It’s now 2018, and I’m 16k words into The Xiaran Mongrel, the finale of my Annals of the Bitch Queen trilogy. This is going to be divided into two acts, each at around 90-100k each, so…quite a doorstopper. Anyone who has finished The Agartes Epilogues know I take finales very seriously. Not only do plotlines have to come …
Earlier this week, my husband asked me what our plans were for 2018. It was a serious question, not a casual one. It had been a tough few years, with life looking like we’d been walking on a tight wire fifty feet off the ground. I can’t even pinpoint the exact moment when it all …
Early this year, I wrote a short story which was a better way for me to express what I’ve felt over the last year–the last eighteen months, really–than screaming at people. I published the rest of my The Agartes Epilogues trilogy in spring, a move which has caused a lot of confusion (as if the series …
Like most writers, I suffer from self-doubt and low self-esteem more often than not. This shit can be crippling. Writers cope in many different ways. I think I’m a sucker for pain, because (apart from drinking) my method involves looking my critic in the eye and then saying, “Hey, you know what, let’s be friends.” …
Whenever I talk about my worldbuilding, I mention that it uses a lot of “Asian settings,” as opposed to the usual European-centric fantasy that is all-too common in the genre. But it’s not just specifically Asian fantasy; there’s a lot of cultures at play, all of which provide the appropriate background for whatever character-centric drama …
