Signal-boosting for Dragon Sisters

If you like a YA fantasy set in Qing China.

Dragon Sisters

Halcyon Days Chapter Eight

“The drastic changes would give anyone whiplash. Sigurd stopped hyperventilating and ran over to my half-brother who had collapsed from his spot. The freezing air reverted back to normal tropical temperatures, though I swore there was condensation on the furniture and windows. The wall panel I touched was moist. The two bodyguards halted behaving like over-protective hens and went back to being silent observers.

Mat remained in his tiger form. Wise old man. Things could go pear-shape instantly. By the time I reached Filipe, Sigurd was cradling his head on her lap. She seemed to throw protocol out of the window, looking more like a worried grandmother instead.”

Halcyon Days: Chapter Eight: Sigurd Earthsdottir

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Umbel & Panicle has become reality

Umbel and Panicle

(for plant and botanical poetry & art, occasionally spec fic poetry)

Way over the (super)moon.

On happier news, I sold a poem to Uncanny Magazine. I am way over the (super)moon about this. 🙂

(not the supermoon – but still a moon anyway!)

November, halfway, almost ending.

In a few days after Sunday, I would be looking at the Starfang: Gathering of the Clans draft again, a novella written during the US election and then during its shocking results. It would be raw, angry, hopeful, brimming with curse-words, uttered and felt. It would be earnest, tender, in parts rushed, in parts savored because of words, always words, because words are part of my world.

I will be revising, re-thinking, and re-hoping that the words work. My voice seems tiny in the shouting of the Internet, the yelling of voices who want to be heard all the same time in social media. November is traditionally a month for me to go silent, to think, and to reflect on my life until that. Yet with the world seeming to go into flames everywhere, I feel as if I have to speak up. I had. I have. It doesn’t seem to have worked. It is not my place, either. Do I have the right to speak up about being Chinese in a Chinese-dominant country, set in a world that is fast going far-right and conservative, where people’s rights are stomped on by an elite who thinks they deserve more, by men who think that it’s their time to speak up?

At the end of the day, the US is going to impact all of us. Our popular culture we consume so readily, the values they have been and are passing down to our youth, the concepts our adults and youth are consciously and unconsciously taking in. Our economy that reacted so badly when the man was announced President-Elect. What would happen to publishing? Would an industry already closed to outsiders like me (non-white, non-US/US etc) be closed even further?

I will still continue to write. Focus on our region that has so much, so much potential, its own markets. I will continue to think diversely, because the world is diverse, that we are just part of a giant connection that links all of us together. I will be announcing something later in December. Perhaps my voice does matter. There are people who will listen, still.

So, pick up your pens, open up your laptops… and write. Pick up a book and read. Because we are writers and readers. Inspire the people around us. Inspire and engage the young minds around us. Be fearless. Be raw, hopeful, angry, earnest, tender, and without fear.

Free-to-read fantasy serial

Rose Thorn & Sword

(occasionally NSFW)

Halcyon Days Chapter Seven

“The year was moving too quickly. Soon it would be Seventh Month. Mother called it ‘Gui Jie’, Hungry Ghost Festival. I was finally getting somewhere with the Dark Claws, with Cedric now working on my side with the threat of expulsion from our clan and a painful death hanging over his head. Leaders of the clans were surfacing names now, and carrying out their own purges. Some, I heard, were just entire sub-clans gone overnight, no questions asked. Drake law. Humanity normally dared not interfere with us. At least we did not continue the tradition of duelling in drake form.”

Halcyon Days Chapter Seven: Calm Before The Storm

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Poems: Dragon Silk

Tonight,

I weave dragon silk,

the cloth of mermaids

– wave by wave,

thread by thread.

jiao xiao sha

In the end, we have hope

I watched the US Elections with horror and felt the total despair and terror from my US friends. All I could do was write. I am working on a space opera and these paragraphs feel apt now:

“Ready?” she said. Already the sky lanterns were floating about us, rising up into the night sky. The scene was magical. We lofted our sky lantern up and it began to ascend. We stood close to each other, watching it join its compatriots in the sky. It was courage, it was brilliance, it was our clan’s collective wishes for the new year. It was our howl shining with lights. Heaven would hear it. Heaven would hear our song.

Holding April now, the memory was just nostalgia. No. The memory was power and strength. Our clan would prevail, as it had, for many generations. We would continue to lit sky lanterns for ourselves, if not for our children and descendents. Our lights would grow stronger, brighter. Even if they faded, more would take our place and join the multitude.  After all, was hope stronger than despair?

(not a sky lantern, but it gives light in darkness!)