Science Fiction & Fantasy Author
It just occurred to me … today … that I could reprint an old published story (my first ever sale!) on my own website. And so I did!
And Now, A Message From A Future Sponsor Of This Fine Publication by Kara Lee. 275 words; best read in Cave Johnson’s advertising voice. (He should probably have bought a policy.)
Wow it’s been a while since my last post. Let’s catch up.
Dance: still doing ballet, although I’m taking a few months off classes so I can condition. Working a lot on turnout, so literally every day I just do slow plies in second – 20 in the morning, 20 in the evening. Interspersed with single leg raises to strengthen ankles and practice balance. It sucks, and progress is glacial, but it exists. I’m also learning to DIY some massage to relieve tight muscles and unlock more turnout.
Writing: miraculously, there’s been some. Finished yet another revision to draft 1, almost done with draft 2, and made inroads on draft 3 (which was commissioned). Restarted outlining of the novel that won’t die, and further than before. Just need to decide how the Final Confrontation shakes down.
Bean: Getting bigger, funnier, and more stubborn by the day. Now potty-trained!
Other: I took a wonderful* vacation last month! London, Amsterdam, and a handful of cities in Germany. I was feeling very burned out and also stuck on my personal writing. One day in a London hotel shook something loose and I came back with 8k more words than I’d left with. (They’re fic, but that’s fine.) I walked everywhere, drank delicious beer, did not eat nearly enough Nordsee, and somehow muddled through Germany without a single person trying to talk to me in English. There were a few points in Saarland, most notably in a Vapiano**, where I later realized I should have used my French, which while not fluent is WAY better than my German. Oh well!
* The one fly in the ointment was getting TOTALLY screwed by not realizing that Eurostar is basically a small airport, not your usual train station. Long story short, I missed my train to Amsterdam, which was the last train out that night, and I was stuck in London. Fortunately, a friend is in London and after she was finished laughing at me, she let me buy her dinner and crash on her couch. I did waste one night at a very nice hotel in Amsterdam, but hey, more time with your friends is priceless.
** I had a HORRIBLE time ordering my food and was wondering if my German*** had truly been that bad. Then the girl after me ordered in rapid fire French and my server/cook responded similarly. So I won’t blame it on myself that time. But man. I could have saved us both so much stress with a je voudrais instead of ich möchte!
*** “Kara why are you learning German” I’m not. Husband speaks German to Bean, and I’m picking it up from sheer osmosis. My vocabulary is mostly suited to working at a daycare, but Bean is quite into demanding food, so I know how to order a meal … more politely than she does.
“Hungry Demigods” by Andrea Tang, published in Gignotosaurus.
Plot: Isabel Chang is a kitchen witch who runs a Pâtisserie in Montreal. One day, she is asked to help Elias, a young man with an immortality curse of Chinese origin, break his curse.
“Hungry Demigods” is a delightful story about family and food. (Against every stereotype, I don’t seek to read about these topics. Ever. A good friend linked me the story. Thanks, Tari!) But what was more, I deeply resonated with the Chinese magic elements and how they were used in this story–I don’t want to spoil them for you, because coming upon those elements so unexpectedly left me shrieking a little with joy! I feel it is the lit equivalent of amazing fusion cuisine (if you will), using and updating some of my very favorite concepts from Chinese folklore/mythology.
This story … I felt a bit like Elias biting into one of Isabel’s buns: “I’d forgotten how food could taste, after you haven’t eaten in ages. It’s like color returning to the world.”
Don’t get me wrong–I fully understand that not everything is for everyone. But when I do manage to stumble upon a story for me … there’s nothing like it.
You may notice I haven’t recced a whole lot of Chinese/East Asian diaspora stories. That’s because when I click on a story and realize that it’s about my ethnicity/culture, sometimes I will back-button. Even if the author’s name suggests they are writing from their lived experience as a part of said ethnicity/culture. Sometimes I run away ever faster—because 1) at least if someone is writing from a place of ignorance, it’s easier to shrug off if I don’t like it. 2) I feel like a traitor if I end up disliking something by a fellow Chinese/East Asian diaspora writer … and I have felt like a traitor many times. I know that’s irrational, but you try reasoning with feelings. Then one day I realized that my fear came from “the danger of a single story” (TED talk by Novelist Chimamanda Adichie). I had personally been burned by the prevalence of certain pieces of Chinese-American literature in the popular consciousness that I felt did not speak to my experience, but that due to the single-story effect, became what others thought of me*. Of course that was and is not the fault of the author or the literature, it’s the fault of the publishing environment. But it still hurt. I’m not going to apologize for protecting myself. But I do find that lately, I am able to explore more. To see what my fellow people are doing. Even to dip my own toe into telling my stories, which I had not really felt like doing in the past. That’s a story for another post. In any case, I’ve been grateful for the slow yet steady increase in Chinese/East Asian diaspora writers being published, along with stories about their cultures (not that they have to be, obviously, I’d be a hypocrite if I said so).
As usual, a review says more about the reader than the story! Which you should read. “Hungry Demigods” by Andrea Tang!
* Chinese stories from China, translated into English, do not meet my mental barriers in this regard. The original intended audience is different, so it doesn’t trip my wires.
The first Friday Favorite of 2018 is Saga (Book One), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. A shoutout to E for gifting me volume one for Christmas. I mainlined it in one day and it made me squee and laugh and cry. The worldbuilding is incredibly vast, the characters are all so real even if they only appear for a panel, and I’m just in such awe of the authors’ imagination.
And of course, it’s all about parenthood.
I had always thought that becoming a parent wouldn’t change my tastes in reading or writing. For instance, an unflattering confession: I loathed kidfic before I gave birth. Well, I was wrong … I loathe it even more now. Before it was merely insipid. Now it’s insipid and inaccurate. And don’t get me started on pregnancy fic. (And both these experiences are life-endingly fraught enough that I can’t just let it go when things are inaccurate, the way I can let LOLTASTAIC SCIENCE go.)
But Saga is the real deal done so right that I was thrown back to week three, living on three cans of coca-cola and three hours of sleep a day while quietly wishing for death. Those days were frankly dark but I’m remembering this in the best way, I swear. And let me just say that I, too, would have accepted a disemboweled ghost as a night nurse during week four AKA The First Fucking Growth Spurt.
And that’s how it is for the mom, too, when she is running through a very large and exciting universe with her family by her side!
Before having a kid, I would probably have rolled my eyes a little.
Now … now, reading this, I want to try to make the world a better place for my child. My world has no wings or horns or intergalactic travel, but we fight the same battles. I can do this. Hey, I’m no longer breastfeeding, what excuses have I got?
P.S. I just bought Book Two!
2017 was incredibly hectic. You may have noodled that one for yourself from my dramatic decline in posting frequency.
Anyway, three goals for 2018:
Here’s to a happy, healthy, and heaven willing productive 2018!