Tag Archives: novel

06.18.13
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List: 94 Asian Speculative Fiction Authors (with links)

I’ve been wanting to expand my reading to include more international speculative fiction, and more non-white American authors. I am privileged to know a couple of brilliant writers who also happen to be Asian, and that seemed a good place to start my reading*. I put together a list of work I’d been meaning to explore, and then solicited ideas from Twitter and the SFWA forums. Most people suggested the same couple of names over and over again… while it’s, honestly, wonderful that we’ve reached a point in SF/F where these authors are being read and discussed at all, there’s so much more diversity in our fiction, if we just look for it. There’s almost a hundred published writers on this list, and I know it isn’t everyone.

The authors are listed alphabetically by given name, so the list doesn’t imply hierarchy. I also didn’t sort by ancestry, current geographic location, or place of birth (though I noted it where it’s listed in author bios**), because the writers listed here have placed varying degrees of importance on those facts. Some work in American tropes, subverting the “classic” science fiction of the 50s, while others retell the myths of their homeland in new and unique ways. Some look to the future, extrapolating possibilities from their own experiences. There’s no one style, structure, or emotional context that can be called “Asian writing”. What these authors have in common is that they’re all of Asian descent, and they all write speculative fiction***. These authors write primarily in English–I’ve included a few translated works, but I can’t vouch for the authenticity of voice, so I tried to choose English-language stories wherever possible.

I want to thank Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, Crossed Genres Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Strange Horizons, Giganotosaurus, The World SF Blog, and Daily Science Fiction for repeatedly publishing these authors. Looking for diversity in short speculative fiction? Look to those publications.

When I could find it, I’ve linked to the author’s Twitter, website, blog, list of publications, and/or a sample short story. I’ve also noted if the author works primarily in YA fiction.

  1. Alliete de Bodard (French/Vietnamese, shorts stories/novels, Nebula and BFSA winner) twitter website publications story: “The Weight of a Blessing“ Clarkesworld
  2. Amitav Ghosh (Indian, novels, Arthur C. Clark award, Man Booker shortlist) website publications blog
  3. Andrew Fukuda (Chinese/Japanese, novels) (YA) twitter website blog
  4. Anil Menon (Indian, shorts/novels/editor) website blog story: “Archipelago” Strange Horizons
  5. Ashok Banker (Indian, novels) wikipedia
  6. Benjanun “Bee” Sriduangkaew (shorts) twitter blog story: “Annex” Clarkesworld
  7. Brenda “B.W.” Clough (shorts/novels, Hugo and Nebula nominee) website publications
  8. Bryan Thao Worra (Laotian-American, shorts/poems) twitter blog story: “A Model Apartment” Innsmouth Free Press (scroll to page 47)
  9. Budjette Tan (Filipino, comics/shorts, Philippine National Book Award winner) twitter blog story: “The Last Full Show“ Alternative Alamat
  10. Cecelia Manguerra Brainard (Filipino-American, novels/shorts/editing) website wiki
  11. Cecilia Tan (novelist, editor, shorts ) twitter website publications free fiction (sample chapters/serials)
  12. Charles Tan (Filipino, shorts/editor) twitter blog publications story: “The Fortunes of Mrs. Yu” The Dragon and the Stars”
  13. Charles Yu (shorts/novels, John W. Campbell nominee) twitter
  14. Chitra Divakaruni (Indian-American, shorts/novels/poems, Pushcart prize) website blog
  15. Cindy Pon (Taiwanese, novels) (YA) twitter website blog sample: first 70 pages of Silver Phoenix
  16. Claire Light (Chinese, shorts) website blog publications story: “The Apocalypse Artist“ Stretcher
  17. Dean Francis Alfar (Filipino, shorts/novels/plays/editor) twitter story: “The New Daughter” Philippine Genre Stories”
  18. Derwin Mak (Chinese-Canadian, shorts/novels/editor, Aurora award) twitter website publications blog novella: “Kleinheimat“
  19. Dinesh Rao (Indian, shorts) blog story: “The Portal Plague” The World SF Blog
  20. Don Pizarro (Filipino-American, shorts/editor) twitter website publications story: “Combat Stress Reaction” Crossed Genres Magazine
  21. Dung Kai-Cheung (Chinese, novels/plays) bio

    22. Continue reading →

05.01.13
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Writer Wednesday: Wesley Chu

Wesley-Chu-200x300

1. Your first two novels are scheduled to be published by Angry Robot books this year. You originally submitted during AR’s “Open Door Month” in 2011. What was that process like?

The Great Angry Robot Open Submission was probably one of the most fantastic and angst filled experiences of my life, which is unusual for me because I usually live a pretty happy, zero-angst life. I’m like a cross between that singing meerkat in Lion King and a Labrador Retriever.

The robot overlords, Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris, opened their doors to subs for one month in March of 2011. The subs went through four levels of review, from query and chapters, full manuscript, editorial and finally to acquisitions. At the end, out of a nearly a thousand submissions, twenty-five manuscripts made it to editorials and five received deals. The entire process from submission to signing the deal took fourteen months.

An added bonus about the open sub process was that fourteen of us in the editorial stage bonded on the Absolute Write forums and created our own social Group: Anxious Appliances. Since our inception, we’ve been the most active writing group on AW. Not gonna lie. Those guys kept me sane. I got pretty batshit crazy as the process drew to a close.

2. Once your book was in to the final stages of consideration, you got an agent. How did you find yours? Looking back on it, should you have started looking sooner, or waited longer?

I did query an earlier draft of The Lives of Tao a few years ago. I received some great feedback, and a request for a rewrite, but things fell through. It was still a great learning experience and helped me develop as a writer. It’s fair to say the book wouldn’t be what it is without the suggestions and changes I made from their critiques. I took a year off from the book and then rewrote it with a fresh pair of eyes.

After the manuscript was promoted to editorial during the open sub, I leveraged the potential deal and began querying again, and received offers from two agencies for representation. I was very fortunate to sign with Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh, who was one of my top targeted agencies. What better person to lead your career than the guy who represented the authors that wrote the books and movies you grew up with (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers)?

3. You have a wife, an executive-level job for a major corporation, family, friends, and a dog. How do you find time to write?

There’s a lot of time in the day. You just have to figure out how to prioritize what is important and what isn’t. I admit to being an OCD kind of guy. I am a single purpose driven machine, like a Phillips screw driver.

During my hardcore martial art days, I used to drive an hour to my friend Tony Marquez’s school (he was the original Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat), Extreme Kung Fu, and train at his facility. Then afterward, I drove thirty minutes to another school where I learned from a Bagua Zhang/Tai Chi master. It was four hours of training a day, six days a week. This went on for many several years.

One day, I thought to myself. “Man, I’ve always wanted to write a book. I don’t know how, but I’m going to figure it out.”

So I gave it a shot. Without knowing what I was doing, I began to write when I had the free time. Eventually, writing took over all my other hobbies. I stopped clubbing. I retired from martial arts. I quit raiding in Wow (that freed up a crap ton of time), and focused on what was really important to me. Continue reading →

11.28.12
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Links and Updates.

You should buy this. Really.

I’ve got new articles about indie comics up at SF Signal: Review of Tails by Ethan Young, and an interview with Young too. Next week will be Richard Sala’s Delphine, and the week after will be V. 1 of Rust, by Royden Lepp.

New book review: The Vampire Combat Manual, by Roger Ma. Want to win a copy? Go post a comment on the review before Dec 1, and I’ll send you mine.

The summer issue of Red Penny Papers, which features my story “Mrs. Henderson’s Cemetery Dance”, is now available as a free ebook at Smashwords.

I’ve been posting my drawing practice online, over at a site I happened to own (which is why the name has nothing to do with what I’ve got there). Click here to see what I’ve been doing. I’m the first to admit I’m not great yet but I’d like to a) keep track of my evolution as an artist, something I always hear people say they wish they had done, and b) I am more likely to work on improving a skill when I put it out in public for other people to see.

My favorite web show right now is a short series called Mythomania, about the lives of struggling cartoonists in LA. It’s cute and bittersweet and fun. The second season looks to be less auto-bio and more spec fic, and I can’t wait. Watch it here.

This post about the cost of indie comics has been getting some buzz, both agreeing and disagreeing with his math (but generally all agreeing with the sentiment).

My novel is progressing so much slower than I expected, but in bits and pieces, yeah, it’s getting written. I’m hoping to send Ch 1 out to a couple of readers tonight.

Also my son wanted a toy from the store, and failing to find anything new in his usual favorites (CARS toys, Hot Wheels, etc) he instead bought a basketball. So there’s that.

11.08.12
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Build It Up, Tear It Down

You may remember me talking about the Wall of Notes either on Twitter or on Facebook. In order to outline my current novel project – something new for me, this “outlining” thing –  I wanted to piece it together in a big obvious place. I have a set of index cards for the fairy tale track (part of my novel’s format is based on Vladimir Propp’s “Functions of the Fairy Tale“), another set for the highlights of the Odysseus myth (which the story is somewhat inspired by), a set for characters, a set for plot points that fit into the structure, and another for plot points that are great story moments but I’m not yet sure where they go.

The entirety of my living room wall was covered with cards. I had to buy extra thumbtacks. Visitors were treated to an explanation of my work-in-progress that included much waving of hands. I literally sat with my third act hanging over my head, since that part of the wall was above my reading chair, while I tried to figure out how a big fight scene with monsters and ghosts fit into my story arc. (I did sort that out, btw.)

Well, the wall has now come down.

Instead I have a three page outline, with bullet points where the extra bits go. I have a few cards left on the wall – characters, some overall novel notes, and those “story moments” that don’t fit yet – but it takes up a 1/4 of the space, or less. Over time, the wall will get filled up again, with maps and drawings and other reference material, but for now I’ve taken the big first step of actually committing words to the page.

After years of other attempts to write a version of this story, months and months of plotting, and all of the work to outline, now that it’s finally getting written, I have to say that I still like this book.

Let’s see if I still feel that way once I’m halfway through it.

10.08.12
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Peer Pressure, Updates, and Links

I had to take a break from writing and editing and much of anything else while I took care of myself and a sick kid and tried not to die this week. In other words, we had the flu. Dayquil played a starring role in accomplishing these goals. Also, the irony of getting the flu a few weeks before I’m set to start writing a viral apocalypse novel is not lost on me.

Up until I got sick, I was actually getting caught up, and had a packed October planned. Silly me, I didn’t budget in time to lie in bed and stare at a stuffed shark for several hours a day*. You’d think it would be quiet around here but a lot’s happened in the last week or so:

First off, Jessica Corra, John Stevens, and Mike Allen did their “Next Big Thing” posts, and so did R.S. Hunter (who I’ve published at Dagan Books) so go click on the links to read ‘em.

By January I will no longer be writing my Tech Nerd column over at the Functional Nerds site. Patrick Hestor and John Anealio were great to give me a chance to do that, and I was officially part of their site for over a year, but it’s time to move on. I will turn in three more columns, to be posted this month, in November, and in December.  I will continue to write the occasional mainstream book review for them, and hopefully appear on a future podcast.

Patrick told me that I probably won’t be getting away so easily, and they’ve got plans which might include me still … Once I know, I’ll let you know.

I do have another non-fiction writing gig in progress. In a few weeks you will be able to find me talking about independent, alternative, and creator-owned comics over at SF Signal. Brian Ruckely, who’s already writing a great column over there called Words and Pictures (click on the link to read what’s he’s done so far) has graciously agreed to share the topic of comics with me.

You guys know I love comics, read comics – mostly the kind of small press comics I plan to talk about, but I also like what Image has been doing recently and was a fan of DC’s Vertigo line from back when it started in ’93. I’ve even written about comics from an academic perspective in the past. My college degrees are in Fine Arts and Art History, and though I studied antique books, prints, and printmaking techniques in school (and just read comics for fun) it turns out that I couldn’t have done much better if I wanted to prepare myself for serious study of narrative art.** I’m excited to have a forum to share what I’m reading a couple of times a month.

Dagan Books work is behind but still progressing, as seems to be the constant state of things this year. All that needs to be done by the end of October will be done, I can see that. It will involve lost sleep and some help from my amazing staff, but it will get done. WFC is about 3 1/2 weeks away… I’m scared and thrilled and looking forward to it at the same time.

November’s going to be busy too. After WFC I’ve got my novel, a lot more Dagan Books work, the comics column, and 10,000 words on my 1/2 of a complicated and brilliant science fiction novella I’m co-writing as part of a project being published next year. I can’t say more than that right now, except I’ve outlined the idea of what I’m writing, and the format I’ll be writing it in, so I feel confident it will get done on time. I like the idea very much.

I’ve also gotten back to a regular drawing practice lately, and I can already see myself improving. This is important because it gives me a creative outlet even when my brain is melted from writing, it’s a marketable skill to have, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of finishing a drawing. I can complete one in a few hours, and I get to say that magic word – DONE. I can’t write a piece of fiction in only a few hours and think it’s finished, so it’s nice to have these little moments of feeling useful to help power me through the long writing tasks I’ve got in front of me.

Speaking of the novel, I figured out the third act – internal, external, and meta motivations – so I’m truly done with the basic outline. Next free moment I get, I will type it up, take the notecards off the wall, and use that space to start building my “bible”: reference material, maps, scene sketches, and other background or extra-novel material that will help me write but isn’t necessarily part of the outline.

Kid is doing well. Personal life is doing well. Making new friends. Health, aside from the flu, continues to improve. Still dirt poor, but I’m working on that. Oh, and I rearranged my furniture.

Overall, I’d say things are heading in the right direction.

* Note to self: schedule shark-staring into regular calendar. It’s very soothing.

** My favorite professor still sends me calls for papers on the confluence of graphic art and art history.