feb 2025 - hanging in there
Hi friends,
Happy Year of the Snake! I know it’s been a while, but I have not forgotten this newsletter exists! I have been busy with life. I had a lot going on the second half of 2024, so this newsletter will mainly be an update as to what I’ve been reading since last time.
Books I’ve been reading:
- Stag Dance by Torrey Peters: Detransition, Baby was incredible and blew my mind. No surprised that I loved Stag Dance. There's a strong horror vibe running throughout a lot of the stories that isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but Torrey Peters is someone who I'm watching for sure. I wish I could talk to her and grill her about her work for a few hours, I'm sure I'd learn a lot.
- I Leave it Up to You by Jinwoo Chong: I loved his first novel Flux which solidly lived in sci-fi territory, so I was surprised to see Jinwoo Chong go into completely realistic romcom territory. I Leave it Up to You made me cry (yes, a book where a character becomes a TikTok-famous 'Fish Daddy' sushi chef made me cry). I have already recommended it to multiple friends, and it hasn't even come out yet. If you're Asian American in/around NYC, this book will hit especially hard. For everyone else, it's a great book about family and recovery and food.
- Confessions of a Fox by Jordy Ronsenberg: An academia-based metafictional novel that's also historical fiction. Joyful and fun, would recommend.
Writing-related stuff:
I’ve got a few flash pieces that have been published since last time.
Why I Quit Teaching at the Villain Academy - Flash Fiction Online
- My brother said the concept of this one was like The Boys, which I have not personally watched but I’ll take his word for.
Everything that Could Go Wrong - Cotton Xenomorph
What Kind of Monster Are You? - Baffling Magazine
I started writing a series of linked flash fictions/microfictions about an unnamed pop star last summer. It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with fairytales, and I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from fairytales for these. I think celebrities are the equivalent of mythological or legendary heroes from way back when, and I find celebrity culture quite fascinating. I say this while struggling my way through revising a novel about a family where three of its members are famous for different things.
Two of my pop star stories that have been published:
The Pop Star Dies - monkeybicycle
The Pop Star’s Post-Breakup (?) Viral Music Video - Maudlin House
There are also two coming in late February: “The Old Crooner Makes the Pop Star and Offer” and “In a Meadow of Pop Stars” in hex literary.
Since my last newsletter, I signed the contract for a pretty chunky short (5.5k words), “How to Build A Homecoming Queen: A Guide by Bad Asian Girl,” which will be in Lightspeed sometime in 2025-early 2026. This story came to me in a dream, it was one of those lightning in a bottle moments. Lightspeed is always a special market for me because when I was in high school, I talked about a Ken Liu story from Lightspeed in one of my college application essays (it was not a good essay lol), and it’s awesome to be back with a story about a meme-dancing robot and teenage girls learning how to build a magical body double from wikiHow and Angelfire. I originally wrote this way back in 2022, so to my fellow writers reading this, sometimes pieces you’re proud of are going to take time to be picked up!
It looks like I’m doing a lot more short story writing than I actually am at the moment. I wrote quite a bit of flash in 2023, a lot more than I expected I would, and I’m kind of flashed out at the moment. 2025 is officially my year of taking things slow. Sometimes you gotta step back for a bit to see the forest for the trees. So that's I'll be doing.
Thanks so much for reading! There are a few craft related things I'd like to talk about on this newsletter in the coming year, so see you again (hopefully) soon!
Tina