Category: Reflections

2022 Round-Up and Awards Eligibility

by Grace, posted in Reflections, Updates, Writing

Just to change things up, I decided to pair my stories for 2022 with ~vibes~ and recommended drinks!

I published 4 short stories and 1 novel in 2022. (The novel, Every Version of You, was published in Australia and New Zealand.)

If you like the sound of any of them, I’d be honoured if you gave them a look and considered them for awards nominations.

NOBODY EVER GOES HOME TO ZHENZHU – Lightspeed

~vibes~: Interstellar detective noir; acid rain battering roadside stalls; love-hate relationships with your shipmates; punching up against the system

drink: rice wine, preferably hot with floral notes

TO THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON – Hexagon

~vibes~: melancholy love in a feminist utopia; dude in distress; brooding cyborgs and coy androids and shiny spaceships

drink: a warm, creamy matcha latte with a drizzle of honey

AS THOUGH I WERE A LITTLE SUN – Fireside Fiction

~vibes~: cosy; bittersweet; a tree remembers how she became a tree

drink: pear and red date soup (or any sweet, clear soup)

DEATH BY WATER – From The Waste Land, PS Publishing (paperback available, e-book forthcoming)

~vibes~: an abandoned space mission; underwater caverns choked with ice and water; threads of memory, love, hope, rebirth, regeneration

drink: shots of strong coffee, swigged with each scene break

EVERY VERSION OF YOU – Affirm Press

~vibes~: “how to stay in love and feel real after mind-uploading into virtual reality”

drink: make a pot of your favourite tea, sip it slowly, until it’s bitter and cold; when you reach the final chapter, you may brew a fresh pot.

The Epoch Engine, my story for Magic the Gathering’s newly launched Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty plane, was published in February.

I published poetry for the first time: Inertness in Going Down Swinging (illustrated by the otherworldly, fantastic James Alexander Martin) and Symmetry, in the Winter 2022 edition of The Victorian Writer.

I published two non-fiction articles: a personal piece in SBS Voices and a column for Meanjin’s What I’m Reading. I also did a few interviews and podcasts.

In summary? 2022 was a year unlike any other. It was exhausting, delirious, wonderful, overwhelming, fuelled by sugar and adrenaline. But I feel incredibly lucky–that Every Version of You is out in the world, and that I managed to publish a bunch of short pieces.

If you want more of a reflection about the joys and challenges of this year, I’ll be sending out my year-end newsletter soon, so jump onto my Substack if you haven’t!

As always, thank you for following my work. I hope the stories whisk you away to adventures surreal, fantastic, and futuristic.

Awards Eligibility and 2021 Round-Up

by Grace, posted in Reflections, Updates, Writing

I have a grand total of one (1) delightful story for your awards consideration!

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars (5300 words) was published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 in July 2021. It’s a science fiction story about Yennie, a lonely 22nd century pop idol on Enceladus. It features quantum entanglements, yearning, superfans, machine learning, duplication, and duplicity.

I’m incredibly grateful to Neil Clarke for the publication. Thank you also to Karen Burnham for Locus Magazine for including it as a Recommended Story: ‘This portrait of fame with its costs and benefits is very well done.’

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was also praised in Maria Haskins’s July 2021 Short Fiction Round-up: ‘Science fiction with a tender, gentle heart and spirit, this story is bittersweet and lovely through and through.’

And in Vanessa Fogg’s July-August 2021 Short Fiction Recs: ‘Wildly inventive, lyrical, and ultimately moving.’ Thank you!

I am also eligible for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer!

Looking ahead to 2022…

I’ve been working on a bunch of things due for publication in 2022.

  • Look out for two new short fiction pieces: As Though I Were a Little Sun in Fireside Magazine, and Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu in Lightspeed Magazine.
  • My debut novel, Every Version of You, is steadily approaching the final stages of the editing process! Also, I’ve had a first sneak peek of the cover design! Publication has been shifted from February to September 2022.
  • I have an illustrated poem in the works, accepted for publication in Going Down Swinging online.
  • And finally, I’ve written a short story for a major game franchise, and I look forward to sharing that early next year.

Thanks again for following my work. I’ll probably do a bit more of a reflection on writing and growth in my newsletter. So if you haven’t signed up for that, take a peek at the link above.

Between work, life and extended lockdowns, I haven’t been able to prioritise writing as much as I’d hoped this year, but I do feel like I’m gradually finding my voice: figuring out what I want to write about and what I’d like to channel my time and energy towards.

I look forward to working on more writing projects in the new year. I hope you’ll stay tuned!

Using Psychology to Deepen Character Development

by Grace, posted in Reflections, Updates, Writing

I presented Using Psychology to Deepen Character Development for the first time at Flights of Foundry last month and received some lovely feedback.

I reflected on the role of the unconscious, internal/external conflict, and self-narrative in shaping complex characters, did a deep dive into defence mechanisms (with a lighthearted spec-fic twist!), and explored attachment theory in relating to others.

I also touched on embodied emotion, psychology interfacing with magic/tech/worldbuilding/horror, and other sorts of minds–although those themes would deserve a talk of their own!

I thought I’d share a couple of key slides/points.

The mind is a speculative place

◦ Psychological theories are frameworks for seeing the mind from different angles

◦ No single theory or framework can explain the human mind

◦ Applying a psychological understanding allows you to show rather than tell the reader what your characters are like

◦ Moreover, you can pare back the showing so it can be implicit, subtle, metaphorical and open, allowing the reader to imbue the story with their individual interpretations and personal meaning

The mind is not a single, unified entity

◦ Inner disharmonies are unavoidable

◦ We can consider the different stories within our characters–different origins, aims, and defences mechanisms of various agencies within the mind.

A conceptual diagram of Freud’s Topographical and Structural Models. Taken from
Kenny, D.T. (2016). A brief history of psychoanalysis: From Freud to fantasy to folly. Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia.

Exercise: Think about a character from your work. Visualise them clearly in your mind’s eye. Then, consider the following questions…

Id

What are your character’s hidden desires? What do they yearn for? What would give them a sense of wholeness and vitality? What sparks their lust, aggression, or anger? What wishes or fears are they unable to admit to themselves? Can other characters glimpse these drives? Will events force them to confront buried aspects of themselves?

Superego

What sort of early upbringing did your character have? Who were their role models, and what values and morals would they have internalised? What standards does your character strive towards? What is forbidden territory for your character, associated with guilt or shame?

Ego

How does your character resolve these conflicting aspects of themselves? What is the story that your character tells themselves? Which coping mechanisms do they tend to turn towards in times of stress? What happens when these mechanisms are overwhelmed? How will their unconscious desires and value systems shape their actions and manifest in the story?

I really enjoyed adapting psychological concepts for writing, especially for speculative writing. I’m hoping to further refine and develop it for the future.

I hope this is the beginning of a helpful resource.

Happy reading and writing, friends!

PS. Thank you, so much, to the Dream Foundry for having me. The talk will be available on the Dream Foundry YouTube channel later this year.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8jDna_LNiWUbJ254-dymVg

The Dunes of Ranza – Artwork and Reprint!

by Grace, posted in Reflections

In November 2018, my first ever publication appeared in Going Down Swinging: Pigeonholed—an pulpy, paperback ode-to-genre by a Melbourne-based literary publisher.

This tale was The Dunes of Ranza, a post-colonial far-future sci-fi story with some of my favourite things—a cybernetically enhanced gender-bending bounty hunter, a love-hate sidekick relationship with wry banter, and questions about power, class, and humanity’s progress.

I’m so thrilled to share that The Dunes of Ranza will be reprinted in the Spring 2021 issue (#140, due out March 20) of Space and Time Magazine. Thank you, Angela Yuriko Smith, for the acceptance! Also, how awesome is the Space and Time Magazine logo and website design?!

Illustration by Bren Luke Art for Dunes of Ranza, in Going Down Swinging #39: Pigeonholed

The original publication was accompanied by an illustration from Bren Luke Art, a Ballarat-based artist who creates restrained, atmospheric, technical pen-and-ink pieces, inspired by the works of 16th century engraver Albrecht Durer and various underground comic book artists.

I was honoured to have Bren bring to life the landscape of Ranza and the Telemar sun. Bren was kind enough to send me a print of the artwork (below), which I’m planning to frame and hang in my study.

Print of The Dunes of Ranza, by Bren Luke Art

2020 Round-Up and Awards Eligibility

by Grace, posted in Reflections, Updates, Writing

For me, 2020 felt slow, and at times painful, frustrating, and confusing. It was easy to compare myself with others who seemed to be having lots of short fiction publishing success, and feel demoralised. However, when I cast my mind back to where I was a mere one year ago, I’m reminded of how far I’ve come in a short space of time. I am immensely grateful: not only for my writing journey, but for the security of my day work and living situation, and for the support systems around me.

Here are the things I’ve published in 2020. My novelette, Jigsaw Children, is eligible for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and grants me eligibility for the Astounding Award.

Jigsaw Children
Clarkesworld (Issue 161, Feb 2020)
Audio Version available on Clarkesworld Website / Podcast

13,000 words. A science fiction novelette set in twenty-second century Hong Kong, about gene splicing, mothers, attachment, and identity.

I think I’m reasonably lucky, only having five parents. I guess my donors didn’t have too many risk mutations. Some of my classmates have been spliced together from eight, nine, even twelve donors. I don’t envy them the task of juggling their Chinese New Year dinners.

Father’s House
Aurealis (Issue 29, Apr 2020)

2500 words. A short story touching on themes of brain connectome mapping, illness, immigration, and the things that parents pass on to their children.

He removes his shoes and places them neatly next to his father’s black sneakers.
His father’s voice floats from the kitchen. ‘Henry. How’s work?’
‘Fine, Ba. I’ve taken a few days off.’
‘Just to help me clean? Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

The Ethnographer
Andromeda Spaceways Magazine (Issue #79, Jun 2020)

5000 words. A far future science fiction story about inequality and powerlessness. A solitary, empathetic ethnographer travels to a far-flung planet and gradually discovers hidden ruptures in the alien society.

I step down from the Linnaeus into a crimson haze creased with shadows. The wind howls like a banshee symphony. At once, I understand why the Vullon have no hearing organs: the noise of this alien planet inspires madness.

Of Hunger and Fury
Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, Omnium Gatherum (Sep 2020)

3600 words. A Malaysian Chinese gothic horror story. When Fen Fang returns to her family home in Malaysia, long-forgotten ghosts begin to creep into her skin.

When I see my mother standing in the front yard, two decades disappear in a blink. I can hardly bear to look at the faded white walls, the creeping lattice of vines like bloated veins. She pulls the metal gate open. Her bare wrists look strangely vulnerable. My husband bounds over to her, grasps her hand in both of his, leans in to peck her cheek.

Mother of the Trenches
Unnatural Order, CSFG Publishing (Dec 2020, available to pre-order)

2700 words. A quirky, tentacled, symbiotic, fantasy tale about power, knowing yourself, ocean pollution, and deep, dark places.

You turn your little eyes to me, taking in my massive shapelessness, the dark patterns shifting over my skin, and my many arms, coiled around us like a nest—protecting, tasting, thinking. Your gaze flicks upwards and crosses paths with mine.
Your fear turns into disgust.

If you’d told me a couple of years ago that I’d have short fiction in two dream Aussie SFF venues, I wouldn’t have dared to believe it! The Ethnographer and Father’s House are very different stories, but both were a challenge and a joy to write. I feel very lucky to have had them edited and published by Andromeda Spaceways and Aurealis, respectively. And, of course, I’m perpetually over the moon that Clarkesworld accepted Jigsaw Children–which, now that I reflect on it, has many thematic overlaps with Every Version of You.

As I spent a large portion of the year studying for a specialty exam, I didn’t get to write and submit as much as I’d hoped. But with the exam well and truly behind me now, I’m set to dive into structural edits for EVOY and more short fiction projects!

As always, thanks for reading and lingering for a little while. May the end of your 2020 be reflective, restorative, and as peaceful as can be in these times.

The Mark – Inspirations, Gratitudes

by Grace, posted in Reflections

A couple of months ago, I clicked into the Aurealis Awards website to check out the shortlist for 2019. To my utter amazement, my psychological horror story, The Mark, was amongst the nominations for Best Horror Short Story.

The Mark is my second publication. In June 2018, I toddled along to the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne, where I came across the Monash University Publishing stand. I chatted rather nervously to one of the editors, Amaryllis, who was lovely. The theme for the next issue of Verge clung to me like a sticky film: uncanny. I loved it. Amaryllis encouraged me to make a submission.

My short story process could perhaps be compared to a ripening fruit. An idea drops into my head, but it’s a formless thing at first: smooth and hard and hidden within itself, like a curled-up bud. Then, one day, with the right dose of sunlight or water, it blossoms, ripens, sheds dried petals, and swells to bursting.

It’s at the bursting part that the words flow best.

For The Mark, the time from seed to overripe fruit was short. The seed was the Capgras delusion: a phenomenon I’ve always found fascinating, complex, and haunting. I wanted to delve into, and wrest back control of, the loneliness, grief, and powerlessness of the underrepresented, marginalised, unseen woman.

At the time, I was inspired by works like The Yellow Wallpaper and Alias Grace, both of which challenged notions of womanhood, social roles, unreliability, and madness. I was also deeply moved by women I’d encountered in my life and my work, who’d experienced subjugation in ways large and small, and crafted their own subtle resistances.

Verge accepted my piece, and it appeared in the anthology in June 2019, alongside a host of experimental, brilliant, uncanny works (I highly, highly recommend the collection). For the acceptance, I’m immensely grateful. For Stephen Downes’ editorial hand, reading recommendations, email discussions about the uncanny, and general encouragement, I’m also extremely thankful.

All in all, I feel very lucky to be on the list next to some very established names in Australian SFFH. I look forward to the results of the Aurealis Awards later this year. And as I feel like I’m still very much at the Starting Tavern of my Meandering Adventures in Writing, I look forward to engaging more with the spec-fic community, reading, squee-ing, learning, and waiting for more crazy idea-seeds to explode in my little, nutty head.

Hunger, fury, and lessons learnt from a short story

by Grace, posted in Reflections

Yesterday, I finished editing the Malaysian Chinese gothic ghost story that I’ve been working on, tumultuously, with a fair amount of hair-pulling, for the better part of two months. Writing this piece was a great deal more challenging than I expected at the outset. I thought I’d share about what I struggled with, and consequently what I learnt about the craft of writing and about myself.

The first challenge I had to wrestle with was trying to write it ‘right’. All possible accusations of fraud leapt out at me. How can I claim to be a horror writer, when I’ve only ever written one other horror story (The Mark: and that was not with the explicit purpose to frighten, but to unsettle)? Who am I to write a Chinese ghost story when I’ve hardly lived in Asia and I have to reference-check every Chinese word I use? And how can I dare to label it as gothic when I had to spend an afternoon self-consciously Googling elements of gothic literature?

[It’s dark, it’s uncanny, it’s sensual, it has omens and spirits, it’s set in the 90s and there’s terrible phone reception—so, heck, I’m just gonna roll with it.]

Eventually, I figured out that I just had to write it ‘right by me’, although that in itself is much easier said than done. I had to focus on exactly what I was trying to convey, and shave away any pretence of being something else. My and my mother’s hazy recollections of talismans and spirits and superstitions are enough. The inspirations and influences from various things I’ve read, and places I’ve travelled, are enough. It’s enough that I’m emotionally honest with the reader.

The second challenge I had to overcome? My fear of being too…weird. What did I expect, really? In writing a story about suppressed hunger and fury, I found myself struggling with my own suppressed hunger and fury, wondering if I was coming across as too angry, too twisted, too much.

My story aims to be metaphorical and impressionistic, not explicit and didactic. I’m not trying to impart any particular lesson, but to inject you, the reader, into Fen Fang’s body: so that you can feel her feelings, grapple with her reality, and scramble as it distorts. I enjoyed this exercise immensely—using Fang’s senses, her behaviour, and even the form of her language and thought, to shape the narrative experience. It’s certainly the most metaphorical and twisty thing I’ve written so far.

Plus, yeahhhh, there’s a ghost in it!

I hope that I can share it with you soon.

Aurealis Awards 2019: Shortlisted!

by Grace, posted in Reflections, Updates

Greetings, digital ghosts.

Just a little post to announce that my short story, The Mark, has been shortlisted for Best Horror Short Story in the 2019 Aurealis Awards.

 
Wang Yibo dancing on stage with a seductive twirl.
Mood

I’m feeling incredibly privileged and honoured that my second published work is an Aurealis Awards nominee.

Congratulations to all the other finalists: a stellar line-up!

https://aurealisawards.org/2020/03/25/2019-aurealis-awards-shortlist-announcement/

Stuff #1

by Grace, posted in Reflections

Like a snail, I drag a mountain of stuff with me wherever I go.

I have all sorts of stuff. It fills rooms. It wedges wardrobe doors open. It transforms the backs of cupboards into a black hole of forgotten condiments and expired food. I scour the shops in search of storage solutions: more stuff to solve the problem of stuff.

There’s the Stuff They Told Me I Needed. A pair of black boots and a pair of brown boots, because you can’t just have one pair–what if you want to dress down, for god’s sake?! A shiny computer, because to work on that old model would be an abomination, an absolute abomination. A set of $300 headphones, because that song deserves to be heard in high fidelity. It would be wrong otherwise.

There’s the Stuff That’s Supposed To Make Me Beautiful. Oil cleaners and foam cleansers and toners and serums and face masks and BB creams and CC creams. Lash-extending mascara and false eyelashes and lip stain and cheek stain and nail polish. It’s revolutionary technology, until the next revolution.

There’s the Stuff Other People Gave Me Which I Feel Too Guilty To Move On. Keyrings. Souvenirs from Paris from someone else’s trip ten years ago. A book you still haven’t got around to reading, you terrible person. A camera. A diary, unfilled. Sometimes I take out the items and admire their pretty shapes.

There’s the Stuff That Carries the Past. This is the hardest sort of stuff to discard. These items are heavy, even if they’re just pieces of paper. They pull you to the ground and swallow you in memories.

One day, I will peel off all this stuff, layers of it, and slither away like a snake leaving her old, lifeless skin.

Fathers

by Grace, posted in Reflections

Our fathers left their lands to look for better ones.

They left their lands and their loved ones and the lives they had built up around nice jobs and nice houses and the corner-shop snacks of their childhood. They went overseas, often alone at first. Searching for new homes and small money. Trading in the clunky words of a new language, trying not to look the fool. Modern day scouts for their fledgling families.

The weapons of our fathers were moderation and caution. For their families, it was better to have a safety net than an SUV. They learnt to calculate when not to take risks and when to hold their tongues. Because they could not rise in the ranks of a foreign company through youth or charm or eloquence or appearance, they learnt to put their heads down and swallow racism and work hard and complain little.

They weathered anxiety so that we would not have to. They absorbed worry, turned it over and over silently, wore it down. Buried it deep, heaped it over with other things. Traded their dreams for their children’s.

Our fathers put their cultural memories into a little box that they brought with them to the new land, and sometimes opened. The children laughed, thinking that there was no use for such things in this new, loud, opportunistic place. We dismissed their wariness, not knowing that it allowed us to survive, and ventured bravely forth into the world, believing it is ours.