So… looks like my recent website troubles have been fixed (the culprit to all my problems was a WP plugin that went funky, but nothing else looks wrong). However, given that the website’s still being hit by spambots (275 attempts in 2 hours!), I activated CAPTCHA on comments. Sorry for the extra nuisance; I hope that doesn’t put people off, but I see no other way to get rid of them.
I actually got tagged for this by Ruth Nestvold, and promptly got buried under dayjob stuff–I didn’t think of it until Nina Allan also tagged me.
1) What is the working title of your next book?
On a Red Station, Drifting
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
I wanted to write the SF equivalent of Dream of Red Mansions, something that would have a Sino-Vietnamese domestic focus with a large number of main female characters.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
SF.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Ideally, Vietnamese older women; unfortunately, my google-fu is failing me and I can’t really find many actors (the only Vietnamese/Vietnamese-American/Vietnamese-French actors I can find are very young). Trần Nữ Yên Khê (the main character in Scent of the Green Papaya) would probably be the right fit for Linh; and Cam Thu (at least how she looks in that picture) would look like my mental image of Quyen. Dustin Nguyen would probably make a great Huu Hieu.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Aboard a space station where everything has always been ruled by an AI matriarch, tensions begin to surface when the AI starts failing…
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It’s published by Immersion Press, a small UK press that is the brainchild of Carmelo Rafala and has already published authors like Chris Butler and Lavie Tidhar.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
A long, long time! I foolishly committed to it without any real idea of what writing a novella entailed–I expected something along the lines of a larger short story, whereas the truth is that it’s more like a short novel… I flailed for a long time because I couldn’t get the story structure right, and then I flailed some more because of one of my main character (Quyen) didn’t have a clear storyline. I think it took me about 7-8 months to finish the first draft, and this was subsequently followed by a long period of substantial revisions.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I’m hoping I managed to produce a book with the strong characters, mythical overtones and chewy prose of Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, combined with inventive worldbuilding similar to Alastair Reynolds’ Chasm City.
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Too many readings of Dreams of Red Mansions! (I even have a graphic novel version of the book, which is a set of illustrations for it drawn during the Qing dynasty that are absolutely gorgeous).
10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
There’s food. Lots of food–in fact, one of the main set pieces for the story is a banquet. And it has a chase scene in a fish-sauce brewery. If that doesn’t make you buy it, I don’t know what will!
Apparently, you’re supposed to tag other victims, er sorry I mean fellow authors, who will post next Wednesday about their own writing projects–if they have the time and inclination, of course! Let me tag TL Morganfield and Joyce Chng.
-Issue number 1 of International Science Fiction is now available for download (will you look at that gorgeous cover!). With fiction by Joyce Chng, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Marian Truţă
-Received my issue of Interzone, which had “The Flower of Shazui”, a Chen Qiufan story translated by Ken Liu. Very gritty story set in the Shenzhen special economic zone–I really liked the interplay between the characters and the ending, which was sad but fitting.
-Also, please go congratulate the awesome Patrick Samphire on the sale of his Mars Regency middle-grade book, Secrets of the Dragon Tomb to Christy Ottaviano Books
So, Skyfall.
First, the good: it’s not a bad movie, per se. By which I mean that you can go to the cinema and spend an enjoyable 2 hours and a half (even though arguably it drags on a bit). It’s… entertaining, I guess? Solid and action-packed, and the actors certainly do give a great performance (props to Judi Dench, who’s impeccable as always, and I also really loved the new Q).
(Mild spoilers for the ending, though nothing you wouldn’t have expected)
Continue reading →
Very pleased to announce that “Immersion” will be reprinted in Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven. I spy familiar names in that TOC, including Karin Tidbeck and Ken Liu.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over there squeeing…
FYI…:
All of this concurs to explain why I’m not going to be very fast on my feet, and don’t hesitate to holler if you think I owe you anything and haven’t delivered…
So, remember Yoko Tsuno, those bandes dessinées with the Japanese electrical engineer I loved when I was a child? [1] As I was saying in that other blog post, they’ve re-edited them with new material which includes author introductions. This is definitely one of those cases where less is more–to learn that author/artist Roger Leloup created the character because he wanted an exotic Oriental character is definitely… not what I really needed to read (the introduction includes a bit where he says that bringing Yoko back to Japan was difficult because she was no longer exotic, and that Japan was hard because he couldn’t make things up. I haven’t tried to reread that actual BD, but it has ninjas and multiple references to samurai honour and losing face as some sort of ultimate deterrent in Japanese culture. Arg arg arg).
Bonus points for his mention that he gave her a Chinese grandmother because he wanted her to combine Chinese sensibility with Japanese efficiency. Arrrrgggg racial stereotyping much, anyone?
[1] Asian geek with a spaceship who was smarter than the boys, the first time I’d seen that kind of character around. Love at first sight for many reasons.
Just a quick update that work has eaten my brain.
I shall be looking at my pretty birthday present from my parents: a shiny new MacBook Air 13.3″. Just set it up now. Wow. The keyboard is very comfy, and it makes a nice change from my old 10″ eeePC (which is a nice machine for writing on and a crap one for making revisions on).
This weekend I have a blog post to write, a story to revise, and various other things to consider that I had no brain-space for during the week, in addition to accompanying the H on a supply hunt to Chinatown (aka, where are my 5kg of rice?). Should be fun 🙂
Just saw on twitter that Clarkesworld owner and editor Neil Clarke has lost his day job, after having a bummer of a year that included a severe heart attack and a hurricane. If you want to support the magazine by taking out a subscription, now would be a great time, and you can do this here. In addition to publishing my short stories “Immersion” and “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”, Clarkesworld also has consistently strong fiction: my favourite pieces include Yoon Ha Lee’s “Ghostweight”, Theodora Goss’s “England under the White Witch”, and Xia Jia’s “A Hundred Ghost Parade Tonight”, among many other fine pieces.
-Benjamun Sriduangkaew’s “Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon” is a retelling of the myth of the love between the archer god Houyi and the moon goddess Chang’e–except that it makes Houyi a woman and uses the opportunity to poke some pretty sharp points into traditional Chinese family structure. It’s a novella, but it honestly doesn’t feel like it–the two main characters are strongly depicted, and the language is so beautiful and crunchy it just leaves you longing for more. Seriously one of the best stories I’ve read this year.
It is the aftermath of the world’s end, and nine birds–nine suns–lie dead while Houyi cradles the curve of her bow, her fingers locking around the taut hardness of its string. The tenth sun, the last, has fled. Chastise them, Dijun said, a father’s plea. But there is the land and the horror and the dryness, desiccated corpses in empty dust trenches that were rivers not long ago. There are dead dragons, too, and snake women with bright eyes–and is it not right to bring down the suns, is it not what Houyi is meant to do? She is a god who protects; she is a god given a duty.
-Karin Tidbeck’s “Brita’s Holiday Village”: a gentle, dream-like account of a writer’s holiday in an isolated Swedish village and of the people she meets there. Lovely atmosphere and sharp observations.
The cab ride from Åre station to Aunt Brita’s holiday village took about half an hour. I’m renting the cottage on the edge of the village that’s reserved for relatives. The rest are closed for summer. Mum helped me make the reservation—Brita’s her aunt, really, not mine, and they’re pretty close. Yes, I’m thirty-two years old. Yes, I’m terrible at calling people I don’t know.
-Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s first column for Strange Horizons is up, on Identity and the Indigenous Spirit. Everything she says is worth reading and mulling over.
From Tita King, I learned to wade through the dead weight of imposed culture and the acquired prejudice against my own culture. Her passion for our indigenous culture helped me to find freedom in the indigenous self. Looking back, I know I was very lucky.
