Okay where were we
Back in your inbox 18 months later
And it’s not like it’s a special occasion? I just decided not to put off updating the newsletter to next week… again. The lovely thing about working in publishing or film is that time loses all meaning, so sometimes when you feel like retiring, you can retire, and then come back after some years if you want to come back, and as long as you didn’t make a big splash about retiring, no one really realises you were gone? I’ve done that a couple of times before, and I think I’m going to use that same principle to nonchalantly start newslettering again.
Since I’ve mostly been off the internet since my last issue, I thought I’d ease back into this with an update for the last year and a half - which hasn’t been much, because I’ve mostly been writing. I’ve finished another novel, which is now represented in India by the good folks at The Suitable Agency. Going through the lovely and not at all worrying process of agent-finding abroad, which is going to take time, because the new book is a contemporary novel, which essentially means a whole new publishing area with different imprints and different agents. I’ve written not-SFF in various media before, of course, but this is my first mainstream novel, so a debut of sorts. It should be out in India not too long from now - next year, maybe? I don’t know. I’ll wait for the publisher to tell me and then you in their announcement.
Jinn-bot was published the last time we mailed. It did well, I think. Three big award nominations and some lovely reviews, all of which are lovingly chronicled on the Jinn-bot of Shantiport book page.
I had other things out - a story in Deep Dream, the Indrapramit Das-edited MIT press anthology, SF stories about the future of art, part of the Twelve Tomorrows series. A (horror!) story in The Map of Lost Places (Apex, edited by Sheree Renee Thomas and Lesley Conner. And a story in We Will Rise Again, speculative stories and essays on resistance, protest and hope, a fantastic project edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz and Malka Older.
For the last few months, I’ve also been teaching/instructing. I’m the lead instructor/flare-carrying orc through the Helm’s Deep wall for Clarion West’s first Novel Writing Workshop, so until November this year I will be haunting and bothering twelve wonderful writers from around the world on the internet and getting in the way of the (brilliant, by the way) novels they’ve currently drafting and will be finishing this year despite my frequent interruptions. I really can’t wait for these writers to take over the world. So far we’ve had Sarah Pinsker, P. Djeli Clark and Daniel Abraham drop by to take guest classes. It’s really been amazing - for me, at least. Possibly for the students as well. I am also - very tentatively - thinking about teaching more, and doing more workshops, because I’ve been doing it more and more over the last couple of years, and I really enjoy it.
I’ve been taking a really long break from social media, and I might never go back. I’ve mostly been online of late to promote some wonderful books (here’s another shoutout to Sanghamitra Chakraborty’s Soumitra Chatterjee and his World, a book I utterly loved and highly recommend - and for which I also got to de-rust my video editing skills and make reels like this one:
Also big shoutouts to Tashan Mehta’s upcoming US edition of The Mad Sisters of Esi, out from Penguin/DAW US in July. If you’re in the UK, Ipsita Chakravarty’s excellent Kashmir book Dapaan is out, and I think the Indian edition is forthcoming in not-too-long-from-now.
I also need you to see this giant poster of me from a recent school event. It has triggered the supervillain era I am now in.
Okay. That is enough newslettering for us all, I think. I will try and be back in a fewer-than-a-year-and-a-half period. Enjoy this speed-limit-breaking criminal Swiss duck.
Back in a bit
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