Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Nghi! Please tell us about yourself and your debut novella, THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE. So I spent a good many years thinking I couldn’t write novels, and that I would always love writing short stories best. Then the Tor call came for novellas, and it suddenly struck me, hey, 20,000 to 40,000 words, I know what that looks like! I can do that!  With respectable parameters and a deadline, I wrote The Empress of Salt and Fortune in about a month. I feel like this says something about me, and I’m still not sure if it’s good or bad. The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a story about memory and love. There’s a lot of fear and fury in it, a lot of terrible things that happen to the people who least deserve them, and there is a victory at the end, but yeah, mostly it’s about the people we remember, how we love them while they’re here, and how we love them after they’re gone. It’s also got talking birds, fried morel mushrooms, war mammoths, and a ton of fortunetelling, as well! The Empress In-yo has gone through great lengths to keep…

I got my first job at eleven, working at a doggy daycare, and I’ve been more-or-less continuously employed since then. Now, at age 34, my full work history is long and weird: server, gas station attendant, construction worker, theater set builder, house cleaner, bookseller, landscaper, bike mechanic, teacher, freelance writer, and editor. A lot of this work brought me joy, particularly when I was lucky enough to have great coworkers, or supervisors who invested in their teams. I’ve also seen firsthand the ways employers can exploit, belittle, and manipulate their workers. I poured years of frustration into my novella, FINNA. FINNA begins in an enormous homegoods store where, thanks to the uniquely awful corporate layout, reality has a tendency to tear doorways into other worlds. When an elderly customer wanders into a wormhole in a furniture showroom, the task of tracking her down falls to Jules and Ava, the workers with the least seniority. (There used to be a specialized division that handled these cases, but they were cut during the Recession.) Navigating a series of hostile, alien worlds would be hard enough, but Ava and Jules broke up three days ago. Before you ask: no, there’s no overtime (unless…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  Prosper’s Demon 2–What is it about?  A man called Prosper and his demon. 3–What words best describe your protagonists?  The protagonists are (a) the hero (b) Prosper of Schanz (Leonardo da Vinci thinly disguised as a fictional character) (c) a demon. The hero; the last, best hope of the human race, but not very nice (b) Prosper; an idiot (c) the demon; hard done by 4–What side character steals every scene he or she is in?  There are no side characters. The book is practically spherical. 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  Using the notation above; (a) nobody (b) his own ego (c) the Lord of the Flies 6–What do you love about the setting of your book?  It’s warm and sort of Austrian, and if you leave the book by way of the top of the spine and turn left, there’s a really nice pavement café where you can get excellent strudel 7–Are you a plotter (follow an outline) or a pantster (write by the seat of your pants)? Pantster. Pantster till I die. 8–What is an ideal writing day for you?   It starts around…