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2024: Year in Review

Well, let me tell you this was a wild, life-altering year: My partner traveled over 1000 miles to live with me. I found out I had a low-grade cancerous pancreatic tumor and had a Whipple, one of the most complex abdominal surgeries (period!) and the most invasive surgeries I’ve had in my life at the start of October. I’m still in recovery and will be for the next year before I’m normal-normal. In March, I started working full-time at Wizards of the Coast and became a Visual Designer for Magic: The Gathering. A little out of order but whatever. And that isn’t even the half of it but thats all I’ll share for now.

Here’s some more of my work that released this latter half of the year!


Honored to be in Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art edited by Indrapramit Das, a fantastic speculative author who I’ve admired for a long time. The story I have in this collection is called No Future But Infinity Itself which follows a guardian-artist and his wife in a far future world where he must make mass-scale art to dissuade a remnant humanity from unearthing its past mistakes. The book copy:

In this volume from the Twelve Tomorrows series, Deep Dream, ten writers imagine the different ways in which art forms might evolve, devolve, shift, and transform in the decades and centuries to come. They consider how the rapid progress of technology will interact with different mediums of art or give rise to new ones, and what the lives and inner worlds of different kinds of artists might look like in the future as they adapt to rapidly shifting eras amidst anthropogenic global threats like climate change and fascism. 

Also astounded that my story The Blade and the Bloodwright was chosen for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 edited by Hugh Howey, John Joseph Adams! I’ve coveted being in one of these collections and it feels good for one of my favorite stories to be acknowledged by these editors. Still amazed by this lol. And the back copy:

“These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest editor Hugh Howey in his introduction. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 promises a treasure trove of audacious characters, daring worldbuilding, and twisted realties. A sibling duo of supernatural hitmen. A traveling spellbreaker and his trusty alligator mount. Superheroes registering for work. Sentient spaceships with an AI-human interface grow up together with their human pilots. From a Korean folk-tale retelling about the goddess of shamans, to a car, resurrected from obsolescence via automancy, for a road trip from California to Maine, these are stories that, for Howey, “challenged my worldview, that made me exercise new mental muscles, and that brought me to tears.”

I don’t want to repeat myself so check my earlier post here for all my work that came out/was forthcoming by March.

Happy end of year, winter, whatever ❤

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Concrete Irrationality

Just a smattering of updates!

First up: I’m honored to be featured in AN OCEAN OF WONDER: THE FANTASTIC IN THE PACIFIC edited by kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, Joyce Pualani Warren, and Cristina Bacchilega! A little about the book:

An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific brings together fifty writers and artists from across Moananuiākea working in myriad genres across media, ranging from oral narratives and traditional wonder tales to creative writing as well as visual artwork and scholarly essays. Collectively, this anthology features the fantastic as present-day Indigenous Pacific world-building that looks to the past in creating alternative futures, and in so doing reimagines relationships between peoples, environments, deities, nonhuman relatives, history, dreams, and storytelling.

Wonder is activated by curiosity, humility in the face of mystery, and engagement with possibilities. We see wonder and the fantastic as general modes of expression that are not confined to realism. As such, the fantastic encompasses fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, fabulation, horror, fairy tale, utopia, dystopia, and speculative fiction. We include Black, feminist, and queer futurisms, Indigenous wonderworks, Hawaiian moʻolelo kamahaʻo and moʻolelo āiwaiwa, Sāmoan fāgogo, and other non-mimetic genres from specific cultures, because we recognize that their refusal to adopt restrictive Euro-American definitions of reality is what inspires and enables the fantastic to flourish.

As artistic, intellectual, and culturally based expressions that encode and embody Indigenous knowledge, the multimodal moʻolelo in this collection upend monolithic, often exoticizing, and demeaning stereotypes of the Pacific and situate themselves in conversation with critical understandings of the global fantastic, Indigenous futurities, social justice, and decolonial and activist storytelling. In this collection, Oceanic ideas and images surround and connect to Hawaiʻi, which is for the three coeditors, a piko (center); at the same time, navigating both juxtaposition and association, the collection seeks to articulate pilina (relationships) across genres, locations, time, and media and to celebrate the multiplicity and relationality of the fantastic in Oceania.

Art by A.C. Esguerra

The third annual Minicomic Awards virtual ceremony will be held TODAY 3/14 at 3pm PST where FIVE winners will split our $3700 PRIZE POOL! Leslie and I have organized this the past 2 years and we’re excited to fold this into the Co-op so it has more support and longevity. Come celebrate minicomics with us!

I have a short story in Dark Matter INK’s 2024 anthology THE OFF-SEASON ed. by Marissa van Uden & featuring 25 brand-new tales of mysticism, psychedelia, outsiders, obsessions, weird sea life, and more! Pre-orders are available.

The Cartoonist Cooperative turned 1 at the end of February! Here’s an adorable little image of just a small portion of our 800+ (!!!) members to celebrate!

Death in the Mouth Vol 2 is about 75% completed and I’m sending out the first round of backer rewards next week! Here’s the shirts I made for it, very pleased with how they turned out!

And a little bit of paper clay sculpting! I had this idea to make frames but we’ll see how they hold up once I hang them with the thin chains I have in mind…

That’s all for now!

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Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star in stores August 1st!

The second volume in my sci-fi trilogy comes out August 1st and you can preorder it at any comic or bookstore!

The planet Eriatarka grows more inhospitable as it’s colonization at the hand of the Chorus continues.

Vep and her fellow students are reaching the end of their basic combat training in the pneumatic arts and begin to exercise their abilities outside the colony-city of Elefstris. Their objective: subdue the unruly planet bent on scouring the Chorus’ presence from its surface. But what exactly are they subjugating? And what will the cost of conquering be?

PRAISE

“Prism Stalker rewires your brain with every page turn, leaving you both entranced by its invention and emboldened by its indignation. This is big-idea sci-fi of the highest order, and a rare depiction of the alien that feels truly and thoroughly ALIEN.”—Ezra Clayton Daniels, author of Upgrade Soul and BTTM FDRS.

“Vibrant, visceral, and vast in scope, Prism Stalker is a mind-bending, evocative, yet intimate story of a young woman’s journey into herself—her past, her identity, the memories that make her whole. A wildly imaginative interrogation of the nuances of colonialism and complicity played out on a galactic scale, you will not soon forget the images, words, and world of Prism Stalker.”—Karin Lowachee, award winning author of the Warchild Mosaic.
 
“The most visually innovative graphic novel in years, PRISM STALKER pairs stunning art with a richly layered sci-fi thriller about the young scouts caught between a colonial empire telling them less than the truth and a planet that is more than it seems. Book of the year, hands down.”—Alex de Campi, creator of Dracula, Motherf**ker! and Twisted Romance
 
“Reading this book is a mindful experience. It demands your awareness, and like all great science fiction it will have you contemplating your own world and the roles we play in it. Sloane Leong’s Prism Stalker is a comic and its creator transcends, and we come out better for it.”—Nick Dragotta, creator of Ghost Cage and co-creator of East of West
 
“Electrifying and hallucinatory, Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star is like a psychic bomb exploding in your conscience. It’s a nuanced meditation on settler colonialism in space. But it’s also a mind-blowing, eyeball-melting trip through biological cities and sentient planets, full of flesh-ripping battles and satisfyingly incomprehensible alien life. The gorgeous, wild characters in this book will blast their way into your heart and refuse to leave.”—Annalee Newitz, author of The Terraformers and Autonomous

I’m also having a release party and will be attending some conventions to promote it, all listed below!

Read the first 10 pages after the cut below!

Continue reading “Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star in stores August 1st!”
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Award Eligibility and 2022 Recap!

Making one of these before the year is out because I’m predicting full body-mind hibernation in December. First off, here’s the short stories I was able to publish this year!

Paradise – A tropical biopunk indigi-horror story following a lone survivor in post-apc Hawaii – 7k words – Published online at Expat Press (2022) – Published in the print edition in Death in the Mouth: Original Horror from People of Color (2022)

What Was Your Inspiration? – A ‘hard’ SF story about an artist whose thoughts are being monitored while making art. – 2k words – Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine September/October Issue (2022)


What Salt Will Bring to Bear – A sci-fantasy story about a soldier looking for a place to die on a foreign planet after a great interstellar war – 5k – Dark Matter Magazine Issue 008 (2022)

Stars May Hunger, Suns May Still – An indigeous sci-fi novelette about the daughter of exiled women who undergoes a strange transformation as she comes of age – 10k words – Snaring New Suns: Speculative Works From Hawai’i And Beyond, Bamboo Ridge #122 (2022)

And a general recap! I’m not feeling too wordy so here’s just a bulleted list of some highlights:

  • One of my stories was translated into Spanish, my first ever translated work!
  • I also had one of stories read by professional for the first time, which was incredible to hear: listen to it here!
  • I wrote a 9-episode audio drama starring Nikki Tuazon and Harry Shum Jr, written by Millie Ho, Monte Lin, Curtis C. Chen, myself, and Jenn Reesefor RealmFM called Echo Park.
  • Leslie and I ran the first Minicomic Awards which was a blast! We read over 100 minicomics and then chose our favorites for 5 different categories. Each winner won $400 which we were stoked about since no other comics awards comes with monetary prizes. You can read a write-up of the event here and watch the award ceremony here!
  • I also helped program my first virtual convention, Flights of Foundry!
  • Me and Anna were nominated for the Cartoonist Studio Prize for our graphic novel Graveneye.
  • I got to attend Clarion West Writing Workshop after several years of waiting (thanks pandemic!). It was energizing, demanding and I was astounded by the stories of every classmate. Such a fun, inspiring summer…
  • I was one of the judges for the LA Times Book Prize and had a blast reading hundreds and hundreds of graphic novels.
  • I made a cartoonist webring!
  • I drew a book cover for my friend Charity, one of my favorite writers around!
  • I joined Unicorn Authors Club as a mentor and coach.
  • I wrote my first screenplays for an animated series (secret for now)!
  • Death in the Mouth: Original Horror from People of Color was published October 1st and we had a wonderful book virtual book tour to celebrate!
  • I went to Boise Comics Festival, the first comics show I’ve been to post-pandemic. It was held at the zoo which was rad, all cons should be held at zoos!
  • I finally finished Prism Stalker 2: The Weeping Star, out from from Dark Horse July 4th 2023. Lucas Gattonni lettered the book and worked with me on styling it just right!
  • Put together a Cronenberg fanzine called Murdered Futures (out in December)!
  • I made it into BRAVE NEW WEIRD: THE BEST NEW WEIRD HORROR VOL. 1 with my story Paradise!

Some media favorites:

Comics: The Third Person by Emma Grove, Murasaki Yamada’s Talk to My Back, Meläg: Town of Fables by Bong Redila, Letters for Lucardo: The Silent Lord by Otava Heikkilä’, Step By Bloody Step By Mathias Bergara Simon Spurrier, Orphan and the Five Beasts by James Stokoe

TV: Better Call Saul, Raised by Wolves, Outer Range, Barry, Severance, The Old Man, The Boys, The Rehearsal, House of the Dragon, Yellowstone, Players, Righteous Gemstones, Irma Vep

Movies: Crimes of the Future, Resurrection, After Yang, Barbarian, Turning Red, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Parallel Mothers, Vesper, The Northman, Tar, The Banshees of Inisherin, RRR, The Stranger, Mad God

Games: Perfect Tides, Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnarok, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Pokémon: Violet, Scorn

I don’t really keep up on new-new books but in my book club, we read: Lindqvist’s I Am Behind You, McCarthy’s Child of God, Babel 17, Nabokov’s The Defense, Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise, Ojeda’s Jawbone, Lolita, Ruthnum’s Helpmeet, The Bad Lands, Eschbach’s The Carpet Makers, and Bulawayo’s Glory. Not sure what our December book will be…

All in all, another mixed bag of year. Don’t know that there’s any other kind unless you get really lucky! I’m hoping this will be my last year in Portland, too, since I’m aiming to move to LA with the rest of the hopeful artist masses during summer next year. Wish me luck!