Published in Blue Fifth Review
Posted: December 1, 2017 Filed under: announcement, flash fiction, prose, publication Leave a commentMy flash fiction piece “Time” is published in the new Blue Fifth Review. Thanks to Michelle Elvy, Bill Yarrow, and Sam Rasnake!
Alone and Other Flash Fiction out now
Posted: November 16, 2017 Filed under: announcement, fiction, flash fiction, prose, publication Leave a commentMy new prose book, Alone and Other Flash Fiction, is now available on Amazon as a kindle e-book.
Alone and Other Flash Fiction is a collection of short short stories about aloneness and loneliness. The title piece is about a woman who is lonely for so many things in her life but the story ultimately surprises the reader with her honesty.
Published in Otoliths
Posted: October 31, 2017 Filed under: announcement, fiction, flash fiction, prose, publication Leave a commentI have four fiction pieces published in the new issue of Otoliths, edited by Mark Young. Thanks, Mark.
These four pieces will be in Alone and Other Flash Fiction, coming in December.
From forthcoming book, Alone and Other Flash Fiction
Posted: October 24, 2017 Filed under: announcement, flash fiction, prose, publication Leave a commentSometime in December, I’m going to publish a 44-page free ebook of stories called Alone and Other Flash Fiction. This is one of the pieces from it.
Language
I know a friend who speaks five languages.
She expresses herself best in English. But occasionally, she would burst into Chinese, recovering some word lost since childhood, picking it up like it was a seashell she almost stepped on.
The thing with language is it is so malleable. People living in different cities sometimes couldn’t understand each other even when they speak the same language. Accent is another thing. But languages absorb other languages, changing so much that they are virtually unrecognisable.
I’d like to think that love is like that. We live to love. Each person we speak with speaks a different language. Think of Babel. Think of that sky we’re trying to reach since we were born. We look up and never know when we’ll reach it. Perhaps even knowing it’s an impossibility, this reaching, this striving to love like it’s there becoming something we need.
Like language. Indispensable. Necessary. Essential.
For expression, for livelihood, for living.
How do you talk to someone who doesn’t speak your language? You love them. You look at them. You think that the city you’re in is a language you learned to speak. Go there.
The night is falling in this city. It is quiet, as quiet as language itself, without words.
I’m saying that love is not just a language, it is there to be here, to reach us like the night sky.
Otoliths
Posted: September 5, 2017 Filed under: announcement, flash fiction, prose Leave a commentFour of my stories have been accepted for publication in Otoliths, edited by Mark Young. Thank you, Mark.
Journal entry (16/08/17)
Posted: August 18, 2017 Filed under: nonfiction, prose 1 CommentTime moves more slowly these days. I feel I am not running after my life anymore. I can rest. I can enjoy the light of the day more.
Today, I walked in the park, at one point, alone. Alone, time moves faster. As if it were a companion. As if we were talking and the day was listening. And the trees were there in the silence of the present.
What We Give: a novella (2017)
Posted: August 1, 2017 Filed under: announcement, fiction, novel, prose, publication 3 CommentsNew book What We Give: a novella has just been published as a free ebook at https://en.calameo.com/books/005063882e0b5bfd690e8
This is my third book of prose. It tells of a widow and her ruminations about life with her husband, her doubts and doubtfulness, his exactness and charm, and the consequences of death.
Excerpt:
“Let us remember our loved ones, our lovers who took us again and again without fail, without success, only with love, by love.
Let’s think about his presencethe one we miss, beside us in bed, beside us in the car, in front of us at the table, beside us walking arm in arm at the park.
Let’s feel his love, gone now, but still here. Still everywhere we are.”
excerpt from upcoming book, What We Give: a novella
Posted: July 28, 2017 Filed under: fiction, novel, prose Leave a commentexcerpt from Chapter 3
There is heat. And there is the sun. You are the one, husband. You are all my ones together. All the lusts in the desert are you. All the water in the ocean. The seven seas.
The seven continents. The beauty of seven colours. Wisdom of every shade. Knowledge of every fruit.
Love, I am undone by you. I want to love you more now that you are gone.
Is that possible?
I talk to you everyday. You are with me all the time.
The degrees of geometry. The chemistry of love. The height of architecture. The sweet music of voice, of silence. Your voice.
The touch of geography. The valley and the fields. The politics of cartography.
Everything I see is you. Comes from you.
My desk has a lamp, three pens, three notebooks, one hundred pages of blank paper.
Every time I write, I think of you.
I wrote about my friend today. I wrote about my mother and my father today.
I thought of you. But I left the words to you.
Another story in Eunoia Review
Posted: April 25, 2017 Filed under: announcement, flash fiction, prose, publication Leave a commentHappy that my short story “Shoes” is now published in Eunoia Review. Thank you.
Jill-Chan.com 