Paper Fruit

Wow, last week was a whirlwind when it came to my weird little debut novel!

I finally put Vermilion in the bag (good thing, too–as it’s out next month!). I have confidence it’s as good as I can make it, which is a wonderful feeling, moving forward with the project.

Also, the cover was revealed… and what a cover it is! Gaze upon the glory. The majesty. The font! I’ve seen a draft of the back, and it’s astonishing as well. That’s still being worked on, however. I’m really grateful to the time and attention put into this fabulous piece of art by Dalton Rose, the artist, and Osiel Gomez, the designer.

Finally… okay, I’m still kind of jittery and excitable about this… but Vermilion got a STARRED review in Publishers Weekly!

Tanzer’s first novel is a splendid page-turner of a Weird West adventure. Elouise Merriwether is a psychopomp, tasked with escorting newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Half Chinese and half English, with a bizarre job that few people understand, she struggles to find a place for herself in 1870s San Francisco, often vacillating between pluck and self-effacement. When her mother asks her to investigate why young Chinese men are going missing after being offered jobs in Colorado, Lou agrees to turn detective, but she’s bitten off way more than she can chew, especially once she runs up against the mysterious Dr. Panacea and his possibly fraudulent Elixir of Life. This hugely entertaining mixture of American steampunk and ghost story is a wonderful yarn with some of the best dialogue around.

Vermilion has been a long time coming, but I’m very proud of it, and I’m really glad the first review in the world is so enthusiastic. It seems like the reviewer “got” Lou and the project itself, which is wonderful, and hearing that the novel is a “page-turner” ain’t bad.

So! Vermilion is off to a pretty good start, I think it’s safe to say. If you’re interested in helping keep things going that way, consider pre-ordering. Pre-orders count towards crucial first week sales, so it’s a lovely way to show your enthusiasm for an author and his/her work. Plus, the bundle via Word Horde includes a signed copy, and an ebook in the format of your choice! You can keep one for yourself and give one as a gift!

You can also keep the enthusiasm in the air by adding the book to your “want to read” pile on Goodreads (and reviewing it there, and on Amazon of course, once it’s out).

So! I’m off to do weekend things. Starred review means I get to treat myself to breakfast at Dot’s Diner. Mushroom gravy slathered breakfast burrito… here I come!

In anticipation of the release of my Steampunk Weird Western, Vermilion, my dear friend and steampunk expert S.J. Chambers introduced me to the lovely Kevin D. Steil. Kevin is the creator/editor of Airship Ambassador, which hosts a yearly event called Steampunk Hands Around the World. This year’s theme is Steampunk: Our Playground, Our Classroom, Our Workshop. I’m a little late to the party (it’s the last week of the event) as my copy edits for Vermilion took quite a bit out of me, but better late than never! And if you’re interested in what other participants have been doing as I agonized over commas, you can check that out here.

Though I’m just writing about all this now, the theme “Our Playground, Our Classroom, Our Workshop” had me thinking as I poured over Vermilion, re-checking various historical details and knowing that in spite of my best efforts, I would inevitably miss something. And I’m not just talking about a clunky sentence or a dropped word… I mean something more akin to an anachronism, an incorrect detail, a bit of “common knowledge” I never questioned. I loved researching Vermilion, but it was an experience as intense and humbling as it was rewarding, and today I’m going to blog about why.

Vermilion is set in 1870, in an alt-historical America where ghosts, monsters, and talking bears are as much a part of the landscape as people, trains, guns, and purveyors of quack remedies. That said, certain familiar elements remain—the Transcontinental links the West with back East, road agents hunt down and terrorize travelers, diseases like tuberculosis are as dangerous as they are difficult to cure, and it’s hard to get a fair shake if you’re not white, wealthy, and male.

Lou Merriwether is none of those things. She’s half-Chinese, works for a living, and she’s a woman, even if she usually passes as a man while she tramps all over San Francisco, exorcising the restless dead. Lou does well for herself, but that doesn’t mean things are easy for her; in fact, where the novel opens, anti-Chinese sentiment in San Francisco affects her personally and professionally on a daily basis. In spite of this, she tries to maintain a sense of humor, but that doesn’t mean she’s not aware of how annoying (and dangerous) being different can sometimes be.

When I first began to draft Vermilion, then a very different novel with a very different title, I knew I wanted a protagonist who lived on the margins, and whose identity (and sense of that identity) would create difficulties for her as much as it allowed her to access interesting opportunities. Vermilion is very much about the marginalized—19th century racial and sexual politics are reflected in the action as much as discussions about sickness versus health, insider versus outsider status, martial prowess versus strength of a different sort—and I wanted the novel’s point of view to be someone flexible enough to negotiate with everything with… let’s call it “a varying degree of success.”

For Steampunk Hands Around the World, the theme of “Our Playground, Our Classroom, Our Workshop,” inspired me to blog about a little about some of the historical and cultural research I did for Vermilion. As with all of us, Lou’s childhood experiences inform her personality, her lived experience, her work, and her decisions, so I wanted to read and learn as much as I could in order to bring her (and her world) to life. One of the reasons I enjoy the challenge of writing historical fiction is I love to research! It’s exciting to lose myself in the past, whether it’s picking up a work of fiction from a different time and place, or looking up what are considered to be the best nonfiction books on a certain subject. While I might jot down random notes or ideas during the drafting process, reading is how I know I’ve really and truly begun a new project.

When I began in earnest to work on Vermilion, several books in particular were extremely helpful to me:

• The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, by Iris Chang

• Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island, by Robert Eric Barde

• The Children of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920, by Wendy Rouse Gore

• The Wisdom of Laotse and My Country and My People, by Yutang Lin

• The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, translated by Robert van Gulik

• Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, by Pu Songling

Iris Chang’s wonderful and detailed accounts provided much of the backdrop I needed to create my alt-history Chinatown, and The Children of Chinatown was a fantastic study that helped me imagine what someone like Lou’s early life might have been like. Given that Lou must do some detective work, supernatural and more traditional, the tales of Judge Dee gave me some insight into the specifically Chinese detective novel, and Yutang Lin’s treatment of the Tao Te Ching, which pairs the original insights of Laotse with commentary by his follower Chuangtse, was most informative when it came to developing Lou’s personal philosophy toward life, death, and undeath.

While I love reading, and curling up with a history book is one of my favorite things in the world, I also wanted to do some more “hands-on” research. To that end, my husband and I took an anniversary trip out to San Francisco a few years ago, to relax and hang out, but also so I could walk the streets Lou would have walked. We had a great time visiting landmarks and poking around in shops, and he was very patient as I spent several hours taking notes at the Chinese Historical Society of America‘s wonderful museum. I also consulted with an apothecary and got a TCM prescription filled at the Great China Herb Company.

Learning about language was also part of my research. A large portion of the Chinese immigrants who lived in San Francisco and worked on the Transcontinental came over from Toisan, called Taishan in Mandarin, and Hoisan by native speakers. I initially hoped to use Toisanese when I needed to use a Chinese word, but after a few conversations with a native Toisanese speaker, on his advice I ended up using mainly romanized Cantonese pronunciations. Negotiating with Cantonese was fascinating if frustrating, as I neither speak nor read any Chinese, but my Toisanese contact as well as my very patient friend-cum-scholar of Asian languages Raechel Dumas got me through it in the end.

I cannot conclude this essay without mentioning several wonderful films that not only initially inspired the project, but actually helped me in my research into what would become Lou’s profession. The truth is, my interest in Taoist necromancy and geung si began with a film: Mr. Vampire. It’s an awesome flick, and I followed it up with watching many more in the Hong Kong vampire genre. Here’s an incomplete list for any curious cinemaphiles out there:

• Mr. Vampire

• Mr. Vampire 2

• Encounters of the Spooky Kind

• A Chinese Ghost Story

• Crazy Safari (on YouTube, it’s amazing, you should watch it)

• Rigor Mortis (it’s on NetFlix now, and it’s really great)

The Hollywood picture Big Trouble in Little China is also worth a watch, if you’ve never seen it. I once pitched Vermilion as being set in the historical past of that film. It made sense to me, at least!

Writing historical fiction requires all kinds of research, but as much as I wish I could share everything, I want to keep my focus in this essay. And on that note, I’ll conclude. Many thanks to Kevin for hosting and promoting Steampunk Hands Around the World, this was a fun opportunity and I’m so glad I got to participate!

Oh, and if any of this sounds intriguing… well, Vermilion drops on April 15th, and can be pre-ordered now. There’s even a fancy bundle offer going on right now!

I have a longish essay about The Bride up at Pornokitsch.com. It’s first entry in my new series, Pygmalia, which is all about Pygmalion stories as you might guess:

The Wiki for The Bride describes it as “an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” but that is a completely ridiculous claim. It is more accurately described as “a film starring Sting as Baron Charles Frankenstein and the girl from Flashdance.” While The Bride generously nods at Frankenstein as well as various cinematic adaptations of the tale, it is entirely it’s own thing. A glorious thing, to my mind, and one that makes few concessions to viewers who come to it without at least a passing understanding of Frankenstein, but its own thing just the same. For the uninitiated… imagine a fanfic of Frankenstein that picks up in Frankenstein’s lab before he destroys the mate for the creature, but a dark, inverted fanfic where the writer had an axe to grind with My Fair Lady, including deciding that in their version of Frankenstein, Clerval survives to play a sexed-up Colonel Pickering to Baron Frankenstein’s Professor Higgins.

It’s a great film in a lot of ways, but a dark one too. Read the whole thing at the link above, and feel free to leave a comment. Even if you have nothing to say about The Bride, while I have the first few months of this figured out but I’m taking recommendations for Pygmalion treatments to write about, especially comics and short stories. Cheers!

Yikes! I wasn’t expecting this so soon in 2015, but Vermilion is… imminent here in ARC form,out in the world, digital and hard copy.

If you are a book reviewer, and would like to receive an uncorrected ARC for review, please contact Ross Lockhart at publicity[at]wordhorde.com. Also, if you know any book reviewers into some or all of the following, maybe send them this way, or at least spread the word: gender fluidity, weird westerns, steampunk-y things, sickness, death, and dying, sea lions, vampires, San Francisco, hiking, the Rocky Mountains, trains, bears, the Mr. Vampire franchise from the 1980s, ghosts, punching things, Big Trouble in Little China, friendship, sanatorium culture a la The Road to Wellville, hysteria, adventures, snow, mountains, sexual tension, mysteries, and… uh… I guess that’s enough to go on.

Thanks, and happy reading!

I have now officially completed and turned in the manuscripts for the two novels that will be coming out this year: my debut, Vermilion (in April), and The Pleasure Merchant (in November). But before that time, I’d really like to get A Pretty Mouth up to 25 reviews on Amazon. I learned last year that good things happen with Amazon’s algorithms when you have 25 reviews for a book, and as A Pretty Mouth is already at 18, I feel like this is… achievable.

If you’ve read A Pretty Mouth, whether you kinda liked it, or totally bazonkers loved it, I’d so appreciate it if you took a few minutes to put a review up on Amazon. (I assume if you hated it, you’re not reading this—but if you did hate it, and are reading this, go ‘head and review, I can take it.)

I am truly grateful for all the attention A Pretty Mouth has received since its publication back in 2012—new readers still seem to be reading and enjoying it, which is wonderful! I know books have an excitement life of six months to a year, so the fact that people are still discovering A Pretty Mouth is astounding to me. But, the sad truth is that while it’s always exciting and touching to hear personally from someone who enjoyed your work… it’s generally more helpful (if you’d like to see more from that author) if that praise is put into review form.

Anyways, I’ll keep this hat-in-hand begging short and sweet. Thanks in advance, no worries if you’re too busy or can’t even remember what A Pretty Mouth was about. Happy New Year, and watch this space for news about forthcoming projects!

The end of the year is fast approaching, and as usual it has inspired me to make a fruitcake and do a little housekeeping, taking stock of what this year has meant for me as a writer, a reader, and just a person, too.

I confess that 2014 has been a difficult year for me. Sort of like Longfellow’s little girl with a curl right in the center of her forehead, when this year was good, it was very good indeed, and when it was bad it was horrid.

I struggled with personal relationships this year, with both friends and with my family, but I also reconnected with several old friends, and was privileged to witness a truly amazing event in my immediate family—my uncle surviving a bone marrow transplant from my mother.

After enjoying performing lion dance over Chinese New Year I decided to take a leave of absence from my kung fu studio for personal reasons both physical and mental. And while I felt less fit overall this year since 2011 (the year I committed myself to taking time for fitness) I ran my first triathlon and achieved the times I wanted.

I wrote a novel that is a total mess, that I may trunk forever, but I also wrote one that I believe may be my best yet.

As is apparent from that last point, I struggled with my writing this year, aesthetically and emotionally, but I also sold a handful more short stories than usual, ones that I like more than usual, even, and I also sold my first novel, my second novel, and a novella.

Though I struggled with feelings of career stagnation, I achieved some other firsts this year. I edited my first ever magazine edition (in spite of being Managing Editor/Assistant Editor of several magazines over the years, I was never invited to take part in actual fiction-selection), and was invited to edit two more projects, an issue of another magazine, due out next year, and another project which has not yet been announced.

Though I did not have a book come out this year, I saw seven short stories published, one of which earned me my first-ever mention in Publishers Weekly, and I sold seven more. I also began (and completed, more impressively for me) a blog series for Pornokitsch, where I am now a regular contributor.

For the first time since 2009 I did not attend a single con, but I was invited to be a guest—an actual guest, not just a participant—at a con next year, a first for me. I turned down cons for good and bad reasons this year, a learning experience, but I also traveled to Japan, which was an amazing experience.

I read more this year than I have in many, many years, in part due to a concerted effort to do so. I kept track of my adventures on Goodreads, which was enlightening. After beginning the year at a good clip I had hoped to read 75 books this year. I’m currently at 65 and I’m not sure I’ll be able to squeeze in ten before the new year, but I’ll try–and whatever I achieve will be extremely rewarding, I’m sure.

I also played video games for the first time in years—Dragon Age 2, and I just started Dragon Age: Origins. As this was also a rewarding experience, I hope to play more games in future, as I am woefully ignorant of the state of gaming, having never owned a video game system that wasn’t Nintendo. Onward to Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect, and more!

2015 should be an exiting year. Having my first novel come out, and my second, is already a thrilling but intimidating prospect. I’ll be doing two other blog series for Pornokitch, which I hope to complete with the same or greater level of success as the last. I’m enthusiastic to do more races, to have new adventures (didn’t get to my annual 14er this year), and to begin new writing projects with more confidence and self-assuredness in what I do best, rather in what I wished I did better.

I hope you all had wonderful years, and if you didn’t I hope your 2015 is better. Cheers!

I won’t just have one novel out next year… I’ll have two!

LFP, who did such a great job with A Pretty Mouth, will be putting out my second full-length novel, The Pleasure Merchant, in Fall 2015. The formal announcement is here, on Pornokitch. I’m really stoked. Here’s a short description:

The Pleasure Merchant;

Or, The Modern Pygmalion

“To truly know a man, you must know his pleasure…”

Tom Dawne is a modest boy with modest dreams that befit his modest station in life. An orphan, apprenticed to a respectable wigmaker, all Tom has ever wanted is to learn his trade, marry his master’s daughter, and become a full partner in the business.

Unfortunately, after a mysterious young gentleman calling himself Callow Bewit tampers with one of Tom’s most important commissions, Tom is summarily dismissed and turned out into the street. It’s as strange as it is unfair—Tom has no idea how the youth planted all those playing cards in the damn wig, causing its owner to be accused of cheating during a high-stakes game at a very fancy party. But he must have done it—Tom certainly had nothing to do with the affair.

Stranger still, in the wake of Tom’s disgrace, Callow Bewit’s father, the very rich and very unhappy Mr. Tiercel Bewit, offers Tom a new job… as his “cup-bearer,” whatever that means. Tom takes the position, even though it’s uncertain why Mr. Bewit feels any responsibility toward him at all—the boy in the wig shop was most definitely an impostor, for Mr. Bewit’s son Callow is away in Europe on his grand tour. Could it be the gentleman had something to do with the scandal? Or is he simply a kindly old man with a heart of gold?

Whatever the case might be, Mr. Bewit’s generosity initiates Tom’s meteoric rise in 18^th century London society. But as Tom goes from disgraced apprentice to gentleman’s servant, and then from gentleman’s servant to gentleman-in-training, his desires change as much as his duties, and his pleasures even more than his station. Once, a small shop and an intelligent bride would have satisfied Tom’s every desire. Now all he can dream of is climbing the social ladder, even if he’s unsure what’s at the top.

When Tom meets a man who claims he can obtain Tom’s ultimate pleasure—for a price—what will Tom ask for? A secure life as an obscure tradesman? A fate more glittering and glorious? Or something darker, like revenge on those who have wronged him? Pleasure can take many forms, after all…

Aw man. Left it too late again…

October’s been a crazy month. In spite of two major deadlines looming, I went to Japan for two weeks, which was awesome! More on that when I have time to upload a thousand pictures of temples and deer and stuff.

As my deadlines seem a lot closer on this side of the trip (and my birthday—I’m 33 now, righteous), here’s a quick update of things I’ve been doing:

• I’m now a regular contributor over at Pornokitch.com! This is super exciting. Now my posts have my name beside them, like this, my latest Roald Dahl blog on his short stories. Roald Dahl hated beards. Who knew?

• Speaking of Pornokitsch, I had a new short story go up over there. Co-authored with Jesse Bullington, it’s called “Four Seasons in the Floating World™“. You can also buy it for 99 whole cents and read it on your e-reader.

• I wrote a short piece on doing my tri for Josh Vogt’s ongoing blog series Write Strong.

• I blind submitted a short story for the first time in several… years? And it was accepted! More details as I can share them.

That’s about it. Except… am I forgetting something?

Oh! That’s right!

One week from tomorrow…

What could it be??

I’m back from my Florida semi-vacation. Some medical stuff in the family, as usual, so I went down to help out my mom. She’s fine—she pulled through her end of things like a champ! She’s one tough lady.

Let’s see…

I realized the other day that I’ve sold over twenty short stories in the last five years. Given how slowly I write, that’s a really exciting figure! Some of those short stories have been sold but not announced—at least two, maybe three? I’m terrible at keeping track of that stuff. Anyways, announcements on things as I can, obviously. Whee!

A week ago last Sunday (meaning September 21st) I completed my first sprint triathlon! It was pretty much the greatest thing in the world, I’ll definitely be doing more in future. And not only did I complete it, I got the times I wanted.

My goal for this was first and foremost to finish, but I also wanted to do it under two hours. That meant, knowing my athletic ability, I needed to finish the swim in under 20 minutes, the ride in under an hour, and the run in under 40 minutes. I did all of it! And I wasn’t totally wiped out, after, nor was I particularly sore. My hips were stiff, and my knees complained a little but that’s to be expected for me. All in all, it was a great experience, and I’ll definitely do another tri with Without Limits, and maybe some others. I’d be curious to do an Olympic some day.

Sprint Triathlons are:

1/2 mile swim

12.something mile ride (mine was 12.9)

5k run

Olympic/Standard Tris are:

.93mi swim

25mi bike ride

1ok run

So, a nice increase in my best event, swimming, but also an increase in my worst event, running. But, my plan is to keep up on running this winter and increasing gradually to see if I (meaning, my knees) can take that distance. But, I must say, the sprint distance was so fun and exhilarating, I have no problem sticking with that. I enjoyed it so much I’m considering looking for a used wetsuit so I can do earlier-season triathlons. The water in Union Reservoir was 69 the day I swam, which is totally fine without a wetsuit, but maybe 4 degrees colder and it would have been pretty terrible. Given how cold the reservoirs around here get during the winter, anything before July would probably be a struggle without one.

I have really been into sewing my own clothes. Down in Florida I completed a new long-sleeved tunic and a sleeveless tunic dress thing. Pics whenever I wear them, probably.

Other than that, I’ve just been working on my WiP, which is finally (FINALLY) chugging along nicely. I had some early-novel struggles with this, for whatever reason, but now I’m enjoying myself greatly. The reduced speculative element in this has been very refreshing for me… we’ll have to see how it flies with my readership! At least anyone who picks it up because they know I can be counted upon to write about terrible fuckers fucking up will be happy. I gotta be me!

I made mandu/mandoo for the first time a few weeks back. They’re time-consuming but super-delicious! So far I’ve only cooked up the steamed kind. Tonight, I’ll be frying up the pan-fried kind for dinner. I also used my leftover mandu-pi to make tortellini with some home-fermented cashew-almond gruyere, which was pretty righteous.

In two weeks I’ll be headed to Japan, which is super-exciting.

Okay… that’s it, I think. Back to work!

I have A Thing due in November (two things, actually, but one of them is a little scarier than the other), and it’s now September. I’ve been working well on it, sometimes, but now I need to be working well on it… all the time.

This is at odds with my desire to blog more, as I find it rewarding, my desire to exercise more (and more diversely) which I have to do as my first triathlon is officially twenty (NO! 19, shit) days away, somehow, and my desire to start sewing my own clothes more, as my mother and I made a dress together on her most recent trip out here and it was super fun. Oh well! This kind of busyness is what I’ve been desiring since day one of deciding to try this whole writing thang.

Speaking of…

I use that little “stickies” program for Mac to keep my monthly biz straight on my dashboard. Hours for my various freelance gigs, HTML code I use to do stuff, etc. I also had been keeping a running list of publishers who were looking at Vermilion since my agent put it out in the world. It occurred to me today I could clear that. The top left of my dashboard now looks strangely empty, but thrillingly so.

I was the Lovecraftian/Weird Author of the Week over at the Lovecraft eZine. Recently, Mike Davis has begun posting short interviews every week with “a Weird Fiction and/or Lovecraftian author that I feel deserves more attention.” I was very flattered he offered me a spot. But I got a little, I dunno, introspective… so be warned.

What is it about Lovecraftian horror and Weird Fiction that appeals to you?

[….] In Weird, and especially Lovecraftian Weird, the world doesn’t make sense to begin with, so all you can do when things go really wrong is… go crazy, or (better) stay sane and learn to cope with the knowledge that everything you believed or knew is garbage. The older I get, the more that… realism, I suppose, appeals to me. I already mentioned my dad passing away… maybe this is obvious, but that really affected me, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Not just because I was suddenly confronted with the terrible knowledge that he was going to die sooner than I’d ever expected, but because my dad was always the healthiest guy. He cooked low-fat and low-sugar, walked and cycled and worked out with weights… and yet, earlier than most people are even diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he died of it. What the fuck is that shit? How is that fair? Well, it’s not. It’s just terrible.

Whee! Fun!

Uhhh, in other news, September’s issue of The Big Click went up today.

Here at The Big Click, we have pretty wide tastes in noir. We’ll publish stories about criminals, about psychopaths, barely reformed lowlifes, and the like. But only rarely will we do cops or private investigators. Partially because most of what is sent to us involving the police or PIs just isn’t noir: it’s hard-boiled, or a mystery with sex in it, or a procedural with booze in it. The rare cop-themed noir we do get tend to ultimately choose sides in a way that sends the story screaming into the hell of moral instruction. Trust us, we already know that doing drugs and killing people and hurting women is bad. (And if we didn’t think so, these stories would not persuade us.)

I think that’s it. My Dahl blog got pushed back from August into September, in part because the book came in late,  so if I actually get that in to Pornokitch it should go up this week. It’ll be on Over to You, his RAF stories. Since the book I finally received also contains what should have been September’s stories, I should be able to get that in on time! Novel!