S. Qiouyi Lu writes, translates, and edits between two coasts of the Pacific. Ær work has appeared in several award-winning venues. Æ edited the magazine Arsenika and runs microverses, a hub for tiny narratives. You can find out more about S. at ær website, on Instagram, or on Twitter.
Read on to learn more about S., and In The Watchful City, along with book recommendations, writing, and more!
Hi, S! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a freelance writer, translator, and editor based in Los Angeles, California. I primarily focus on speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror; most of my work has been short stories and poetry. In the Watchful City will be my longest work to date.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I started writing fanfiction in fifth grade when my best friend showed me Fanfiction.net. I loved having an outlet for my imagination and enjoyed filling in the gaps for my favorite media.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
I’m not sure what the first book I remember reading is! Probably something from the Baby-Sitters Club or a beat-up old paperback about Greek mythology. I don’t know if any particular book made me want to become an author, either—I think I’ve always had a propensity for writing. My mom often tells the story about how, in kindergarten, all the other kids were writing “A is for Apple,” while I sat there writing a whole paragraph about how apples are good for you, accompanied by a drawing of a person sitting under a tree while eating an apple.
I often return to Terry Pratchett novels, in particular Men at Arms and Going Postal. There’s so many layers to his worldbuilding and characters, and I love the wordplay and cleverness of his narration, plus the way he incorporates real-world technological developments into many of his secondary world novels. I also love House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski for its inventiveness and atmosphere. There’s so much hidden in that book and embedded in the story; it’s always ripe for a reread.
Your debut novella In the Watchful City is out today! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Minority Report meets 1,001 Nights!
What can readers expect?
In the Watchful City won’t be like anything you’ve read before. Readers can expect an unusual storytelling structure that involves multiple, interconnected short stories, each of them centering queer characters in a secondary world that draws inspiration from Asian cultures and other locales. The stories are tonally very different; there’s something for everyone, including a biocyberpunk frame story, a weird Western, an epistolary story of political intrigue, a steampunk sports story, and a dark mermaid story.
Where did the inspiration for In the Watchful City come from?
The inspiration came from a number of places. The frame story itself was inspired by a trip to Hangzhou, China that I went on in 2017 with Western and Chinese science fiction writers. We got to see emerging technology that incorporated facial recognition. The differing cultural attitudes toward surveillance sparked me to write a piece of fiction that treated surveillance in pragmatic and benevolent terms rather than as purely dystopic.
The short stories interspersed throughout the novella all have their own origin stories as well. A couple even started out as fanfiction before I decided to set them in my own secondary world, as they were AU (alternate universe) stories anyway.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
I think my biggest challenge was the novella length. My natural length for stories is in the short story range, usually between 1,500 and 7,500 words long. In the Watchful City is about 38,000 words long, composed of four short stories and a frame narrative. The composite nature helped me achieve the right length for the format. But I think the mosaic structure is also key to the storytelling itself. The stories within In the Watchful City can stand alone, but the novella isn’t meant to be a collection. The alternating nature of the narratives is part of Anima’s character development. It was definitely a challenge to tie everything together so it feels cohesive, but I think I was able to accomplish that.
What do you hope readers might take away from reading In the Watchful City?
I hope readers come away with the idea that we all have our own stories to tell. Even if you think your life hasn’t been that interesting, to someone else, your life story is a fascinating other world.
You’re also a freelance editor and translator. What was it like being on the other end of the editing process?
Editing and translating are similar, but they each have their own demands and challenges. When it comes to editing, being on the other has given me a greater understanding of the publication process. A lot of what makes a story successful is individual taste—I like to use the metaphor that even if you can brew the best espresso in the world, none of that matters if the person you make it for doesn’t like coffee. Likewise, you could write an amazing story that doesn’t get published simply because it hasn’t found the right editor. Craft is certainly one aspect, but a lot of people don’t realize how much finding that right subjective match matters.
As for translating, it’s been interesting to have insight into two different traditions of storytelling and two sets of narrative norms. Like with editing, I’ve become much more sensitive to how much of storytelling comes down to personal or cultural preference. For example, anglophone speculative fiction doesn’t tend to tolerate infodumps, but Chinese speculative fiction revels in it. There’s really nothing that you can say is objectively bad technique or storytelling—it’s all about how you use the tools available.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best writing advice I’ve received is to heed only the feedback that gets you closer toward your vision for your story. A lot of new writers try to incorporate everyone’s feedback, thinking that all criticism is valid and that they should appeal to as many people as possible. But sometimes people miss the point of what you’re trying to do, or they’re actually telling you how they would tell the story. You want to pick out the feedback that understands what you’re trying to do with your story, and discard the rest. Of course, you’ll still want to be polite when acknowledging people’s feedback, but you don’t need to incorporate all of it into your revisions. Plus, trying to appeal to too many people can often take the teeth out of your story. Don’t focus on doing everything perfectly; focus on doing one thing well.
I don’t know if I’ve received bad writing advice per se. It’s really just about what does and doesn’t work for me. Some people live by “write every day”; I personally can’t do that, as, more often than not, that way leads to burnout for me. I also find that “show, don’t tell” might be practical advice in general, but there are definitely instances where telling might be more effective than showing. It really all comes down to context and to which tools are helpful for you. Only keep what works.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on another novella for Tordotcom Publishing. This next one won’t have the 1,001 Nights format of containing multiple short stories; instead, it will be a more linear, straightforward narrative. The novella will be a heavily linguistics-oriented take on science fiction and fantasy, about a world where certain languages are hunted down for bounties, and a person who resists that linguistic destruction through language creation.
I also have a short story out in the September/October 2021 issue of Asimov’s titled “Your Luminous Heart, Bound in Red.” It’s my take on Little Red Riding Hood, one that adds a Chinese flair to the story and makes it about werewolves. I like to summarize the story as “The Big Bad Wolf unlearns toxic masculinity through rope bondage.” It’s all about vulnerability and the artificial constraints we put around expressing vulnerability.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
The last book I read that I thought was fantastic was The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers by Tom Standage. It’s a great, accessible piece of nonfiction that traces the history of the telegraph and its cultural impact. It’s fascinating to see how similar it was to the internet—even while technology changes, people don’t.
