• Ian R. MacLeod: Multi-award winner Ian R. Macleod’s story Second Journey of the Magus is the main featured fiction in the Winter 2010 issue of Subterranean Online.

• Elizabeth Moon: A long excerpt from SHEEPFARMER’S DAUGHTER (the prologue and first two chapters, no less!) the first in the DEED OF PAKSENARRION series, is available at the Orbit web site, promoting their recently released omnibus edition (see this previous post).

• Lavie Tidhar: The Feb 2010 #41 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine has Lavie’s brand new story The Language of the Whirlwind. There are also back issue links to two other stories by Lavie, The Dying World and 304 Adolph Hitler Strasse. And if you want more by Lavie, check out this link at Free Speculative Fiction Online, which should keep you going for a bit!

• Aliette De Bodard: Aliette has a page on her website with a fistful of links to stories she has dotted about the internet. Well worth the effort.

‘Paksenarrion wasn’t planning to submit to an unwelcome marriage and a lifetime of poverty, so she left her village with a plan and her grandfather’s sword. And a few weeks later, she was installed as Duke Phelan’s newest recruit in a company of soldiers for hire, her arms training about to begin. But when Paks sees combat, she’s stabbed with an ensorcelled knife and barely survives. Then the near-misses start mounting up, raising questions about this young fighter. Is she attracting evil because she is a danger to them all? Or is there another reason malignant forces seek her life? Paks will face the spider-minions of the Webmistress Achrya, orcs and the corrupted men who serve blood mage Liart, Master of Torments. She will also earn the gratitude of elves and of her Duke. And through conflict she will learn she has powers of her own and a destiny. To become a gods-chosen Paladin of Gird, and a target for the ultimate torture.’

Be sure to check out the Orbit blog where Elizabeth has recently contributed this guest post.