My novelette “Memorials”, originally published in Asimov’s,  has been reprinted in Apex Magazine‘s June 2016 issue, alongside fiction by Mary Pletsch, Douglas F. Warrick, and a novel excerpt from the awesome E. Catherine Tobler.

Virtual realities, powerful aunties, and trafficking in the dead. Also, three-colour chè. Because.

Snippet:

Cam finds Pham Thi Thanh Ha in her house, as she expected. By now, she doesn’t question the aunts’ knowledge or how they came by it. She does what she’s told to, an obedient daughter beholden to her elders, never raising a fuss or complaining– the shining example of filial piety extolled in the tales her girlfriend Thuy so painstakingly reconstitutes in her spare hours.

You can read it here.

My story “Desaparecidos” is now available in the June 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy. This was actually the one that got me pulled from the slush, so I’m very pleased to see it published (with Realms closing for a while, it did end up feeling like forever…). Like the other writers in the issue, I’ve written a piece on the origin of the story, which you can read here (and be sure to check out the other background pieces–sounds like a set of fascinating stories). And the table of contents is here. (as an aside, isn’t mine the best story description ever? Kind of sums up a lot of my fiction…)

Snippet:

Caldera de los Angeles (Crater of the Angels)
About 15 km (10 miles) from downtown El Águila. Count about three hours of a fairly taxing climb to reach the top, but the inside of the caldera–with its magnificent lake and forest–is well worth the exertion.
Legend has it that the Crater marks one of the numerous places where the rebellious angels fell down from Heaven–hence its name.
From A Traveller’s Guide to the Acamba Valley

In other news, I was pleased to see that “The Lonely Heart” (published in Black Static, to be reprinted in Panverse’s Eight Against Reality), garnered an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, and that “After the Fire” (published in Apex, podcast on StarShipSofa), is a notable story of 2009 for the Million Writers Award

My story “After the Fire” is now up at Apex Magazine, as part of the special World SF issue edited by Lavie Tidhar. It’s, er, sort of a post-apocalypse story, set in a China where the Empire never fell. Well, sort of set in China…

In her dreams, Jiaotan saw Father: hands outstretched, the flesh of the fingers fraying away to reveal the yellowed, tapered shape of bones, the deep-set eyes bulging in their sockets, pleading, begging her to take him away.

“You’re dead,” she whispered. “Rest in peace, with the Ancestors–watch over us from Heaven.”

But the Ancestors were bones and dried sinews, shambling upright from the wreck of their graves–anger shining in the hollows of their eye sockets as they walked past the devastated gardens, the withered trees, the dried-out waterfalls and rivers. And clouds marched across Heaven, a billowing mass of sickly grey spreading to cut the path of The Red Carp as it rose away from Earth…

The issue also includes Nir Yaniv and Aleksandar Žiljak, and an interview with Maylasian writer Tunku Halim (courtesy of the tireless Charles Tan)

I workshopped “After the Fire” (as “In Our Minds, In Our Hearts”) on OWW rather close to the deadline for handing it in–so many thanks to Mark Hünken, Tom Crosshill, Sylvia Volk and Max Griffin for helping me whip this into shape. And thanks to Lavie for the editing and the title help, as well as giving me the opportunity to write in a genre and a length I don’t often try.

And don’t forget that The Apex Book of World SF has been released, giving you a chance to read “The Lost Xuyan Bride” on paper alongside many other tales from cool writers such as Mélanie Fazi, Jetse de Vries and Kaaron Warren. You can read a sample of the book online, Aleksandar Žiljak’s “An Evening In the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia On My Mind”–as Lavie puts it, a mixture of Boogie Nights and Men in Black.