I always build a playlist as I’m working on a book. I don’t really listen to music while I actually write–it usually distracts more than helps me–but I like to play it to get into the headspace, and the process of figuring out the book’s sound can help me hone the vision for the book itself.
For WHEN THEY BURNED THE BUTTERFLY, which is about a girl gang with fire magic in 70s Singapore, I drew heavily on angry women songs, especially with rock bents. Some of the songs I think encapsulate the book’s aura are:
King – Florence & the Machine
“But a woman is a changeling, always shifting shape/Just when you think you have it figured out/Something new begins to take” and “I need my golden crown of sorrow, my bloody sword to swing/I need my empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology/I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king”
In this book there are girls with changing faces haunting the streets, which hover on the precipice of some oncoming change. I call it the coming-of-age of both a girl and a nation; it’s an era of creating your own mythology and figuring out who they want to be, and for my main characters, that looks like adopting roles outside of those prescribed for girls in society.
I Did Something Bad – Taylor Swift
“I can feel the flames on my skin/Crimson red paint on my lips/If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothin’/I don’t regret it one bit ’cause he had it comin’/They say I did something bad/Then why’s it feel so good?”
I always have a Taylor song on a book playlist and this book is heavily reputation coded. I constantly channelled an unapologetic energy for these girls; they’re badass and morally grey and they exist outside of male dominated structures, but they’re also still defining their own femininity–and of course there are literal flames on their skin.
Fear the Future – St Vincent
“When the club come and go/To the top of your skull/I run for you, what can I do?/When the war started new/In our bed, in our room/I’ll come for you, come for me, too”
Butterfly is set in 1970s Singapore, in the early nation-building years shortly after achieving independence from the British. The backdrop is one that’s rapidly changing and existentially concerned about survival and cementing a future for the country; on a smaller scale, it’s also about these girls in a violent gang environment trying to keep themselves intact. There’s a lot of short lives and the looming risk of death, and clinging on to each other amidst that.
I am not a woman I’m a god – halsey
“I am not a woman, I’m a god/I am not a martyr, I’m a problem”
The book is about girls with a fire god in their veins. Maybe the song isn’t quite right; they’re both women and gods, both martyrs and problems. The main character Adeline is absolutely a problem for everyone she comes across, but I’m very affectionate towards problem girls.
Burning – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
“Believer/Took me over like a fever”
Religiosity and fervour play a big part in this book: as an atmosphere, as a magic system (the gangs gain magic from gods), as a theme of devotion, and exploring the changing landscape of religion in the country as Christianity grew alongside English education and modernisation. But specifically, the romance in this book is feverish and quasi-religious; lovers and gods are a little intertwined.
WHEN THEY BURNED THE BUTTERFLY by Wen-yi Lee
In this fierce, glamorous adult fantasy debut, Silvia Moreno-Garcia meets Fonda Lee, with the feverish intensity of R.F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy.
Singapore, 1972: Newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters in Chinese secret societies are the last conduits of their ancestors’ migrant gods, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place magic has not been assimilated and legislated away.
Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley barfight—a girl with a butterfly tattoo—she discovers she’s far from alone.
Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian.
But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it.
Romance Fantasy | Fantasy Dark | LGBTQ [Tor Books, On Sale: October 21, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781250369451 / eISBN: 9781250369468]
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About Wen-yi Lee
Wen-yi Lee is a Clarion West alum from Singapore who likes writing about girls with bite, feral nature, and ghosts. Her speculative fiction has appeared in venues such as Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Uncanny, as well as in various anthologies. The Dark We Know is her debut novel.
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