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
At certain times, science-fiction and gardening afficionados do mix!
I had a wonderful weekend meeting new readers at the Blooming Boulevard annual native plant sale. Here’s my table by Sunday. My Gardeners’ civilization SF graphic novels were a hit, as were my birdwatching stories!
How this non-literary event came to be ?
Two years ago, I was impressed by a neighbour’s indigenous plants garden, set in the grassy band between the sidewalk and the street. As a staunch environmentalist, I was considering doing the same with my own curb band. But, book fairs and deadlines loomed, and I missed the opportunity.
According to the Blooming Boulevards web page:
We are a group of civic-minded Mississauga residents who love gardening and want to do what we can to help the environment and promote community well-being. We became a not-for-profit Ontario corporation, a Mississauga community organization, and developed the mission and goals of Blooming Boulevards in early 2019.
It took me two summers to gather the courage and contact the founders. And then, everything went fast, as Jeanne and Wayne came to see my modest space, and drew up a plan for indigenous plants, and gathered the forms to get an “encroachment” permit from the City. This was at the end of April.
This as how the space looked before I took out the grass. There were steps well explained before planting.
Before…And after! The completed garden.
Now, I must be patient to allow those plants work on their roots before investing in foliage and flowers. Stay tuned for next year!
How my signing table planted itself there?
When the nice Blooming Boulevards people learned I was a writer, and when they saw my Gardeners’ Universe graphic novels, they invited me to sit at their annual plant sale!
The plant sale. My table was to the right of those chairs
And, ooh , that went so incredibly well!
The signing table on Saturday, a little cramped, but they put my publishing company sign up!
I did not have any expectation beside talking to gardeners who are better at their hobbies than I am. In most literary events, I am used to people ignoring my table.
Not here.
Visitors were intrigued and many stopped by (if their arms were not loaded with seed boxes!) And some gardeners were also science fiction readers, so I gained new fans! Two people even went back on Sunday to get my books signed!
One colour pencils signing of Mistress of the Winds, available in electronic format here along with my other books.
It is very rare that half the books I bring at any event fly out, but it happened here.
The advantages of an in-person, non-lit event
My esteemed colleague writer and indie publisher Mark Leslie Lefebvre regularly attends non-lit events in his home area, and I can now confirm that it is worth my time.
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.
After a busy summer counting birds and writing, I come back with the first English graphic novel for a long time!
On the leafy planet Luurdu, young Adalou dreams of becoming a wind mistress. Alas, she faces a thorny competition because the kite choregraphy brings a high prestige to women who excel in this art. Adalou must overcome her family’s opposition, her biological limits and the jealousy of high-class rivals to conquer her place in the sun.
A graphic novel set in the universe of the space-faring Gardeners, sprouting from the fertile imagination of Michèle Laframboise.
My fresh new YA graphic novel, Mistress of the Winds, set in my Gardeners’ universe, will be out an about in September. 92 pages, B&W art. The pre-order link is here.
An extract here.
I’ll Be Moon for Christmas
My Holiday-themed story, “I’ll Be Moon for Christmas” will be featured in Asimov’s end-of-year issue. With fine cover neighbors like Kris Kathryn Rusch and Ray Nayler! I devored their previous stories, which doesn’t mean I won’t discover the new (to me!) voices in this upcoming issue.
This will be my fourth publication in Asimov’s, laying to rest the idea of a fluke when the magazine accepted my first story. It is also my first Holiday SF tale and. by the title, you may guess what immortal song is playing in my mind!
Meanwhile…
On the Canadian front, I will have two stories coming up in Polar Borealis 25 and 27, edited by Greame Cameron. On the French front, there will be a hard-SF story coming up in the French SF magazine Géante Rouge at some point in 2022 or 2023.
Meanwhile, I tend to lag behind in the reading department… I should finish my current SF mags OnSpec, Analog & and Asimov’s !
I came to SF by reading the collections of short-stories on my father’s bookshelves. There was the Marabout collection (in French) of 1950s-1960s fantastic, SF and horror that got me acquainted with the genres. Reading a short-story gave me an open window on an author’s style, favorite themes and personal voice. It eventually guided me towards their longer works.
When you do not have a lot of free time, plunging in a 800-page saga that turns out to be disappointing (for any reason outside the author’s talent, like: not to your taste, or your favorite character dies to thicken the plot, or you’re not into space-faring, chocolate-sauce-gurgling vampires etc.)
Hence my own offering of short-story collections. As the number of my published works rises, I started to publish reprints in collections that won’t consume too much reading time, while giving a taste of my brand of science fiction. Most of those books are under 160 pages, their electronic edition easily affordable.
The two books on the ends are my collections in English ; the three others present my numerous French short-stories reunited under themes.
5 Hard and Crunchy SF Tales
Sink your teeth in those crunchy SF tales!
Welcome to the Big Bang Bar, where the playground of the ultra-rich spans whole solar systems. Follow a cyber-butterfly soaring over the scarred Earth, with strings attached! Watch a proud woman stranded in the pitiless Martian desert find her way out — or die trying. Discover why an alien ship must keep eternally shifting its parts. Or would you prefer to jump a few billions years forward to witness the end of our universe?
Five hard and crunchy science-fiction stories, cooked by multi-award winner Michèle Laframboise, with the help of translators Sheryl Curtis and N. R. M. Roshak for two of those stories.
Thinking inside te Box (2017) Compelling SF 7
Ice Monarch (2018) Abyss&Apex 67
Closing the Big Bang (2017) Fiction River no 21
Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus (2006), Tesseract 10, Edge publ.
What will happen when AIs write better, and faster, than writers? When Montreal freezes under the ice and the budget cuts, will solidarity hold? See humans gifted with eternal life experience a cruel reminder of their mortality. A termite woman whose life in the mines has lost value wants to live her last vacation. And what about the young people trapped in a generation-ship that is falling apart over the light-years?
Five dangerous visions of Sf author Michèle Laframboise.
Les âmes gelées (1999) recueil Transes Lucides, Ashem Fiction
Quand le dernier écrivain est mort (2014) Solaris 92
Petzis (2017) Solaris 203
Dernières vacances de la femme termite, Solaris 215
5 Histoires de SF douce et fondante (French collection)
On Mars, an augmented gorilla must protect the cyber-pollinators in his garden… and the morale of his human colleague. Elsewhere, a first contact stumbles on an advanced race that shuns numbers. A lonely biologist wants to discover the secret of migratory trees threatened by a project. The captain of a cargo ship on a diplomatic mission must go out of his way to convince a talkative door to open. Finally, after the climatic catastrophe, what are we ready to pay to make the Moon habitable?
Five science fiction stories that melt on the tongue, by author Michèle Laframboise. A cocktail of science, humour and tenderness.
A stomach technician experiences the pitfalls of living off the land, in the quest for a viable world. On Ganymede, a young girl receives an invasive lifeform for her eleventh birthday… A young heir discovers the exploited inhabitants behind a balmy resort planet. A weary cargo Captain deals with a stubborn door and a infected ship. On a luxury cruise ship, a lonely technician discover an eccentric lady, and an odd friendship blooms.
Five hard but hopeful science-fiction stories, cooked by multi-award winner Michèle Laframboise.
Essential Maintenance (2022) NeoOpsis 33
Moby Dick’s Doors (2022) in Space Opera Digest 2022 Have Ship, Will Travel
Echoes of a Sunday artist 