-The Booksmugglers have started publishing fiction on their blog. They’re focusing on fairy tale retellings: the two I’ve read so far have been very good indeed, original and striking. S.L Huang’s “The Monster Hunters” mashes together a lot of fairytale tropes while tackling hard subjects of abuse and female agency.
The other story, which has just published, is Yukimi Ogawa’s “In Her Head, in Her Eyes”, a creepy SF/horror retelling of the Japanese story “Hachikaduki” (Girl with a Bowl on her Head”).
-Alyssa Wong’s “Santos de Sampaguita” over at Strange Horizons is a tale of dead gods, aswangs and weddings–it’s the visceral and heartbreaking tale of a woman coming into her power.
-And finally, J. Damask’s Heart of Fire, the third in her Myriad/Jan Xu cycle of werewolves in Singapore and how they uneasily coexist with Chinese dragons, jiangshi (reanimated corpses) and European fairies, has recently published. I love the mingling of influences in those, and the sense of real place evoked by someone who is a native of Singapore, as well as the strong focus on families and the bonds that make or break them.