jan 2024
hello 2024!
Happy New Year everyone!
This is going to be a pretty short newsletter. 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, which theoretically equals good fortune and prosperity. We sure need some of that good fortune in the world this year, so here’s hoping.
Some good: Twitter’s takeover and the way the new boss has treated basic bugs affecting performance and loading times on the app, along all the other stuff has permanently cured my Twitter addiction lol. Bluesky seems to be the place a lot of writers are moving, but it still feels pretty quiet.
Reading Updates
Suggestible You by Eric Vance: A look at the placebo effect that makes me wonder how susceptible I personally am to placebos. He talks about how susceptibility to placebo is partially genetic and why the placebo effect is so powerful even if you already know it exists. Vance grew up in Christian Science, and even though he later left, he had always wondered why the faith healing they do over there actually seemed to have an effect on some ailments. Fascinating stuff.
Going Infinite by Michael Lewis: This book is better as a profile of Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF) than it is a factual account of everything that happened to FTX, but I have to admit, it's a real page-turner. Michael Lewis’s recent appearance on the podcast Freakonomics Radio talking about how he was surprised how the book was received—some reviewers criticized him for going too easy on SBF—is also worth a listen.
Songs on Endless Repeat by Anthony Veasna So: This is a collection of Anthony Veasna So's essays and the first part of his novel, published postnumously. It's impossible to talk about his work without talking about his untimely death. Afterparties was one of my favorite things I read in 2021. I've probably mentioned it on this newsletter before, but “Superking Son Scores Again” still has to be one of my favorite short stories—knowing a Superking Son or two is one of those universal parts of the Asian American experience. Even though we'll only ever see a small portion of the novel he was working on when he passed away, there is so much life in it already. The final essay in Songs on Endless Repeat, “Baby Yeah,” written in honor of a close friend of his who passed away, ends on a deeply haunting note.
Pub Updates
I have a bunch of stuff being published the next few months (I don't control the timing or else I'd spread it out more), and my first pub of the year is “The Moon Swans” in the 50th anniversary issue of The Journal! This story is loosely based on the fairytale of the Wild Swans/The Swan Brothers. Really honored to be in here alongside other very cool work.
What’s happening to this newsletter in 2024
I have toyed with the idea about writing about craft-related or publication-related thoughts on here in the past but have wimped out, but I do plan on doing a few posts actually about writing this year haha, starting with a guide on determining whether a piece with magic/supernatural happenings/sci-fi you’ve written is genre fiction or literary fiction with an emphasis on flash fiction, which is important when it comes to submitting stuff since they live in pretty much two distinct ecosystems. See you soon!