Fiction

2013

‘Annex’ at Clarkesworld Magazine (April 2013). Memory and music. 3,800 words.

On the eve of Samutthewi’s entry into the Costeya Hegemony, Esithu was sloughing off the shell of their birth-body. There would be speculation afterward what Esithu was born as—someone’s son, someone’s daughter? To that Esithu would always say, “I was born as I am now,” which became a stretch after Esithu obtained a second then a third body. A hardware upgrade, they liked to say. You can never have too many.

That was much later.

• Reviewed by Carl V. Anderson at SF Signal.
• Reviewed by Barbara Melville at Tangent Online.

‘The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate’ at Beneath Ceaseless Skies (April 2013). A sun goddess finds herself. 8,500 words.

Winter was air sizzling against my skin, snow hissing to steam on my hair, a susurrus in my ears: Xihe, Xihe. Had I a mother she’d have warned me, Your vanity is how men will ensnare you, little daughter—but I gestated in the dreams of birds and left them fully grown: a woman’s silhouette, no childhood behind and no old age before to give it substance.

• Reviewed by A.J. Fitzwater.

2012

‘Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon‘ at GigaNotoSaurus (Nov 2012). Houyi the Archer brings down the nine suns. 14,900 words.

• Recommended by Aliette de Bodard.
• Reviewed by Bogi Takács.

‘Chang’e Dashes from the Moon‘ at Expanded Horizons (Aug 2012). Chang’e escapes with help from her wife and a descendant. Sequel to ‘Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon’. 6,000 words.

• Reprinted in Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, ed. Steve Berman and Tenea D. Johnson.
  

‘Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods’ at The Future Fire (Sep 2012). Two young women find love and loss in a time of war. 11,200 words.

• Reviewed by Cosmic Vinegar.
• Reviewed by Bogi Takács.
• Reviewed by Nic Clarke of Eve’s Alexandria.

Upcoming  

‘The Bees Her Heart, The Hive Her Belly’ in Clockwork Phoenix 4, edited by Mike Allen (pre-order available now).

• Reviewed by Bonnie Shufflebeam at Short Story Review.
• Reviewed by Lois Tilton at Locus.
• Reviewed by Francesca Forest.

‘Vector’ in We See a Different Frontier, edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes.

‘Fade to Gold’ in The End of the Road, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris Books)

The Blue Place

Atlanta is lush. The gates and lawns and hedges I walked past were heady with the scents of trumpet honeysuckle and jasmine, the last of the pink and white dogwood blossom. By June, of course, all the small blooms would wilt in the heat, and the city’s true colours, jungle colours, would become apparent: black-striped tiger lilies, orchids, waxy magnolia blossom. By the end of August, even those would give up the ghost and the city would turn green: glossy beryl banana trees with canoe-sized leaves, jade swamp oak, and acre upon emerald acre of bermuda grass. And as the summer heat faded into the end of October, the beginning of November, the green would fade with it. In winter Atlanta became a pale black and white photograph of a city with concrete sidewalks, straw-coloured grass and bare, grey trees.

Thunder rumbled to the southwest and lightning turned the clouds the pink of Florida grapefruits: a long, long wait until winter.

I love, love this book. More than words can say. I may not have the fortitude to read the sequels Stay and Always (though I’ve purchased them, courtesy of Book Depository) because what happens toward the end of The Blue Place had me in pieces, but I don’t want to spray spoilers everywhere so – these paragraphs! Aud Torvingen is an enchanting character in every way and Nicola Griffith’s prose is visceral and taut and elegant, just like Aud herself. It drew me in and kept me immersed, and when I emerged it was as if I’d escaped drowning – just. There were tears. Oh, tears! Private sobbing. I am too emotional to read books, it is evident.

It’s been over a week since I finished this book, but I can’t stop thinking about that moment. It’s a brutal, brutal novel. I won’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

Let’s sparkle! Estee Lauder Pure Gloss, MAC Dazzleglass

One of the things I like about airports – and I know I will sound so shallow – is picking up travel-size makeup from duty-free shops. It’s not usually the ideal option, but I have trouble using up full-size makeup before the recommended throwing-away date (that nobody ever follows and neither do I, but!) so tiny tubes and palettes are always welcome for trying out new products and new colors.

The Estee Lauder Pure Gloss has simple packaging (I always expect fancier ones from prestige brands…), five tubes in a clear plastic buttoned bag. It’s packed tightly. The colors are, from left to right, Sugar Rush, Electric Ginger, Impulsive Coral, Rock Candy and Racy Raspberry (alliteration!). They are light but surprisingly hydrating. The glitter does tend to stick around after the color’s faded, but I’m used to that from shimmery glosses.

I used to resist putting anything but strictly matte colors on my lips, but I’ve been on a shimmer and glitter kick lately. I’m not sure if this is a sign of aging backward or if shiny makeup is simply just that irresistible. Glitteriness-wise, the Pure Gloss doesn’t compare to…

The Dazzleglass (the color is called Internationalist, inexplicably?) is opaque – just the way I like my glosses! I’m lazy and don’t like to layer gloss on top of a lipstick base. Full, opaque coverage in a gloss is always a huge plus (the Estee Lauder glosses are all very sheer, though I believe the Sequins shades are not; I think Estee Lauder Violet Rain is close to Internationalist). Picking a Dazzleglass was tricky too, since I wasn’t 100% sure which shade was the sparkliest in all the land. The applicator is a hard brush rather than the (to me) more familiar doe-foot, which took some getting used to. It does lend to precise application easily though – no lipliner needed. Reviews tend to indicate the Dazzleglass range have poor staying power, but for me I found the gloss kept its color and glitter through a (fairly messy) breakfast congee and a lot of drinking. I’m pretty impressed!

This appears to be part of a limited edition collection, though the way it was shelved at the MAC store makes it look like part of the permanent range? I don’t see Internationalist listed on their website, though.

The Indigo Spell!

I’m so pleased to have a copy of this in hand!

“What is it?” I asked.
“Seven-letter word for ‘cotton gin pioneer.’”
“Whitney,” I replied.
He leaned over and wrote in the letters. “‘Dominates the Mohs’ scale.’ Also seven letters.”
“Diamond.”
Five words later, I realized what was happening. “Hey,” I told him. “I am not doing this.”
He looked up at me with angelic eyes. “Doing what?”
“You know what. You’re luring me in. You know I can’t resist—”
“Me?” he suggested.
I pointed at the magazine. “Random trivia.” I angled my body away from him and made a big show of opening my book. “I have work to do.”

I adore Sydney. She’s unashamedly enthusiastic about cars, unapologetically book-smart and deeply practical at the same time.

Reviews! Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Clockwork Phoenix 4

A.J. Fitzwater, with whom I share issue 118 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, has the luscious, imaginative ‘Blood, Stone, Water’ full of creative food-based similes (my favorite kind): ‘Nhia favored Tau with a look as rich and thrilling to the senses as unpeeled koca-bean’. I love the way she describes women as virile, muscled, and strong, as well as how she describes older women: ‘The Ia-mother’s figure floated in Tau’s mind; her heavy breasts, striped by sun, time and nurturing, and her tattooed lips.’

Imagine my delight to find that she liked ‘The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate’ too, and has said so here, where she also reviews stories by Genevieve Valentine, Jake Kerr, Kali Wallace (‘No Portraits on the Sky‘), Ken Liu, and Matt Wallace from Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex and PodCastle.

Carl V. Anderson at SF Signal reviewed the April issue of Clarkesworld and has many nice things to say about it, lauding the editors’ choices for ‘the kind of issue that could garner nearly hyperbolic praise’.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Two alien entities wage a surreal battle to save an alien world from absorption by powerful hegemony, Chicken Little’s prediction begins to come true in a forest world filled with useful spiders and human souls reincarnated in the detritus of suburban life mount a defense against avenging garden gnomes in this month’s original fiction.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Creative, non-standard science fiction/fantasy storytelling; mind-bending world-building; stories demand you read to the end as they do not forecast their conclusions.

I continue to be incredibly delighted in this excellent company, and grateful to Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace for giving ‘Annex’ a home.

There have been quite a few reviews for Clockwork Phoenix 4, too. One from Bonnie Shufflebeam at Short Story Review.

There were several moments when reading that I felt physically altered, only to realize that it was the story and not my body which was causing the queasy feeling in my gut.
That is not to say that these stories are not enjoyable; they are, in a discombobulating, shiver-inducing kind of way. And there were several of the tales which left me thinking on them long after I had finished reading.

From Lois Tilton at Locus.

Very happy to see a rare original anthology… The overall quality is high, although, unusually, the opening and closing stories are among the weakest. Several of the pieces are quite challenging. Readers will do well to pick up a copy.

Tangent Online has this to say.

This 4th volume of Clockwork Phoenix contains an excellent diversity of speculative fiction ranging from cold and hopeless to harsh but victorious and warm and fulfilling. It was a pleasure to read.

Finally, from Francesca Forest. (Francesca is our copy-editor – and she is good at what she does too – and discloses as much, but I daresay she’s not too biased!)

Clockwork Phoenix 4 is nearly out, and oh my goodness, the stories. There’s not a single bad one, and there are some amazing gems.

Editor Mike Allen has been really good about getting copies to reviewers’ hands. *_* Responses have been pretty positive, I think, and if that convinces you to buy a copy pre-orders can be made now through PayPal.

‘The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate’ up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies

A statue of Xihe in Hangzhou, source Wikipedia

Yay!

This is (for the moment) the last story I’ve written in what I’ve tagged the ‘sun-moon cycle’ – very creative, I know – which is my rough labeling for stories connected to Houyi, Chang’e, and now Xihe. ‘The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate’ came last of all – it sprang from a suspicion that, though I tried to do the characters justice in my borderline-novella ‘Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon’ I didn’t give Xihe as fair a showing. I wanted to write about growth, about wisdom, and a little about motherhood.

‘Crows’ sold to the first place I submitted it to, the delightsome and scintillating Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which publishes some of the most beautiful fantasy short fiction. It was a shock.

The issue is also available as a purchaseable ebook. Or you can subscribe!

‘Annex’ is up at Clarkesworld

…I didn’t think I would ever get to type a story title of mine next to ‘up at Clarkesworld’ or ‘Clarkesworld’ anything. I thought that if I was going to, I would surely have a prior blog post stuffed with pictures of firecrackers and confetti, but that would have been terribly obnoxious and nobody deserves to be subjected to a storm of animated gifs.

But yes! ‘Annex’ being in Clarkesworld is a real thing. So real you can even listen to it, as read by the wonderful Kate Baker.

This is still a little surreal.

…very surreal! The cover art for Clarkesworld issues is always elegant, abstract sci-fi, consistently stylish. This one is by Alexandru Popescu.

‘Annex’ is a bit different from my other stories, I think, being rather like a shark. A cyborg shark full of ideas and fringe art making big things happen: my second ever submission to Clarkesworld. Like ‘The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly’ this takes place in the same universe as ‘Courtship’  and is directly connected to ‘Bees’. It does not, however, contain bees. Honest. Not a one!

The issue can also be purchased here, or you could subscribe to Clarkesworld through Weightless Books or Amazon.

Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

Excitement! Thrill! Delight! My story ‘Chang’e Dashes from the Moon’, first published in Expanded Horizons last year, will be included in Heiresses of Russ 2013, edited by Steve Berman and Tenea D. Johnson.

“Harrowing Emily” by Megan Arkenberg
“Reality Girl” by Richard Bowes
“The Witch Sea” by Sara Diemer
“Saint Louis 1990” by Jewelle Gomez
“Narrative Only” by Kate Harrad
“Nightfall in the Scent Garden” by Claire Humphrey
“Only Then can I Sleep” by Tenea D. Johnson
“Elm” by Jamie Killen
“Beneath Impossible Circumstances” by Andrea Kneeland
“One True Love” by Malinda Lo
“Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints” by Alex Dally MacFarlane
“Winter Scheming” by Brit Mandelo
“Nine Days Seven Tears” by JL Merrow
“Oracle Gretel” by Julia Rios
“Otherwise” by Nisi Shawl
“Chang’e Dashes from the Moon” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
“Astrophilia” by Carrie Vaughn
“Barnstormers” by Wendy Wagner

The lineup is ordered alphabetically at the moment (it’ll be finalized differently in the actual book). I’m amazed and honored to be included in it; I loved Alex Dally MacFarlane’s and Andrea Kneeland’s stories (both first published in Strange Horizons), and I’m keen to check out the rest! I’ve got it on good authority that Julia Rios’ ‘Oracle Gretel’ is a fairytale of charm and humor.

Heiresses of Russ 2013 will be out in August this year from Lethe Press, and looks like it’s already available for pre-order from Amazon. Eeee! *\o/*