I haven't read the April issue of Locus but there are a few bits from the Ekaterina Sedia interview online. Here's one that made me think of Jenny Davidson's The Explosionist:

“I don't sit down and try to work out my fantasies as though they were SF. I do think there's a definite overlap, but scientifically I'm not averse to saying, 'We've reached the limit of scientific understanding -- magic.' When you have the gargoyles in The Alchemy of Stone, science stopped working long before this thing started!

“People say, 'There should be rules to magic.' Why? It's magic. I understand you shouldn't be able to do anything you want, necessarily, but it shouldn't be like the laws of physics laid on magic. I'm much more interested in surreal kinds of things, where you don't know how things work but you don't care. It's like the Celestial Cow in The Secret History of Moscow -- she has no rules; she's a cow.”

She also talks a bit about the book she is working on right now which sounds amazing:

“The book I'm working on now, The House of Discarded Dreams, is mostly based on urban legends, but there's also some other strange stuff going on. This girl's parents are Zimbabwean immigrants, and she has problems with her mother, who is politically aware and insistent on her daughter following the same road and having the same beliefs. It's urban fantasy, but it's more Atlantic City/New Jersey/horseshoe crabs (though the urban legends are mostly Zimbabwean). There's a Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, who wrote about this entity known as Man-Fish -- it's a fish that swallows the soul of a drowning person, and becomes a fish with the soul of a person inside of them. I read this book and thought, 'Oh my god, this is so awesome! But I'm not going to steal somebody else's ideas.' Then I found out the Man-Fish was actually an urban legend. Score! I am so going for it!”

I have to be honest - she pretty much had me at "horseshoe crabs". They are all over the place in the river I grew up on; we actually have the shell of one here in the house that we brought back a few years ago. They are fascinating creatures more taken advantage of then appreciated.

I loved The Secret History of Moscow - still need to read Sedia's most recent book but I'm pretty much onboard with anything she writes.

In other news I was a reviewing machine today, finally getting Ghost Town, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and The Entomological Tales of Augustus Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone all reviewed for July. (When I'm done with this post I'll get to Nothing But Ghosts.) One of the things that happens when you review YA and MG books is that you read them fast - and thus they get stacked up before you get the reviews done. This isn't a big thing but when you turn around and see a stack of books sitting there, you realize that writing needs to happen before any more reading does. It's nice to be this far ahead again though; I hate when I'm crunching on a column days before it is due.

Just finished Flygirl by Sherri Smith (also for July); It's wonderful; can't say enough good things about that one. (And whoa - what an awesome cover!)