Out of the Debauched Sloth

A newsletter, containing actual news and such, all about Chaz

To begin at the beginning: Happy New Year! It’s the Year of the Tiger, so cuddle your nearest kitten (and, should you know, tell me why baby cats are kittens while baby big cats are cubs? On Mars, I am pleased to tell you, we have none of this nonsense; the young of the mighty and undeniably big sandcat are sandkits, oh yes.)

Well, as this claims to be a newsletter, we might as well move on to some news, as I do actually have some this week.

Dust Up at the Crater School is now out in hardback, huzzah! I know y’all dashed out on Christmas Eve to queue for copies of the ebook and the paperback, but you can at last complete your set! And look, she’s so pretty, and she matches so well with her slightly-older sister.

You can find purchase links here at my page on the Wizard’s Tower Press website.

In related news, said elder sister, Three Twins at the Crater School, made the longlist for the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel! That was highly unexpected, at least by me, but is real nonetheless. If you belong to the BSFA, you could use one of your available votes to nudge her a little further along the road, should you so choose. Countless cheering schoolgirls will bedeck your path with roses.

And in further award-related news, my Best Of collection, “Everything in All the Wrong Order”—out now from Subterranean Press in both ebook formats and sumptuous limited-edition hardcover which I have personally scribbled in on your behalf—finds itself in the Locus Recommended Reading List, alongside numerous others, some of which I proofread for the aforementioned SubPress. This list also functions as a preliminary longlist for the Locus Awards, and you don’t even need to be a subscriber to the magazine in order to vote. The generous amongst you may begin the process here.

Cutting back to the Crater School for a moment, some of you may not be aware that the redoubtable cook and domestic tyrant of that establishment, Mrs Bailey, has been publishing her recipes (downsized when necessary for the family table, rather than two hundred famished adolescents) over on Medium. Her latest, Shrimp, Fennel and Mushroom Risotto, has just gone up; all the others are gathered and organised here, under Mrs Bailey’s Martian Kitchen. M’wife and I have personally tested every single one, and they come with her wholehearted approval and my highest recommendation.

Within that cornucopia of delicious fare, you will find her recipe for Oxford Marmalade, which as a native of that fair city I obviously grew up on. This being February 1st, not only the Lunar New Year but also Imbolc and also also Candlemas Eve, it is the time of marmalading hereabouts. I used to buy boxloads of Seville oranges from the Grainger Market in Newcastle; here in California, of course, I grow ’em. Not quite by the boxload, not yet, for my tree is but a stripling, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. I have harvested thirty-three fruits, amd tonight I boil them whole, in just enough water to cover. Tomorrow gets messy, which is of course why the cleaners are coming today. They’re here now, as it happens, so I am hiding in the clubhouse and talking to you instead. It is in my mind that this might become a regular habit; fortnightly seems a decent interval for a newsletter to adopt.

’Til then, Deo Volente.