Viking Penguin)
• YA Short Story: “The Wisdom of the Ants” by Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld)
• YA Novel: tie: Dead, Actually by Kaz Delaney (Allen & Unwin) and Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
• Graphic novel: Blue by Pat Grant (author and illustrator) (Top Shelf Comix)
• Collection: That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote by K. J. Bishop (self-published)
• Anthology: The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 6 edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books)
• Horror Short Story: “Sky” by Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Horror Novel: Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott (Xoum)
• Fantasy Short Story: “Bajazzle” by Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Fantasy Novel: Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
• Science Fiction Short Story: “Significant Dust” by Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Science Fiction Novel: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (Harper Collins)
• Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence: Kate Eltham
• Kris Hembury Encouragement Award: Laura Goodin

Congratulations in particular to Margo Lanagan who picked up four awards on the night. I note that, as with the Ditmars the vast majority of winners are women. Goodness only knows what Alisa’s puppy will say on the next episode of Galactic Suburbia.

I am, of course, delighted to see another award win for Clarkesworld. If you’d like to help Neil and the crew with the expenses, you can buy that issue from my bookstore. And, of course, we have several of the award winners on sale. Here they are.