Over the last year I’ve been working with Dark Winter Press and Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop on two different books. Finally they are going to be ready for publication next month!
Dark Winter Press will be publishing a book I wrote for a speculative fiction novel contest (it lost) about yokai demon hunting in San Francisco (Gum San) in 1869 after the completion of the railroad. I did a lot of research about the living conditions of Chinese people in Gum San’s Chinatown and was a bit shocked to discover that the ratio of men to women was 20 to 1. Chinese people were thought of as temporary laborers and everything possible was done to decrease the quality of life, from not letting women into the country easily to banning Asian fishing nets to extra taxes. Since the book title has to do with weddings, I’ve dug out my Chinese wedding dress and accessories and will do a photo series with them on social media in the near future. Pre-order page for digital eBook: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0DY84DF4K
For Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, Dark Helix Press is publishing the fourth Ricepaper Magazine anthology which is full of fiction and poetry by the Asian diaspora. We’ll be doing some events in in Toronto and Vancouver to celebrate its release and I was one of the many editors for this book. Pre-order page for digital eBook: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0DY5CVFL6/
Once the print book pages are ready, I’ll make another post to share information on book preview information and where to buy!
I am awful about posting new podcast episodes, I’ll try to make updates more often!
On episode 69 of the Artsy Raven podcast, we spoke to Daphne Gray-Grant, a book coach. She advised me that I should just write non-stop and edit later because this will make writing faster. I’ve been trying to do this, but haven’t managed to grasp this skill yet!
On the podcast, Daphne speaks about common writer problems, how to write faster and why changing font size is a good idea!
On Netflix I have a tendency to watch dark stories, but when an ad popped up for Love Game in Eastern Fantasy I just assumed it would be more of the same. I was pleasantly surprised, there is demon hunting in the show, but it’s a wacky comedy with some romance in it. The show’s intriguing plotline moves along and has many funny moments, making it one of the lighter things I’ve watched in 2024.
The main storyline is about Ling Miaomiao, a girl who is an obsessive reader of wuxia demon hunting novels and after she posts a bad review of the latest book from her favorite author, she is sucked into a videogame world based on the novel. To her horror, she discovers she isn’t the main character, but a secondary character who is a villain in the book with a terrible fate. The “system” gives her quests, similar to an RPG game and she must fulfill them or risk losing a chance to return to her real life. One quest is to make another secondary character fall in love with her which takes up a lot of episodes because the male lead/secondary character hates her guts. Prior to entering the game, Miaomiao is a bit of an otaku, so it’s funny to watch her try to charm a man and fail spectacularly most of the time!
The world building assumes the audience is familiar with wuxia (ancient Chinese martial arts genre), cultivation and demon hunting. Since Miaomiao is a “modern” person in a game based in ancient China, she asks a lot of questions which helps the viewers understand what is happening. The female lead in the show is played by Esther Yu (Yu Shuxin, 虞书欣), a former girl group member (The9) and she is fantastic with her comedic timing along with dramatic scenes. One great scene has her failing a mission and she is killed over and over again until she figures out the solution. It is really funny because she is the only person who remembers dying while the other characters just “reset” in the videogame.
The male lead is Ryan Ding (Ding Yuxi, 丁禹兮) and he is super impressive with his range in acting from nasty smothering stares directed at Miaomiao to becoming an innocent puppy in front of his older sister in a matter of seconds. He does most of the heavy lifting for fight scenes and he is swift and graceful. The Chinese gossip columns said the male lead was supposed to be Arthur Chen Feiyu ( 陈飞宇) but there was a scandal involving him and the President of his fan club so he was dropped from the role. Asian idols aim to have pristine reputations so they can gain sponsorship opportunities. Some companies and fans also demand celibacy of their idols. Despite the glory and glamour, the entertainment industry is a tough business.
Admittedly the name of the show made me scratch my head. It’s based on a book called The Guide to Capturing a Black Lotus by Bai Yu Zhai Diao Gong so who the heck came up with the title of Love Game in Eastern Fantasy? The original title is better in my opinion because mentioning a “love game” tends to turn off a lot of people who don’t usually watch romance, like myself. Themes involve friendship, not giving up (or you remain in the game forever), recognizing the greyness in people and demons along with the fact that falling in love can be a struggle!
Overall, I have been recommending this drama to friends and waiting for the official Netflix episode releases so I have something to look forward to every week. Each episode is about 37 minutes and Netflix drops happen every few days. The show has very high production quality with lots of scenic settings in forest, mountains and ancient Chinese towns along with beautiful FX during fight scenes. My only criticism is that despite the fact the characters are wanderers carrying tiny satchels, they have an impressive wardrobe of flowing robes and ribbons. I am glad that there are female characters in the show that can fight since Miaomiao, as a modern person is fairly useless at that. The show is a smart fantasy comedy mixed with impressive special effects when the characters are demon hunting. (Show rating 9.0/10)
Link to English/Chinese lyrics to MV for 凝眸 (Stare Intently), one of the main songs in Love Game in Eastern Fantasy is below:
A long time ago when we were all in lockdown, an Australian publisher asked authors to send in science fiction stories to distribute in a free eBook to readers. Two of my stories made it into this book: Mind Patch, a story about an elderly woman needing the brain of her children to heal her brain and Designing Fate, about genetically modified children.
This year I have a few panels and a reading session at Can Con, a literary convention in Ottawa that is being held Nov 1-3, 2024. I suspect most of my time will be spent in the dealers room where I will be selling “writer” enamel pins as a fundraiser to pay writers and editors for the next Dark Helix Press anthology.
Looking forward to having some interesting discussions with other writers and editors on these upcoming panels. I always learn something new when meeting people at conventions and it’s great to hear about everyone’s writing/publishing journeys!
Can Con JF Garrard Schedule:
Creature Comforts: Making the Monster Your Friend Friday November 1, 2024 8:00pm – 8:50pm EDT – Salon F
Maintaining a Sustainable Creative Business Saturday November 2, 2024 2:30pm – 3:20pm EDT – Salon E
If you are in Ottawa area please come by the dealers room and say hi!
Below is our fundraising poster which we will put on top of a fake lego typewriter display to attract potential buyers.
Admittedly my husband did not welcome the influx of fantasy jewelry (dragon necklaces, sword bracelets, celestial brooches, etc) which I will sell at Christmas markets in November and pins at Can Con this year. He offered to just pay for the next book, but I told him I am capable of raising funds myself! If I don’t sell all the stock of “writer” pins at Can Con I will look into selling them online or at other conventions. Wish me luck!
At Buffalo NASFiC today, I was slotted in last minute to teach drawing. “Gotta Sketch ‘Em All” is a 30 min hands on class with kids (adults welcomed too) to draw kawaii Pokémon! See you at 4pm today!
One of my friends asked me to participate in programming in the 16th NASFiC (North American Science Fiction Convention) coming up July 18-21, 2024 in Buffalo, New York at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. I’m looking forward to speaking about writing, publishing, doing an author reading and discussing the movie Galaxy Quest. If you are in Buffalo, please drop by to say hi! Website: https://buffalonasfic2024.org/
Hi all, haven’t posted in a while, have been busy with life and travelling. Recently I went to Hong Kong to visit a 95-year-old relative and Seoul (because my cousin told me she wanted to go since we watch so many K-dramas). Will write a post in the future about the adventures we had while abroad. Toronto is such a quiet city compared to Hong Kong and Seoul. There’s barely any traffic or people here compared to there!
I haven’t been on social media very much since the beginning of the year and it’s been ok. The world didn’t end and I had time to do other things like travel and catch up on reading.
Recently, I discovered the email service I was using wasn’t sending out emails to everyone on my list which was about 1,600 emails. It was only emailing out 400 people. So I switched to a different service and found that after sending out a newsletter, 100 people unsubscribed. Fantastic! I say this because email services charge per number of emails on your list. Only people who want to get the newsletter should get it and I can avoid paying for extra emails. One person didn’t know how to unsubscribed and asked for manual deletion which was fine, learned how to do that today too!
Right now I’ve editing my 57th episode of the Artsy Raven podcast. The 56th episode will come out tomorrow, hope you get a chance to listen, it’s such a pleasure to listen to people read their words. The sun, is out, hope you all have a chance to go outside to bast in the sun a bit!
The summer went by so fast! Now I’m suddenly scrambling to pull myself together for Can Con 2023, a writing and publishing convention held in Ottawa. Things were going well, I actually did a jog in the park yesterday, but then in the afternoon I lost my favorite pair of headphones in the supermarket and my day went haywire from then on (I found myself crawling on the supermarket floor in search of them in case they got kicked under the shelves, but they stayed lost).
Sometimes I feel like whenever I feel happy, that is when things go really wrong. Anyhow, I’m hoping things will go well at the conference now that my bad streak has happened…below is my schedule if you happen to be going to the conference, feel free to come chat with me!
The schedule looks action packed with lots of writing sessions, book launches and interesting topics about the future of publishing. It’s one of the few conferences left in Canada that features genre writing and it should be hopping!
Musings of a Generic Asian 
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