On Wednesday, November 4, at around 8:30 at night, my mother, Christine Anne Khanna, died. She was surrounded by family and some close friends. I held her hand as she died.

While this is devastating, I take comfort from the fact that she isn’t suffering anymore. And she suffered quite a bit toward the end of her life. She handled it all bravely and with an unwavering optimism. I will never forget that and it gives me inspiration.

I have no regrets about how she died. I was with her, she knew that I loved her, I knew that she loved me. My whole family was there. Her family from England visited her before she died, including my cousin Camille’s 10 month old son, William, who made my mother smile countless times in the last week of her life.

I’m still obviously processing all of this. But I will miss my mother. I always knew that she was warm and caring, always smiling, always thinking the best of people, generous, welcoming, and beautiful. But over the past two weeks I got a chance to see how the rest of the world saw her and all of that came through to everyone that she knew.

My sister chose a poem for my mother’s memorial cards, a poem attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (though apparently that’s not necessarily true). It reads:

To laugh often and love much:
To win respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics
And endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give one’s self;
To leave the world a little better,
Whether by a healthy child,
A garden patch,
Or redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm
And sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier
Because you have lived…
This is to have succeeded.

That describes my mother so well. She touched so many people and helped so many people to smile. Though her life was cut short, it was undeniably a success. I’ll miss her, but I’ll always be proud of her and I’ll always think of her as an example of how to be a better person.

Rest in peace, mum.

Since my last post, there have been a few developments in things I mentioned. The first of these is that I’m no longer going to be attending World Fantasy in San Jose. Things with my mother have become progressively worse so much so that traveling at this time, and being away from the family for more than a day at most is ill-advised. It’s a shame – I’ve been looking forward to it all year for many reasons, and I’ll miss seeing all the distant friends I was hoping to see, but some things trump all else.

In the positive category, however, the Shadows of the Emerald City, which some are probably sick of hearing me mention, is now available to buy, both from the publisher, Northern Frights Publishing, and from Amazon. Links are below:

Northern Frights

Amazon

There seems to be a good amount of buzz for this anthology, as seen in the reviews I posted last time. I’m looking forward to reading the other stories in the volume and seeing how people like it.

Okay, that’s enough pimpage for now. More news when it comes.

Between work and the situation with my mother, I haven’t had much time to even compose a blog post lately. But I have some writing news to share, despite not being quite as productive lately as I’d like to be. The next few months look like a good time for my fiction.

Most recently, I found out that I sold a story to Steampunk Tales, the digital magazine for steampunk fiction that launched for the iPhone with a rather attractive application and is also available in Mobireader and PDF formats. I did a review of Steampunk Tales Issue One for Tor.com and I was impressed with it. When I found out they accepted fiction submissions, I knew I had to submit to them. I’m really excited about the opportunity, especially as it’s a different form of distribution than I’ve seen.

Prior to this news, I received word that my pirate story, “The Furies”, previously in Shimmer’s Pirate Issue will appear as a reprint in the Skulls and Crossbones anthology due out in January 2010 from Mindancer Press.

My story in Shimmer’s Clockwork Jungle issue, “The Emperor’s Gift”, should see print some time in November along with the rest of the issue.

Then there’s the Shadows of the Emerald City anthology which includes my story, “Pumpkinhead”, which should be releasing any day now. The anthology has been getting a number of good reviews (some of them collected below) and I’m looking forward to seeing the final product.

M-Brane SF Review

Senses Five Press Review

Apex Book Company Review

Innsmouth Free  Press Review

Strange Weird and Wonderful.com Review (PDF download)

Wanderings Review

Finally, I will be attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, California next week. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. Maybe I’ll see you there.

I haven’t updated for a while. Which isn’t necessarily anything new. But this time there’s a good reason for it.

I believe I’ve talked about it here, but last year my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Over the course of the last year and a half she’s been receiving treatment for that – first with chemo, then radiation, ending up on a treatment of Tarceva, a daily pill that has actually helped to reduce the tumors in her lungs drastically.

Unfortunately, she also has metastases in her bones. This hasn’t responded to the treatment and has spread as her lung cancer has dwindled.

Since July she has been having spells of headaches and nausea that eventually became so bad that she was barely active and couldn’t eat on a regular basis. The initial MRI showed nothing suspect, but her condition continued to deteriorate.

All this led to last Thursday (when she was supposed to get another MRI) when she had a seizure. In a stroke of amazing luck, my father was there with her when it happened and he helped her otherwise I don’t know what would have happened. Since then she’s been in the hospital.

Another MRI showed that she had hydrocephalus. Cerebrospinal fluid was accumulating in her ventricles and pressing on her brain.

This past weekend was tough as she was heavily medicated as they tried to stabilize her seizures. Thankfully, on Monday they were able to start treating her with radiation therapy and with a spinal tap which helped to reduce the fluid accumulation. Since then her headaches have stopped and she’s been feeling much better, though her stomach is still a bit touchy (which would seem natural after weeks of not being able to eat solid food).

It looks like she will be able to come home tomorrow. Things will have to change, of course. She can’t move around like she used to. She’ll most likely have to sleep on the ground floor because of this. But she is coming home and she’ll be out of the hospital and she’ll be better able to have something approximating a normal life.

To say that this has been hard on the family is a massive understatement. I can’t think of many things worse than watching someone you love deeply, someone who has always taken care of you, subjected to something as horrible and as painful as this. But we’ve been doing our best to be there for her and with her and we will continue to do that for as long as it’s needed.

In the meantime, if I’m a little quiet, or unresponsive, you know the reason why.

Thank you to everyone who has expressed their sympathies and have offered their thoughts, prayers and well wishes. In a time like this, it’s humbling to realize how much love and support I have and it’s something I continue to be awed by. I suppose it’s one of life’s contradictions that in the middle of terrible misfortune, you can be simultaneously confronted with how lucky you are.

Paul Di Filippo looks at the new series of Roger Zelazny collections from NESFA Press at the Barnes and Noble Review site. I’m a huge Zelazny fan and I’ve acquired the first four volumes in the NESFA series. The last two are due out at the end of the year. I have yet to delve into them, but I’m looking forward to it. While I’ve read some of Zelazny’s short fiction, I’m looking forward to some of the more obscure stories and tracking his evolution as a writer. Maybe I should make 2010 the year of Zelazny.