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Mary Soon Lee

@marysoonlee.bsky.social

380 followers 76 following 950 posts

Author, cat owner, and book addict. Website: https://marysoonlee.com/

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · Nov 24

Hello, this is Mary Soon Lee entering stage left.... Hoping to find some of the folks I used to follow on that other social media platform....

For anyone wondering who I am, I write poetry and fiction, much of it SF and F.

I also have a cat, Pilot.

And I like to post about books I've enjoyed :-)

Photo of Pilot, a ginger cat with a white bib and white paws. Pilot is sitting on the box of the board game Terraforming Mars; he is staring up to his left. Behind him is an orchid, mostly hidden, and windows looking onto trees.

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 21h

#TSOTD_note Monster: Opening Gambit

- I love Atun:

Atun caught the king
as Xau's knees buckled
...
his king whom he would shield
at any cost

- rhyme for the monster, perhaps from a future ballad of Enlai's?

- close to the book's end, Kuan appears again briefly in a way that's important to me

✏️📖

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 1d

I am so glad that you liked #2 -- I'm looking forward to reading it very much :-)

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 1d

P.S. Many thanks to @svartjagr.bsky.social for repeatedly nudging me toward this book.

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 1d

Update from the reading front: finished "The Tainted Cup" by Robert Jackson Bennett. Marvelous fantasy murder mystery. Superb worldbuilding + I love Din (the narrator and central character).

www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Almost enough to stop me craving more Slough House books, but not quite!

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 1d

#TSOTD_note Coast

- a short Hana/Xau poem

- I love the sea. [I know that's not unusual.]

No gold, no jewels,
no herd of horses
equal to this gift.

- the first draft had an introductory 3 lines balancing the closing 3 lines:

No words, no drawings,
no inward imagining
prepared her for this:

✏️📖🐉

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, dearie me indeed. Where does one even begin?

My one regret about Diviner's Bow was the absence of Turtles, but I understand the books are not each a thousand pages long -- alas! -- and there were norbears :-)

Coming week includes plumbers, window person, medical appointment.

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 3d

#TSOTD_note Lantern Festival

- accompanied by Gary McCluskey's superb art

- when I was small and my father's relatives visited, they would give me red envelopes with money

- this is an important poem for Keng:

Thought of men ending up
with no legs or no arms
because they'd fought for him.

✏️📖🐉

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 3d

Very glad the beach outing was fun.

I also had a fun day, spent with my daughter. Yes, we did spend over four hours driving to and from a DMV so she could renew her license (we needed to get to a DMV in her home state) but it was (very) nice being together and we had other fun later

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 3d

#TSOTD_note Bowl

- first published in Ship of Fools

- "how the willow was drawn
in air as much as brushstroke."

- this poem doesn't contain any major moments, but I am fond of it

- Meqing is large and contains many lives we never see

- I'm not at all good at drawing/art, but my daughter is

✏️📖🐉

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 5d

#TSOTD_note Way-Fort

- Yang Du went inside to shovel more horse shit....

- I like Yang Du, who appears only once (quite a few point-of-view characters are seen only once)

- I enjoy Leong being alarmist about his health

- I enjoy Leong in general

- I perhaps enjoy my own book more than I should

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 5d

Update! I am one chapter into The Tainted Cup and already it is deeply appealing. I want to crawl further into it, but there are Things That Must Be Done.

More book suggestions very welcome, since your recommendations are typically books that I end up loving.

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 5d

As our family says, soup is nice.

Bubo! Firstly, a striking name for a rat, bringing the worst associations of rats and plague to mind. I thought he was a fine and bold fellow. [Snuff is my favorite, however.]

Weather in these parts is cooling, but not yet properly cold.

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 5d

#TSOTD_note Bridge

- A war that did not come.
Days gave way to weeks,
weeks to months

- this is partly because I added a year to the course of the story, so everything unfolds a bit more slowly

- first time readers may be impatient, but I wanted Xau to have that year

✏️📖🐉🐴

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 6d

"HELL no" absolutely should have been an option on that ballot....

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 6d

Thank you :-)

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 6d

Thank you! 🐈‍⬛🐈

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 6d

For the curious, the October update of my newsletter may be read here:

mailchi.mp/f72546af2d84...

It includes poetry news, a photo of me with Pilot (my cat) on my 60th birthday, and book recommendations.

✏️

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 6d

!!!! 🐉📖🐉!!!!

oboist73.bsky.social @oboist73.bsky.social · 6d

The first part of the r/fantasy readalong for The Sign of the Dragon by Mary Soon Lee is up today! www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/...

From the Fantasy community on Reddit: The Sign of the Dragon by Mary Soon Lee READALONG — Part 1: Crown

Explore this post and more from the Fantasy community

www.reddit.com

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 7d

#TSOTD_note Recruits

- first published in Mirror Dance

- "Do not spend their lives lightly" - many horses die, trusting Xau, who never spends their lives lightly

- the phrase "shadow and darkness" also appears in the earlier Donal/Xau poems Training: Shield + Two Kings + Allies

✏️📖🐉🐴

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 7d

Thank you very much for publishing such a beautiful edition of this lovely book :-)

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 7d

Update from the reading front: finished Jamie Lackey's novella The Forest Gods, a sequel to her wonderful novella, The Forest God. This one is wonderful too. (Read them in order.)

www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

📖📚

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Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 7d

#TSOTD_note Oath

- this poem had 5 rounds of revision

- the final round, suggested by F. J. Bergmann, was to indent the opening/closing stanzas

- I had indented them in my first draft and later un-indented them

- ah, the glamorous world of poetry revision!

- I do prefer the stanzas indented :-)

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 8d

The magic show sounds great :-)

Your glass pattern looks lovely but very ambitious!

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 8d

Serendipity! I'm very glad that worked out well and I hope you are back in touch with them soon :-)

Mary Soon Lee @marysoonlee.bsky.social · 8d

Update from the reading front: finished Sub-Majer's Challenge, the 25th book in L. E. Modesitt Jr's Saga of Recluce. This is the third book about the rise of Alyiakal through the ranks, and I enjoyed it very much. I greatly admire Modesitt's worldbuilding.

www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

📖📚