Liner Notes #12: Birthday Edition
Welcome to Liner Notes #12, the birthday edition!
I had meant, I swear, to write a different mailing letter altogether about aural images and their importance, but that got lost in the shuffle. There's been a lot going on here, but I think the biggest change in terms of the mailing letter is that I've moved to Buttondown after TinyLetter got axed by MailChimp. This was such a disappointment because TinyLetter was one of the last few places that did one thing and one thing well on the internet, and that was to deliver an email to a lot of inboxes with no other frills attached.
I'm the kind of person who, outside of kitchen gadgets, likes to own single-use items. My phone? I'm cranky. I want it to make phone calls. I don't want it to do other things for me other than making phone calls. I don't want to watch TV on it or movies or do whatever other things phones do nowadays, but I've come around to things like streaming music, although, clearly, I still purchase physical copies of music. So when it comes to mailing letters, I wanted a service that did one thing for free.99.
Those days are over. Buttondown is a paid service. I have to justify the cost, which means more mailing letters, probably. Apologies in advance.
Today is not my birthday. Today marks a year since Bitter Medicine was officially released. A year is not a long time, and yet it is--when I look back on this date last year, it feels like another lifetime ago. So many things have happened since debut day. Most of those events have had to do with my family, and when I say my priorities shifted in 2023, I really do mean it. I've normalized it now, but I had to do a pretty hard turn to support family members in 2023, which was both good and bad. Good in the sense that I didn't have the bandwidth to get into debut year drama; my attention was wholly given to my personal life and I just did not have it in me to care about work when I was not at work.
And bad in the sense that I've since distanced myself from the book and have to try hard to care about it and be proud of my accomplishments. For those who know me, this comes as no surprise. It's a very me thing to do. I am trying to be better at not doing that. At any rate, happy birthday to Bitter Medicine, my firstborn, who in the last week picked up nice reviews at the Boston Public Library and at Librin Latone, a book blogger's site! Because it's Bitter Medicine's birthday, I'll link the reviews.
Queer Lit Review: March 2024 | Boston Public Library
Hello and welcome to the March 2024 edition of the Queer Lit Review Blog! This month we have an autistic high school senior dealing…
Review: Bitter Medicine – Dream by Day
Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai was a fun read. I must be on an “urban fantasy” kick because it’s a theme. This book was very much focused on the romance, but the other plots through …
In the year that Bitter Medicine has been out, I've done my best to get as much work done as possible, even with my schedule being as nutty as it is. My mother always told me I could sleep when I was dead, and I took that personally. The week before debut, I dropped a full NaNoWriMo, a whole 50k words, on my middle grade horse girl concept. That was on top of guest editing for the Strange Horizons wuxia and xianxia special issue, which has done so well for itself, though I admit I want it to do even better. One of the poems has been nominated for a Rhysling, and one of our stories has been translated into Chinese, which is, frankly, amazing to me that diaspora work can now be read in the sourceland.
I did a revise and resubmit for Key & Vale; I dropped 60k+ in November for the Fated Lovers, which is set in the same world as the middle grade horse girl story, albeit in a different time period (1920s horse racing à la The Black Stallion, but make it Hidalgo). I've gone and hyperfixated on a personal project and decided, what the hell, let's go for it. Fuck it, we ball. Arise, arise, ballers of Théoden! Ball now! Ball for ruin and the world's ending! Get brain worms and pour 230k of story out in three months! Forth Eorlingas!
So that happened. I also pitched a new project to my agent, called Rainbow Road Trip, and got the green light for it, and also did a Get Money Speed Run, which endeared me to all my production editors. PEs love contractors who say yes before the email has even been sent. I have not been idle, though on the outside, I probably look like I've been, considering how little I'm engaging on socials these days.
There is a point to this mailing letter, I promise: and that's the Bitter Medicine omake I wrote last year, then stuck on Tumblr, intended to put in the mailing letter, and plum forgot. I'll attach it to the end.
Music-wise, I haven't been listening to a whole lot because it's just been busy. Well, that's a lie; I've been listening to the same damn CD over and over (WANDS Singles Collection +6 because I've been stuck in 90s nostalgia) even though I don't super care for half the tracks on the record. It was more about being bathed in Uesugi Show's warm voice and melting over his gorgeous tone and vibrato, which is such a perfect vibrato for me when he isn't taking direction from a producer and changing it to have more of an enka style. Uh, that's a rant for a different newsletter.
If I listened to my records any more, I'd have worn grooves in them. Things have been stressful, so it's been almost all downtempo music for me: Khruangbin, Hermanos Gutierrez (who I'm seeing in two days! If 90% of the audience isn't vaping THC, I'm gonna be upset!), Arooj Aftab, Woody Goss. I've really wanted to go and find new artists, but the brain won't let me do that right now, especially since I'm gearing up for Real Practice. Real Practice, meaning my butt is gonna be on the bench for several hours a day as I work through technical exercises, sightread as much rep as I can, and then work on the rep I picked out months ago.
I figure, maybe I should drop some Fated Lovers tracks for you all? The setting is in a desert, and there's a lot of divining and astrology and wind spirit horses and the coolest space-time-gravity powers, so I wanted music that evoked the desert at night, gusting winds, the sense that you've met this person before, and desperate, doomed love. A lot of percussion, a lot of mallet instruments, and Medieval music.
Fiona Apple, "Hot Knife" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG1VVFfOnYQ
Steve Reich, Mallet Quartet: I. Fast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IwhsE8oDy8
Native Construct, "Your Familiar Face" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHoAQRpTFw0 (shoutout to Just Prog Rock Thoughts from last year, when I was listening to a lot of Native Construct)
Angus MacRae, "Two on the Breakwater" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THbGOeYGxAE
Mitski, "Geyser" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdFZJf-B90&pp=ygUNbWl0c2tpIGdleXNlcg%3D%3D
Hildegard von Bingen, "Spiritus Sanctus Vivificans" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6WLdFV4mQA&pp=ygUbc3Bpcml0dXMgc2FuY3R1cyB2aXZpZmljYW5z
Alvina Tan, "Dansons?" played by Gordon Stout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chMGLCapWWU
Hozier, "All Things End" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=potq6EfzFTI
And that's it. See you on the B-side. By the way, the following piece has spoilers for Bitter Medicine, so if you haven't read the book and you care about spoilers, avert thine eyes!
Tony Takes Up Landscaping
Tony barges into Elle’s house on the heels of an unlocking glyph, entering as insouciantly as the wind itself. Sure, he might have a spare key, but there’s no fun in using it, nor is there any fun in ringing the doorbell like some normal person who respects boundaries. Like a cat, Tony believes he’s meant to be anywhere and everywhere. Unlike a cat, however, he won’t pee on something to mark his territory.
Before the character of 開 even fades from his fingertips, he’s met with, in order: a chokehold; a knife at his throat; and a cold-faced, dead-eyed Luc.
But Tony is prepared. Despite what his sister thinks of him, he’s not the carefree, vain playboy she believes he is. A significant amount of the time, yes, he is, but he has his life and his affairs in order, which was not a goal Elle could boast of achieving a year ago. Tony is well aware that Luc was alerted to his presence by the sound of the car pulling up the drive and by the cadence of Tony’s footsteps on the front walk. The whole manufactured situation serves multiple purposes. It’s a test of Luc’s readiness, for one thing, and maybe it’s a bit of a hazing, too, for daring to shack up with Elle, but most importantly, it’s Tony’s way of getting Luc close.
The chokehold never lands, nor does the knife. Tony exhales cheerfully as Luc stops half a centimeter away, kept from touching Tony through use of a shell glyph and a generous borrowing of Shénnóng’s qì. Luc takes a second too long to relax, and it’s that second Tony uses to flip into his second sight—no, that makes him sound like a mystic—his qì eyes—no, not that either—his Tony Vision. He scans Luc quickly from head to toe, taking note of Luc’s meridians and energy centers, making sure everything remains as put as it was when Tony had anchored those points months ago. They sometimes look like they might not stay put, which necessitates these checkups. Tony already has had to make tiny, secret adjustments, which Luc has likely thought of as Tony being overly handsy and affectionate.
Elle is harder to fool, and Tony’s just waiting for the day when she sits him down with a pot of tea and asks, in a direct but gentle fashion, how much time Luc has left.
Tony pushes clear of Luc, whose face hasn’t yet freed itself completely from being in “destroy” mode. “You’re armed in your own house?”
Luc flicks his switchblade closed and takes a step back. “A strange, unwanted man keeps intruding. I stay vigilant.”
“She’ll leave you if you kill me.” Grant appears from behind the couch and twines himself around Tony’s legs. Tony leans down to give the orange tom a scratch.
“Don’t give me a reason to, then. Why are you here?”
“I’ve decided,” Tony says, straightening, “that the inside and outside of your house is ugly. I can’t do much about the inside yet—”
“I don’t take interior design pointers from someone who considers his own portrait the height of décor,” Luc interrupts.
“But the outside is a greige mess and that, I can fix.” Tony spreads his arms wide. “I’ve a bit of a green thumb, if I do say so myself, and some color would really enliven this place. It’s a millennial color scheme dream, which means it’s really a nightmare.”
Luc’s face, which had shifted away from murder to blatant distaste, returns to murder. “No.”
The sliding door to the backyard opens, and Elle enters, her eyes narrowed. “Tony, you have a key! Don’t tell me you broke the doorframe again with 開! I told you specifically to use 開鎖!”
“First, is that any way to greet your elder brother, and second, your doorframe is fine, and I used 開 only on the lock and not the door, so please unclench over property damage.”
“He wants to do landscaping,” Luc says. “I have said no. This is a rental.”
“And that’s my problem . . . how?” There are already plants in the backseat and trunk of Tony’s car. He doesn’t believe in asking permission, only begging forgiveness.
“Oh, no,” Elle says, lifting an ink-stained hand and covering her eyes briefly. “Tony, you can’t.”
“Oh, yes, I can.”
“Absolutely not.” Luc’s voice is fetchingly firm. Add in that accent, and it’s no wonder Elle’s done what she’s done.
“It’s too late. I’ve got my buddies in the car. I’m going to make the front of your house look like someone who gives a damn lives here.”
Elle heaves a sigh. “You might as well give up, Luc. Tony gets really weird about plants.”
“I miss my friends.” It had broken a piece of Tony’s heart to leave his plants behind in Raleigh. He’d tended some of them for over a decade. They’d been his longest relationships outside his family.
“I told you,” Elle says. “Really weird. Let him do it and see what happens.”
“You’ll have a beautiful yard, is what’s going to happen.” Tony pulls a fresh pair of gardening gloves out from his back pocket, then slaps them into his open palm. “You’ll see. This is going to be the Redfin star of the block.”
Elle takes hold of Luc’s hands, gripping them hard enough for her knuckles to show white. “You go and do that, Tony. Enjoy yourself.”
It is perhaps a little alarming how easily Elle is rolling over and showing her belly, but Tony sets the warning feeling in his gut aside. He’s doing her a favor. He’s doing himself a favor as well because he can’t stand being in places that aren’t beautiful. Somehow, even though Elle is churning out calligraphy and paintings from her chaos shack in the yard, there isn’t a single piece of hers on the walls. There probably aren’t even nail holes. Luc’s doing, no doubt.
“I’ll let you know when I’m done!” Tony says.
“I’m sure you will,” Luc mutters.
***
“My hydrangeas!” Tony wails three weeks later, standing aghast in front of Elle’s house. The driver’s-side door to his car is open. The engine is still running; the keys are swinging from the ignition. He’s probably breaking some California law against idling, but he doesn’t care.
The row of bushes he planted in front of the house is gone as if it never existed, replaced by a mulch bed. A single sphere of blue hydrangea flowers lies wilting atop it, taunting him. The reason for the multiple paper compost bags at the curb becomes stunningly clear. Clear, too, is the danger he’s presently about to be. “Luc, what the fuck!”
The curtains to the front windows are drawn slowly open, and Luc’s face appears. He unlocks the window and pushes it up, the frame screeching against itself. “I told you not to do it. Elle told you not to do it. You did it anyway. You’ve only yourself to blame.”
“Is it a crime to be beautiful?” Tony cries.
“You didn’t match the plants to others in the hydrozone, you didn’t account for the runoff, the existence of which breaks the county code, you didn’t ask permission from the landlord, and you didn’t plant according to the HOA bylaws.” Luc rattles off all the rules Tony has broken in a deadpan voice. “And you’re idling. Cut the engine.”
Tony stomps over to the car and yanks the keys out, then slams the door extra loud. “Your landlord sucks.”
“You owe me for my time, materials, and labor. I will email you an invoice.” Luc shuts the window and draws the curtains.
Tony would laugh if he weren’t so upset at the waste of living things. He’s got a love of greenery on account of growing up surrounded by wilderness. He’d talked to those hydrangeas as he’d planted them, dammit, and told them he was proud of them and everything. He might have also added a little bit of magic to speed them along their way. Last week, orbs of pink and green and white and blue had greeted him, making Elle’s house the prettiest on the block. This week, it’s back to being a house only HGTV and gentrifiers could love.
His phone buzzes with a text. Tony fishes it out, staring at the screen as he realizes the text is from Elle. I’m sorry, it reads. You do kind of owe Luc, though.
“Owe him for what?” Tony hollers at the windows.
A moment later, his phone buzzes again. He didn’t say anything when our landlord sent a nastygram. He didn’t say anything when the HOA showed up at the door. He covered for you and said he’d take out the plamts
The phone buzzes again. Plants*
It buzzes a fourth time. I think that’s worth a thank you, don’t you? He’s jocking about the invoice.
And a fifth time. Jocking
Buzz number six. Not jocking! Joking! I hate autocorrect!
Tony texts back furiously. You can turn that shit off you know. and thanks i guess for not snitching. i won’t charge you for the plants and labor and luc can not charge me for his labor and we’ll call it even
The curtain is pushed aside, and Luc opens the window again. “It is not even.”
Elle opens the door, though in reality, she opens it, Luc shuts it, and she opens it again. “It’s even. Mulch is not that expensive and Luc had a great time ruining your day, except for the part where he stank. Come in, Tony. Want some tea?”
Of course Tony wants tea that he doesn’t have to make. He hides a smile as he thinks about Luc smelling like mulch. He was probably in hell, that fastidious asshole. “No one can snitch on me if I handle the interior, right?”
The last thing Tony sees is Luc’s glare in the magical California sunlight before the door slams shut.