Can a bankrupt resort owner find a new hope on a ski slope? A ballerina escapes the Iron Curtain, but can’t forget her ghosts as she prepares a Nutcracker performance in Toronto. In the same city, a radiohost’s voice raises the spirits of a depressed musician. See a weary, guilt-ridden mother find her lucky star in Hawaii. And a sad, dispirited stunt woman meets two special persons on Christmas Eve !
Five women, each overcoming her own challenges, are about to discover a holiday magic that opens the hearts!
Five tales to take a respite from harsh times and share with your loved ones, told by award-winning author Michèle Laframboise.
CW: the opening of the second story contains some threat of violence, but the characters manage to escape. Fifth story has a character mired in a muddy relation but she regains her freedom.
Asimov’s SF Magazine just published In the Gardener’s Service, a fun SF caper novelette, that readers will enjoy more than does the main character !
Those of you new to my Gardeners’ universe will get to know better Emperor Pallan’s special agent, who really, really! doesn’t like to dunk his high-maintenance braids while in a mission.
My name is not featured on the cover this time, but I have prestigious cover neighbours like Suzanne Palmer, Derek Kunsken and Rich Larson. Stephen Reid has a story in there also, the kind of hard & fun SF I enjoy.
Maison de la Presse – Place Ville Marie, 1 place Ville-Marie, Montréal QC H3B 3Y1 —Get there Gateway Newstands – 300-1, Place Ville-Marie, Montréal QC H3B 4R8 – Get there Maison De La Presse Internationale 4261, rue Saint-Denis, Montréal QC H2J 2K9 — Get there
Rose du désert, my YA SF novel, is finalist at the 2025 Trillium Awards! The intrigue is set on the same world and starts some time after the events in LeSecret de Paloma. It features an autistic spectrum heroine with a pessimistic temper, an attitude illustrated on the cover.
The awards will be given soon,on June 18th in the Toronto Reference Library, at the Bram and BlumaAppel Salon.
Whether my book places or not, it is a wondrous occasion to meet fine Ontario Writers like in 2013 (article on my French blog). Meeting Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander (2007), Ridgerunner (2020) and other books, was my favorite award!
Meeting Gil Adamson in 2013!
Meanwhile…
Another Gardeners’ Universe story is coming in the July-August 2025 issue of Asimov’s. It will be my seventh publication in this magazine.
The July/August 2025 issue will hit the newsstands on June 8, 2025, with my novelette In the gardener’s Services, set in my SF universe. That story will explore the past of one of my favorite characters in the YA series La Quête de Chaaas.
You can also subscribe to Asimov’s Science Fiction inprintor in various digital formats.
Looking back, here are my contributions to the larger field of SF in 2024. Several short-stories, one graphic novel, one novella, and the links to the publishers.
Michèle happily tapping away in a Montréal hostel in 2018
In January 2022, I gave a presentation in French about self-publishing, aimed at people either retired or close to retirement. All were interested in publishing their book and or memoirs. As I had started my own indie company Echofictions to make my published books and short-stories available, I could help them navigate the main hurdles on the way to get a book published, starting with the ISBN number.
Why writing a memoir is not a simple hobby
As history goes, most of what make up our daily lives vanishes quickly after our passing. The “big” history deals about big events (and wars, and colonisation) but this is not by far the whole fabric of our lives. And I am currently doing a research for an historical novel set in my own city, Mississauga, in 1979. Even if I remember that year, a lot of details get lost.
We are barely discovering through archival and legal papers, the everyday life of our ancestors. Some journals are unearthed. But even one or two generation spans can be difficult to recall. So this spurred me to call out, “write what you can about your parents, friends, and grandparents!”
Because you never know what will spark interest of the next generation, or the future historians!
You don’t need to wait !
I am currently writing a book of my mother’s memoirs. (After her passing last year, she won’t see the book, but she did enjoy getting her story published in the French lit magazine VIRAGES .)
After both my parents (and my grand parents’) passing, I measured how fast the funny anecdotes, the marking events dwindle in our memories. I had some anecdotes told to me by my paternal grandmother Laframboise, and at a point, I urged her to start a journal. She did, but did not complete it before passing. All I can tell is: she had a very beautiful writing hand.
So this is why, reader, whatever your age, please, write. One of the new authors attending my presentation was over 80. And one 77-year-old self-publisher told me, at a meeting in Oregon, that she did not aim for the glory, but to leave something for her grandchildren. It is a perfectly sound goal.
For myself, if my non-fiction reaches about 50-100 people in my extended family, I will be happy.
Nor do you need to sell a million books!
You don’t have to write like Stephen King or Barbara Kingsolver (my favorite author). Let the words pour from your heart, plunge deep in the well of memories of your parents, grand-parents, so the children coming after you can appreciate a little bit of life in our times.
None of us need to reach a billion readers, but your words will reach the people who matters to you.
And, for that activity, there is no mandatory retirement if it pleases you!
My author interview is out, published in the Astounding Analog Companion. There, I discuss the premises of my new story, Maragi’s Secret, a novella set in a distant future where humanity has taken to the…. sky. The full story is available in the current May-June 2024 issue of Asimov’s.
There’s some cool factoids for the hard-SF aficionados out there, plus photographs of me learning to fly a glider (taken by my wonderful father at the time). It was a fantastic experience, even if I did not pursue that activity. There, you learn to respect the three ‘Ws’: wing, weather and wind. I had a few bad landings (not shown on the pics) before getting the hang of it (ha-ha).
The world-building was, and still is, challenging. And fun, even if the plot seems to swerve in unexpected directions!
I consulted several sources about living in altitude, health problems, not forgetting the perils of dirigibles, especially in the first part of the XXth century. You would think lifting humans in a floating balloon would be a simple volume-weight equation, but the engineering challenges and the huge size of those mastodons, with the then-available materials, were daunting.
Nowadays, the are start-ups trying to push the concept off the ground (in the literal sense). Beside slow traveling, transporting heavy loads over harsh terrain, if time is not of the essence, can be done.
I love to illustrate writing hurdles, so here is one below. That manuscript was a hard act to follow, to say the least.
There may be several stories coming up in this universe, so stay tuned!
Analog Science Fiction & Facts has a blog where the editors interview the authors. This is my Q&A session for the latest story, “Living on the Trap”, published in the Nov-Dec 2023 issue of this SF magazine. And yes, I put on this picture, illustrating the perils of writing hard-SF !
First, a big, warm thank you to all of you that I met at the Winnipeg Pemmi-Con and other occasions of celebrating science-fiction.
September – new book!
I am launching a French SF book this fall, Rose du désert, Éditions David, about a very pessimistic, troubled teen living on an hostile planet. Rose can’t relate to other teens, is painfully aware of her cognitive lapses and waits for the end. Nevertheless, when the drought threatens everyone’s survival, she must come out of her shell…
For you English-speaking, the illustration on the cover is from me.
It was not supposed to be. I usually send a crude sketch to my publishers, and the graphic designer takes on. But changes in the format of the collection – and to the covers – prodded me to complete this illustration of Rose, entirely done with Clip Studio.
The official launch of the novel will be in the Congrès Boréal, a French-speaking Canadian Science fiction convention in Montréal, on October 21st.
My most recent publication « Tears Down the Wall » is out in the September-October Asimov’s issue. Check out my wonderful cover neighbors!
« Living on the Trap » will be out at Analog in November-December 2023
« When the Last Writer Died” is out in Polar Borealis 27. Polar Borealis is an online fanzine enturely supported and edited by Richard Graeme Cameron.
And… for he first time ever, I am included in a « Best-of » of Canadian SF authors by . The reprint contract has been signed for « Rare Earths Pineapple » published in Analog last year.
I think 2022 has been my best publishing year so far, with a new graphic novel and publications in Asimov’s and Analog. Go check the Echofictions website for more info.
I have been very involved in family affairs and caring fo my dear mother (who is well by now, fingers crossed) so I lacked free time to promote my works, and the Kickstarter fundraising for a special edition of my new graphic novel.
A word from Winter Holiday Spectacular 2022 editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch:
“The Skeptic and The Primrose” is set in England in the late nineteenth century. The story has echoes of Wells and Verne as well as a touch of Sherlockian brilliance… with heroines who manage to save the world (or their corner of it) while wearing corsets and petticoats.
This story will be up for one week only. Enjoy!
Just so you know beforehand: I don’t believe in time travel. Never have. Until…
***
London, December 21st, 1888
The conference had been set in the conservatory of the Royal Botanical Society’s Gardens in Regent’s Park, the air so stuffy with moisture for the exotic plants I felt my hair curling in Medusa-like wisps, escaping my carefully done bun. The temperature had convinced many in the first rows to pull off their shawls or overcoats. A few bright orange and yellow butterflies, ignoring the season outside their realm, fluttered from one exotic corolla to the next. The rich leafy scent and the trickle of water falling on a rock pond added a poetic note to the ambiance.
Those sounds and smells distracted me long enough to miss part of a question, uttered in a snarky tone by a middle-aged gentleman sporting an impressive handlebar mustache, the iron-gray tips waxed so rigid they could easily poke a too-inquisitive eye out. He sat in our front row next to Mother, his legs nonchalantly crossed in the free space ahead, exposing black dress shoes covered with whiter-than-white spats. Those kinds of too-clean shoes never went within an inch of the melted snow mixed with horse dung covering the streets.
(This story has been available from Dec. 18th to dec.25th)
THE END
Interested in this story?
There’s more on the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Short Stories
Michèle Laframboise is a Canadian SF writer, with more than 60 stories published. Her most recent story, I’ll Be Moon for Christmas, was feature on the Nov-December issue of Asimov’s SF Magazine. She is a fair low-level athlete runner, a lousy gardener, and avid birder. More on her official website here.
Echoes of a Sunday artist 