Everything Under Heaven is a Peranakan wuxia short story about dinosaurs, published by Uncanny Magazine for their Dinosaur issue. It’s available to read here, with my interview about the story (and the other stories in the issue) available here. Hope everyone likes it! Uncanny Magazine is one of my favourite SFF magazines, along with Strange Horizons, F&SF, and Lightspeed, so being able to get published in 2/4 of those this year has been amazing. I still don’t really believe it. It’s definitely been years of rejections for all four though, which is normal for pretty much most people I think! Hopefully, I’ll get a story into the other two mags sometime, one day.
I’m Peranakan-Hakka on my mum’s side, Hainanese on my dad’s. Food has always been part of my family, passed down from the women’s side. For Nyonya (Peranakan) women, food is how we express love — traditional recipes are so time-consuming. I’ve definitely been lucky never to feel unloved with my family. Up until she retired and had to slow down, my aunt would make her pineapple cookies for me to take back to Australia whenever I visited Singapore, a 2-day labour of love, a day for the jam, a day for the pastry. While traditional Peranakan food is slowly dying out, Mum and I aren’t averse to the modern takes. We enjoyed Candlenut, and I plan on trying Violet Oon the next time I’m in Singapore. If you plan on visiting Singapore, give Peranakan food a shot! We have both authentic and modern takes, and you can read more about it here.
Story Stats
Submitted: 12 Mar 2018
Accepted: 14 May 2018
Contract Signed: 16 May 2018
Edits: 2
Published: 7 Aug 2018