Moonlake's Fiction Space

Let’s take an inventory of obsessions:

Not sure where the jumping off line (let’s take an inventory of obsessions) is from but it says all about this piece.

Let’s take an inventory of obsessions:

Chinese lore, I know that’s too broad but hard to refine this. I mean, I’m interested in an assortment of stuff that I group in under it: sometimes it’s the language, sometimes it’s like a story, a different world that you get to gaze upon

Fantasy, I keep coming back to it as my main staple. It used to be mostly epic and some sword & sorcery mixed up but I think I’m branching out slightly

Writers, this something recent after I decided to take writing seriously. I started to take an interest in author bios, forewords, that kind of stuff. Before that, I felt like those things just flew by and I wouldn’t really glance at them.

Social customs, I don’t know, not everything but what inspires me, surprises me, I guess. Probably acting as fodder for my imagination to gobble up and mangle and use for my fiction

Personality and identity, probably because I have a philosophical streak in me, I tend to reflect on things. So of course I would contemplate on myself and what happens to me and what I experience foremost

Speculative biology, no idea where that came from, I didn’t even do biology but I rather like coming up with made-up plants and trace out all the cultural significance of a given plant

Constellations because it dovetails so well into myths and opens a window into a particular culture’s view of life and how things are perceived and ought to be, all those kinds of things

Language and how they carry imageries. I am an appreciator of prose and that’s the sum of its attraction for me. Strangely, not poetry so much, which I didn’t feel attached to that much. I prefer works of length that gives me a certain degree of immersion. It’s not until recently that I understood poetry was meant to be imagery based.

Writing Updates- March 2025

From about mid-January this year, I have had to pick up the itinerary planning for our upcoming European trip to Spain and Portugal. I was originally going to start on that much later given the original plan of going in October. But given my study plans and how my supervisor wants to work with me at the first half of the year, I ended up shifting the European trip up to May and going for a mid-year intake on the graduate certificate. As a result, I have had to devote a large block of my attention towards travel. That plus summer lethargy means that I am slowly going through my draft but that is really the norm for several years now.

On more specific progress, I’m now on Chapter 42 out of 80 Chapters. I will probably want to do a structural round some time this year and then advance the current decimal draft to draft 0.84 after making some concrete decisions during the structural round.

That’s it for now. Until June.

Moonlake’s Book Discoveries- March 2025

Mystery

8 by James Phelan

We are seeing a widening of the story that is set up nicely all along this series. Still with this series and reading on to find out what happens next.

7 by James Phelan

Here we see a major game changer in this series and I find that refreshing. Still got me and I’m reading on.

6 by James Phelan

The stake has been ramped up again for Sam. Good work.

5 by James Phelan

Stakes are still going up and now not just for Sam himself. A new element being introduced as well but I like it not as well as 6. But still with the race.

4 by James Phelan

By now the books have seamlessly merged together for me and I am thinking this is probably the effect that the author is angling for all along. This is also the book where I feel like the author has managed to shake it entirely loose from the template that I felt was what held together the earlier books in the series. Good work.

3 by James Phelan

This book still takes me along the ride very well and there is a bit of foreshadowing that presents a hook to give me that little extra push to see the series to its conclusion.

2 by James Phelan

Again, this book carries you smoothly on with Sam’s journey. It also neatly sets up for the grand finale by making it more unpredictable.

1 by James Phelan

Everything comes together in this grand finale and I was surprised when the big twist was revealed (a positive for me in a mystery). I am satisfied. Overall, I think this series is interesting. I can’t say I loved it but it’s solid work and enjoyable, perfect for those who appreciate a fast paced adventure story with thriller elements and a bit of technological speculative/urban fantasy twist to it. I think this was packaged under fantasy for my local library but it felt more like mystery to me and not bad for a mystery.

Fantasy

A Duel of Evils by Anthony Ryan

I actually have the Raven’s shadow trilogy down on my reading list but I couldn’t find it on my local library’s catalogue so I read what’s available from the author. This is a short story and I anticipated that I wouldn’t like it as much as a novel but I had even more difficulty with this than usual when this was presented as the historical record of an event as written by one historian to his Emperor. Basically, the whole story was just written in too dry a tone for me and the quick unloading of big chunks of information necessitated by this chosen narrative voice basically dragged my attention towards logically processing these information as opposed to experiencing the story.

The Lord’s Collector by Anthony Ryan

I like this novella overall and the ¾ mark has me interested in the trilogy potentially. Except my local library doesn’t have an electronic copy and I’m not that enticed by it to actually look up an alternative method to read the trilogy. Still a good novella if you want tight quick-paced adventure and a potentially interesting fantasy world to partake of.

Science Fiction

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

I am still reading this book. It has high stakes and quite amusing dialogue. Liking it so far.

23 days Italy, Switzerland and France trip on trains- France part 3

We had the hotel arrange a taxi to Lyon Part-Dieu (we were living at a hotel near Lyon Perrache, the other train station) at 5am but we got out early because the room was stuffy so we ended up leaving the hotel at 4:30am and when we arrived, Lyon Part-Dieu was actually not open yet and we had to stand in the rain for about 10 or 15 minutes. But other than that, nothing amiss about the trip to Paris. Once we arrived there, we grabbed brunch at a cafe where we were both not impressed with the too sweet pastry croissants that we had ordered- mine was Nutella with bananas (I didn’t know Nutella was a brand of chocolate sauce, I thought that it was something akin to peanut butter, my mistake) and Mum’s was pistachio cream with raspberries. We went to Versailles (I already bought the Musical Garden show tickets online) on that first day but we did not get to stay until the show due to a thunderstorm but we did take enough signature photos to justify the trip. Originally, we had planned to do all the signature landmarks on this day too (Notre Drame, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower etc.) but we did not feel like going out in the rain so we called it a day. Dinner was at a place nearby. I ordered half a dozen snails for Mum and the rice with fish for myself. The snails were horrible- Mum thought they were from lunch and reheated but it could as well just be that these were big snails and they really tasted so tough. We ended up not having any of the snails (well, I tried one and spat it back out). The fish was surprisingly good and I was nicely surprised by the rice being normal by Asian standards (I have no idea why but all the non-Asian rice I’ve consumed outside before were either half-cooked or soggy-to-the-extent-of-disgusting, this one isn’t.) It’s a bit soggy but still edible for me.

Day 2 at Paris was supposed to be a trip to the Monet mansion and gardens but I started to feel sick. So we gave it a miss and decided to move the signature landmark trips to this day instead. We started with Notre Dame which was quite close to our hotel (in actual fact, we accidentally came across it the day before when we lost our way when we got back from Versailles). Then we shot some photos at a place overlooking the Seine River, used the metro to get to Hotel de Ville where we took some pictures of the place they were fixing up for the 2024 Olympics as well as Hotel de Ville (we got lost half way and had to catch a bus there, I got the Navigo easy card for us both and preloaded it with 10 trips each. And it was only one stop but I didn’t know, Mum was quite sick and felt really tired and I never liked walking in the first place). The highlight of today was really the Louvre even though we were just doing the front and not visiting the inside and we even snapped a photo of the Eiffel Tower from some garden at the back of the Louvre. We also mistakenly thought the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was the Arc de Triomphe until I Googled it. And then voila, rain came and back to the hotel. Mum was firmly sick by now and had no appetite so this time only I ate. Not sure what I had.

Day 3 was basically just Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysses. Mum had high hopes of getting me a short jacket at Champs Elysses but we almost could not find it after finishing our shot of Arc de Triomphe and we could not even find the metro station. When rain descended, we hid out on the bus stop. I braved the rain after an extended wait and found Champs Elysses. There was a department store (we felt it was a shopping centre at first) so we went inside for lunch. We ordered the smoked eggplant and caviar with sour cream and pita bread appetiser (we could have ordered 30g caviar at 110 Euro but we were not sure we would like caviar that much so opted to go with the appetiser) and the fried calamari tentacles and the vegetable that looks like asparagus with a way bigger head. The calamari was okay but Mum did not like the caviar appetizer at all and it was too sour for my taste. We did walk along Champs Elysses after lunch but we did not really get to the clothing brands bit, we just stopped after LV and could not be bothered walking further and headed back. Bought something from the supermarket for dinner again. We both broke the fever that night.

On our final day, we had a night flight so we went to Montmartre in the morning (we got off at Abbesses and landed right in the midst of a flea market type of place). I ordered a Parisian breakfast for myself (croissant and hot chocolate/coffee plus orange juice) and an apple pie plus coffee for Mum. The apple pie turned out to be too sweet with the syrup so I told Mum to try it with just the apple fillings which was slightly sour but acceptable to me. We did not actually walk around much and just took a photo of some church because we were wary of heading deeper into the neighbourhood where we had to go through a steep incline first. So we actually missed the Moulin Rouge and the other known attractions in the neighbourhood. Ah well. We skipped lunch as we visited the Pantheon. We got back to the hotel around 2 or 3pm. Technically, we could have visited the Luxembourg garden over at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood but I could not be bothered because every time I walked outside, I just got a headache. So we just waited around for our taxi to the airport. We shared a lemon and poppyseed cake for dinner there before we boarded our plane back to Melbourne.

Chinese Lore- a selection of mythical fauna (26)

This is the last post for this particular series.

Lin

Physical Description:

A hound-like beast with tiger-like claws, scaled.

Special Properties:

It is good at jumping and pouncing. Consuming its meat can cure some health condition

Gui

Physical Description:

A turtle-like creature with a red head and a white body.

Special Properties:

It has fire resistance.

Zhi Tu

Physical Description:

A crow-like bird with red feet.

Special Properties:

It has fire resistance.

Mini Reading Challenge

To be honest, I am running out of things to say about reading on this blog other than my Book Discoveries. Also, I’m feeling like changing things a bit with reading other than just relying on my whims. To this end, I’ve set myself a mini reading challenge which is this: I would read 4 books this year that have elements that belong together in a theme irrespective of genre. Not 4 seasons because it’s too obvious and personally speaking, I don’t feel anything special for that theme.

My current thought on theme is running the lines of getting outside the box of the number 4. For example, I could pick a random 4 of star signs or constellations or Tarot cards and Google books that have those elements. I am currently really liking Constellations and this is what caught my eyes through a Google search:

The Wide Starlight by Nicole Lesperance
Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
Murder in Scorpio by Martha C. Lawrence
Collecting the Constellations by Emily Steers

The other aspect that I am changing is that I am going to seek a bit of input with this mini reading challenge. So feel free to leave me comments on theme and book suggestions.

Moonlake’s Writing Space (and Routine)

The photo is not actually my writing space. Mine consists of only a single monitor and a keyboard and none of the other stuff but it is much too cluttered and I don’t want you to see how messy it is. But I chose the pic above because it is pretty much the standard setup and I’m using AI so I’m just taking the first picture that’s more or less what I want. Anyway, going back to the topic, I’m not a very ritualistic person, rather I tend towards practical and utilitarian so I don’t have a dedicated writing space per se (and besides Wild Writing, I don’t really write by hand anymore). Instead, this is basically a space where I write, work and play games with my PC.

Now, while I don’t have any writing rituals, I do have a writing routine. It has been evolving but the basic principle is that I pick 5 or 6 days a week to work on my WIP and a set number of hours to devote to writing&related each day. By writing & related, I mean everything that feeds into my writing. Half of it is reading which is split between English/Kindle books nowadays which is purely leisure and what I call emotional reading- re-reading a specific old or new online novel in Chinese and recording down bits where I remember an emotional reaction to. The other half is not all directly related to the WIP but rather more exercises to hone my writer’s craft overall. RIght now, I only have one WIP writing session per writing day (I did have a spell of two writing sessions per writing day but that’s a few years ago now) and I’ve tweaked things from meeting a given word count to achievement based. Part of it is summer lethargy and procrastination and part of it is that there are just a lot of scenes where I feel ‘stuck’ constantly that I encounter everywhere for this project.

That’s the state of things right now with me. Feel free to leave me comments to let me know what you think.

23 days Italy, Switzerland and France trip on trains- France part 2

We caught the Flix bus from Annecy to Lyon and though the seats were a bit cramped, we no longer had to worry about porting luggages etc. I felt like I would do more Flix bus intercity trips in the future if I could.

Our 3 star hotel at Lyon was really cramped but it had a good location. We mainly visited Place Bellecour and Vieux Lyon. Originally we planned to have lunch at Place Bellecour and almost had it at a Chinese wanton shop but the French waitress was adamant that we had to either sit at the table that Mum felt would make everyone gawp at us because we were right in front of the menu or basically share a ‘table’ with the other 3 Chinese customers (it was a row of 3 tables that was jammed together into a big table of 6) when there was an entire row of free tables on the other side. Mum did not like that treatment so we eventually walked off after sitting down at the free table and had food from the supermarket as lunch. We went to Vieux Lyon after lunch but it felt like a waste of time to be honest. We had the Palme d’Or pizza for dinner and I ate most of it because Mum had no appetite. Overall, it was too salty.

Day 2 at Lyon was spent at Vienne. I think the highlight of this day was the quay and Cathédrale Saint-Maurice and then the rain cut the trip short such that even though I had already bought a return ticket at 5pm Mum decided we would buy new tickets on the spot to get out of the rain. And this is when I found out that I don’t need to prebook the Lyon to Vienne tickets at all because the return tickets bought on the day were exactly the same price as the tickets I bought online. Ah well. We bought something from the supermarket for dinner that day. I think by this point Mum was already down with the cold for many days and I caught mine on the first day in Annecy.

Remarkable Women in Ancient China (23)- Qiu Jin

Who is She?

A feminist, revolutionist and writer/poet

Notable Life Events:

Born in 1875 (end of the Qing dynasty) as Qiu Gui Jin, to a family of government officials- her great-grandfather was a provincial governor, her grandfather and father held official positions in Taiwan.
She got married in 1896 which was considered late for her era. It was an unhappy marriage as her husband was from a rich merchant family and only cared about enjoying himself
In 1903, she befriended the wife of one of her husband’s colleagues Wu Zhi Ying and became sworn sister with her and she raised a controversy when she dressed in men’s clothes when going to the cinema on the Mid-autumn festival. In the next year, she divorced her husband and using her own jewelry as well as sponsorship from Wu Zhi Ying, she went abroad to Japan to study- she got the opportunity because Dowager Empress Cixi was eager to modernise China after losing the first Sino-Japanese war
In Japan, she was very active in revolutionary activities organised by fellow Chinese students, founded a few student groups and eventually got the position of strategist at the revolutionary society under two fellow students who founded the society on behalf of Sun Yat-sen who eventually led the revolution that successfully overthrew the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. It was also in Japan that she changed her name to Qiu Jin.
She returned to China in February 1906 in protest of the laws restricting the freedoms of Chinese students in Japan that came into effect in the previous year. In China, she founded the “Chinese female newspaper” that only had two issues and then co-founded a school for females with her cousin Xu Xi Lin.
In 1907 she took over as the head of a school for sport teachers that was founded by her cousin and others back in 1905 that was really the cover for a place that trained revolutionaries in military skills. In the same year, all the founders of the sports school were executed for assassinating their Manchu superiors and Qiu Jin was arrested in the same year. She could have fled but chose to stay at the female school where she was the principal and was apprehended there by Manchu authorities. She was tortured but refused to admit involvement in the scheme so the authorities used her own writings to incriminate her. She was beheaded in her home village at the age of 31.

Why is she Remarkable?

According to Wikipedia, “she is considered a national heroine and a martyr of republicanism and feminism”.

Moonlake’s Thoughts on her:

I only knew of her as a writer/poet before I looked into her and she actually reminds me of Li Qing Zhao who is also from a family of high societal standings, highly educated, patriotic and a female poet.

Chinese Lore- a selection of mythical fauna (25)

Dai Bird

Physical Description:

An owl-like bird with three eyes and ears.

Special Properties:

Its call sounds like that of deers. Consuming its meat cures diseases to do with too much moisture.

Yao

Physical Description:

A pheasant-like bird with a long tail, a red body and an indigo beak.

Special Properties:

The sound its makes sounds like its name. Consuming its meat prevents nightmares.

Qie Zhi

Physical Description:

An owl-like bird with a white head and red body.

Special Properties:

It has fire resistance.

Qing Geng

Physical Description:

A magpie-like bird with whites eyes, a white beak, an indigo body and a white tail.

Special Properties:

The sound it makes sounds like its name. It is resistant to diseases.