Michael R. Collings has written a review both hilarious and gratifying of After, the recently-published young adult dystopian fiction anthology edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow. After contains my short story "The Easthound".

"Not one story in After was other than what I had hoped for … engaging, thought-provoking, imaginative. The authors — and the editors — did everything right."

For the past little while, I've been mildly obsessed (or is that an oxymoron?) with making a dress with cutouts in it. So when I got my hands on Vogue 6522, I decided to give it a go:

I'm going to take a guess that it's from the 60s. True to form, rather than selecting a pattern with one simple cutout for my first attempt, I decided to make one with seven cutouts; one at bodice centre front, two at the waist on either side, one on each shoulder, and two at the bodice upper back. I'm calling it the chakra dress because it has holes. For the name to be apt, though, there should be nine holes. But seven was all I had patience for.

For fabric, I used a nylon curtain in shades of silver stripes that I'd found in a thrift store. I don't remember where I found the bias binding with diagonal stripes in brown, cream and yellow.

It's turning out pretty well. Not especially neat, but well.

I bound the seven (seven!) cutouts by hand. That was a learning experience. Not so much tough as fiddly. The rest of the dress is pretty simple, thank heaven.

I've done everything except the binding on the neckline and armholes. For that, I want to use black bias tape, and I've run out of it. No sewing stores within striking distance, so I'll have to wait until somebody nice on Ebay sends me some in return for some cash.

This soup is both nectar and ambrosia. I just returned for a second cupful. Sometimes I make gluten-free dumplings and boil those in the water in the pot while I'm preparing the puree.

These are scotch bonnet peppers from the Caribbean:

They are among the hottest peppers on this earth. At least, I think these are scotch bonnets. I've seen red, yellow and green ones, but never the shade of purplish-brown of the one in front in this photo. I found these in Kensington Market in Toronto. I bought four; two red, two purple-brown. They are called scotch bonnets (if that's indeed what they are) because of their resemblance to, of course, traditional Scotch bonnets such as this one sported by Beatrix Potter's Benjamin Bunny:

Scotch bonnet peppers are very flavourful. I just used them to revisit the sweet/hot pepper sauce I came up with while in Toronto this summer. This time I added a little bit of onion and used a cabernet sauvignon wine instead of a gamay.

Just in time, I remembered that the woman in the Caribbean grocery had warned me that the purple peppers were particularly hot. When a Caribbean person who's used to eating scotch bonnets warns you that a type of pepper is even hotter, you need to pay attention. I had already put three whole peppers, seeds and all, into the blender, but I hadn't run the blender yet. I fished one of the peppers out, and I'm very glad I did. This batch of pepper sauce is a little bit hotter than the previous one. It's just right for my palate. One more pepper, and I might have found it inedible. For breakfast, I slathered it over avocado halves sprinkled lightly with salt. So good. And tingly.

Audible has just released the audiobook of my novel Midnight Robber, wonderfully narrated by voice actor Robin Miles. I don't think Robin ever met an accent she couldn't master. Plus she realized that the language of a culture set so far in the future would have morphed from the current-day form. She's created this wonderful hybridization of Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean speech patterns.

Publisher's Summary: It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life...and set her free. ©2000 Nalo Hopkinson (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

While in Toronto, I spent three days at The Workroom, a brilliant place where you can rent sewing machines and sergers by the hour, take sewing classes, buy fabric, and so many other things. The people there are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly. They were the ones who took the first photo below of my project the second I finally pulled it, completed, out from under the presser foot. (Thanks, guys.) That's The Workroom behind and around me in the shot. For the second pic, my sweetie did the honours with his cell phone camera. I made a king-sized duvet cover, using test swatches of my fabric designs up on Spoonflower. It's for a friend of mine. I've been promising it to her for more than a year now. I was determined not to leave Toronto without giving it to her. And then I'm never making anything like it again; at least, not in that size. Two layers of fabric, each 80" square, plus about 150 yards of binding strips. It's a job of work to wrestle a piece that size into place on a sewing machine, and to sew it without random bits of it falling under the needle and getting stitched to itself in the wrong places. Also, bear in mind that I hate sewing miles and unrelieved miles of straight lines. (I know, I'm so queer I can't even sew straight.) But it's done, and it's pretty if not elegant, and I'm proud of myself and pleased to be able to hand it over.

Woke up yesterday morning to a tweet from Peter Straub, informing me that Publishers' Weekly had given a starred review to my book Report From Planet Midnight, which came out in July from PM Press. The book is in Terry Bisson's "Outspoken Authors" series, and I'm pleased that he invited me, and thrilled with the book. Their review fuelled my day yesterday with little bursts of happy. Actually, I'm still feeling pretty hyped about it today.

"Insightful and engaging, the scant pages of this volume will leave the reader wishing for a more comprehensive collection that further showcases Hopkinson’s broad talents."