Ken Liu, Writer

Author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie

writing

Simulacrum Is Out at Lightspeed

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My story, “Simulacrum,” is out at Lightspeed.

  • read the story
  • listen to it performed by Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki
  • read an interview of me by Christie Yant

And I’m working on a secret project involving this story. More details when I can announce them.

Cover Art

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Thought I’d post the cover art for two magazines with my stories in them. Really beautiful pieces, and I’m thrilled to be associated with them.

The January issue of Clarkesworld (“Tying Knots” is in it).

Clarkesworld cover

And the February issue of Lightspeed (“Simulacrum” is in it — scheduled for February 15).

Lightspeed cover

Save the Cat

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My friend Georgia recommended this to me, and I’m really glad she did. It’s not the sort of book I would have picked up on my own, as I’m not a screenwriter. But as it turns out, Snyder’s tips are really great for any kind of fiction.

Snyder writes in a breezy, easy style that makes for quick reading. He has strong opinions and doesn’t back down from them. A lot of the things he says about how a story must be constructed will be controversial for short-story writers and novelists. But I think he provides a useful framework for thinking about how to make your story engaging and interesting — aspects that I need to work on more in my own fiction.

Very much recommended.

Fantasy Ideas

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I just read a beautiful piece of flash fantasy tonight — the kind that makes you jealous and wish you had come up with it — and it confirmed something I’ve been thinking lately: good concepts for contemporary fantasy can be generated by literalizing metaphors.

This was what I did in “State Change” (your soul/spirit is literally an object). And it was also the idea in The Golden Compass (your soul/spirit is literally an animal). It seems that whenever you treat a metaphor as real, there’s the potential for an evocative, moving exploration of the metaphor as fantasy.

This is no doubt old news for many fantasy readers and writers, but it’s still exciting to discover tricks like this on your own.

Collaborative Writing

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Lisa and I just finished the first draft of a story we are writing together.

I’ve now written a few stories in collaboration with other authors. (One of them, “Saving Face”, co-written with Shelly Li, is up at Crossed Genres.) In general, it seems to work best if the story naturally requires more than one voice, and each author can take charge of crafting a separate one. It is a lot of fun to draft together.

Writing doesn’t have to be done alone.