Phoenix Tile

I’m a demigod, if you want to use the crude name for it. Things fall my way. I have friends in low places and IOUs in high places. I’m the smoke but not the mirrors. I’m the smile that tips the scales, the person you meet once who you’ve known your whole life.

A trickster tale set in an Chinese-flavoured urban fantasy version of Sydney: a demi-god has less than twenty-four hours to earn his way back into the pantheon, or cease to exist.

Read if you like: Ocean’s Eleven but the money in the vault is continued existence; gratuitous descriptions of yum cha and custard tarts; Loki fan-fiction.

Read for free online.

Included in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol 2, ed. Paula Guran.
Included in the 2022 Locus Recommended Reading List
Included in A.C. Wise’s Favourite Short Stories of 2022
Recommended by Alex Brown for Reactor: “I could happily read a whole book about Ah Lok’s urban fantasy adventures.”
Recommended by Karen Burham in Locus

Published in khōréō Issue 2.1, April 2022. (Edited by Rowan Morrison. Narrated by me! Audio produced by Lian Xia Rose.)

Cover of Khoreo Issue 2.1 where Phoenix Tile was first published. Cover image is of three women with feathered wings coming from their back or arms, laughing as birds circle around them. Cover image of khōréō 2.1 is “We’re From Here” by Marika Bailey. Man, it’s gorgeous.