A Probability of Being

I have a new short story out in the Fireside Fiction Quarterly ! They have an amazing selection of short fiction available online, but my story, "By the Storytelling Fire" is only available in the print quarterly, which you can get by subscribing to them for just $10 a month! You can also get it by buying it as a $5 back issue ; I'm in Issue 63. It's a beautiful print issue, with illustrations by fantastic artists and so many excellent writers like Brandon O'Brien and Sheree Renee Thomas! I'm very excited to be part of the Fireside oeuvre ^^ "By the Storytelling Fire" is about two people telling each other fairytales that may or may not be about themselves. One is a remix of Sleeping Beauty, examining consent that is not given in the original tale; the other is a tale of an illegitimate prince who rejects toxic masculinity.  I wrote this for my final week of Clarion 2016, and I'm so glad it's out in the world! I hope you like ...

It's a new year, and I've got new fiction coming up! I'll be in New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color , edited by the inimitable Nisi Shawl! It'll be published by Solaris Books in March!  I encounter LeVar Burton once more as he's written the introduction of this book, and I'm sharing pages with some of the most exciting writers right now, such as  Rebecca Roanhorse , and Darcie Little Badger  and SFF stalwarts such as Tobias Buckell and Andrea Hairston! Here's the table of contents: Foreword, LeVar Burton The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex, Tobias Buckell Deer Dancer, Kathleen Alcalá The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations, Minsoo Kang Come Home to Atropos, Steven Barnes The Fine Print, Chinelo Onwualu unkind of mercy, Alex Jennings Burn the Ships, Alberto Yáñez The Freedom of the Shifting Sea, Jaymee Goh Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire, E. Lily Yu Blood and Bells, Karin Lowachee Give Me Your Black ...

My latest short story, "A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine," is now out in GLASS AND GARDEN: SOLARPUNK SUMMERS from World Weaver Press ! If solar-powered airships, crocodile farms, and happily-meddling family members sound like your jam, buy the book and support the anthology!  I'm also participating in a series of blog posts at the World Weaver Press blog ! So watch that space for me!

The Table of Contents for my next upcoming story is now up ! Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers edited by Sarena Ulibarri will be out from World Weaver Press this summer!  My story "A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine" is about a student returning home from her cheap American education after a breakup stemming from irreconcilable differences. It has solar-powered airships, traditional Malay architecture, and a crocodile farm! Lots of girlfriend talk, a relatively healthy mother-daughter relationship (HA! not a Disappointing Child story this time!!), and budding romance are all in this story set in a far future where rich people done fucked up and are reaping the seeds they have sown. 

Mythic Delirium 4.3 is now live! I'm honoured to be the featured story for January 2018, kicking off this Gregorian year on a good note, even if the story itself is quite dark.  " When the Bough Breaks " combines different things I learned in childhood--rhymes and stories of forest spirits--with the memory of the Highland Towers collapse in 1993. Parts of the plot were also directly inspired by dreams I had during a brief period when I kept sleeping wonky, waking myself up with pins and needles in my back.  I'm not used to writing horror, and it is indeed one of my least read genres: when it comes to good horror, I scare easily. Growing up in Malaysia we have a lot of ghost stories and a laundry list of ways to not piss off forest spirits, and our spirits tend to be less jump-scare and more ambient creepiness, so I thought I would try my hand at it.  I hope you like it!

Mythic Delirium has just announced their mock cover for their 4.3 issue! The art is by Ruth Sanderson , based on Beth Cato 's poem "The Body Made"!  My short story "When the Bough Breaks" will be available in the January 2018 segment of the web issue. It is based on the Highland Towers collapse of 1993, in my home state of Selangor, Malaysia. This was the first major catastrophe I can remember being widely-televised--Berita Terkini, which usually ran for about 5 minutes every couple of hours, kept popping up on seemingly every single commercial break at this time as more survivors and dead were found.  In this short story, I tried to evoke the feeling of creepiness that some luxury condos in natural areas have, partly as a result of not being wholly lived in quite yet, partly because wooded areas have landed spirits who are often not happy that humans are moving in! The characters run a gamut of different races and ages. One of the opening scenes is...

by Alan Bao It's the day of the Hungry Ghost Festival! I went to the Thien Hau Temple on Sunday with my friend S. Qiouyi Lu and Nilah Magruder . There were monks chanting for most of the holiday weekend. It was also very hot, because there was a heat wave in Southern California (and about 7000 acres were burning near LA).  Coincidentally, it's also the first Tuesday of the month, which means my Lightspeed Magazine story " The Last Cheng Beng Gift " is now up for free reading!! I also talk about writing the story in the Author Spotlight . 

The September issue of Lightspeed Magazine is now available for purchase ! I'm really excited about it for several reasons. First, the incredible cover by Alan Bao: It's a smaller version of the illustration he did for my short story, "The Last Cheng Beng Gift"!! It's my first ever story to become the cover story for a magazine, and hopefully it won't be the last!  Secondly, I share an incredible table of contents... I'm in this issue with stories written by Genevieve Valentine and Tobias S. Buckell (who writes incredibly fun Caribbean space opera!!) and the non-fiction is by some of my favourite fiction writers, Amal El-Mohtar, Theodora Goss, and Joseph Allen Hill!! Not only that (sub-second-point??), while my story goes live in the first week of September, my Clarion classmate Giovanni de Feo's story, "Ugo" goes live in the last week of September! That's like, a werejelly sandwich!!! Gio read his draft of "Ugo...

Today marks the first day of Hungry Ghost Month. On the 15th day of the 7th lunar month, which is September 5 this year, Chinese people, at least in Malaysia and Singapore, will celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival.  The Hungry Ghost Month is when the gates to the Underworld open, giving the ghosts reprieve for a time to wander the earth, and visit the living. Because ghosts don't eat in the Underworld, they are, as one might expect, hungry, so now is a really good time to feed the supernatural myriad. We will leave food out with our prayers overnight, inviting the ghosts to eat. It's good karma to feed the hungry, whether alive or dead. It's also a very exciting time! There will be a lot of live shows, and the first row of chairs will be empty to make way for the ghosts so they can watch. Back In The Day the shows used to be traditional Chinese opera; nowadays they can be more contemporary entertainments, like live performances or stripper shows (because, you kno...

Anathema Magazine #2 is now up, which means my latest short story, "Eruption" is now up and available for reading online!  I wrote "Eruption" in Week 3 of Clarion, under Andy Duncan. For some reason all the stories that day were somewhat of a similar theme: mine is essentially a misandrist utopia (I call it my #killallmen story); another classmate wrote a misandrist dystopia (in which boys are locked in a giant enclosure for a certain time); and a third wrote a somewhat misogynist attempt to establish a utopia free of women (but in ways that also harmed young men). It was a day .  This story combines two ideas I had floating about: the story of a woman slowly succumbing to mental degradation, which surfaces a lot of terrible memories about the founding of her city, and a story of an underground slave people rising up to destroy their oppressors. It is inspired partly by this 1906 illustration by William Balfour Ker  and a dream I had: with added ...

As I publish more, it's been fun to look back on my old fiction to see what I used to do that I don't anymore, what concerned me then and how that has changed. So I thought I'd post some old old and possibly terribly embarrassing fiction over time. Today's story is "The Changeling," inspired by Asimovian robots and the question of humanity and sentience in artificial intelligence. Further ruminations on the story afterwards.

Interfictions Online , a journal of interstitial arts, has released their latest issue! This issue includes an interview with Tade Thompson by Sofia Samatar, poetry by Neile Graham and Jeanne Hall Gailey , as well as a new short story by Nino Cipri !  I'm so pleased that my story, " Mana Langkah Pelangi Terakhir? (Where is the Rainbow's Last Step?) " is in such great company! "Langkah Pelangi" is inspired by a dream I had in which I found a friend in a jail far away from home, and the last I saw of her was in a sampan punting off to sea. I get home to discover that she has died, and been mythologized. And I thought, wouldn't that be kinda crazypants to live in a work where the collective imagination could have so much power, that a dead person could become a myth that never dies ? What if that was literal? I had a lot of trouble with this story. It bounced off a couple of places, and each time I revised it, and then revised it some more upo...

I don't usually announce when I've signed a contract, and tend to announce future publication news only when I have a Table of Contents to share, but it's coming into the last quarter of 2016, and I'm putting together my CV and had to count up my forthcoming publications. The other day I thought I had three. But no, upon further reflection, I actually have four.  "Mana Langkah Pelangi Terakhir," translated one way into "Where Is The Rainbow's Last Step," will be out in the Fall issue of Interfictions Online . It is about what might happen in our world where, if enough people dream the same thing and relate the same stories enough times with enough conviction, even if it isn't true or possible, it will come true. Our heroine is a journalist trying to make sense of this in light of a colleague's re-appearance. I tend to forget about this one because it's already fall so I kind of think it's already out, except it's not, just...

My short story "Crocodile Tears" is now live at the Lightspeed Magazine website !!! In addition, I got a little author spotlight as well ! Thanks to my editor Wendy Wagner, and to EIC John Joseph Adams for publishing this!!

I'm pleased to announce that I'm in the September 2016 issue of Lightspeed Magazine ! I sold the story last year but generally refrain from announcing anything official until I see a table of contents. And wow! I'm sharing a TOC with An Owomoyela and Nisi Shawl! Also Maria Dhavana Headley, who I had the chance to participate in a class Skype session with while I was at Clarion!  My story, "Crocodile Tears," will be familiar to attendees of the reading I did with Nisi Shawl and Sam J. Miller this past ICFA. It's a combination of two of my favourite Malay folktales, the story of Si Tenggang, and the story of the old woman and the crocodiles. This will be the second story this year with crocodiles who are not mean and nasty (the first being " Anak Sungai " at Truancy). I hope you enjoy "Crocodile Tears"!

And I'm in it! Lim Jia was raised by the local monks, and has the ability to see the spirits of the departed. Jia joins the Chinese Commission to Cuba as a clerk to search for a long-lost brother, and finds many others long lost in the process.

I am very, very, very happy to announce that I made a sale to Strange Horizons, one of my favourite zines on the 'net! It is my very first professional short story sale, and I was a little nervous about whether or not it could ever find a home, since it's in second person.  It went up today! Please check it out: Liminal Grid