Chinese GL

Orders will be opening on 25 November for the baihe-adjacent short story collection Antonym (反义词, pinyin: fanyi ci). The theme of the collection is 'opposites attract'. I use the term 'baihe-adjacent' advisedly, having read a couple of such collections in the past. As these stories are print-first (and, indeed, print-only) rather than web-first, they tend to be rather more constrained in how romantically explicit they can be. The quality also tends to be somewhat uneven over the collection, but there are usually at least a couple of standout stories, which make good starter pieces for translators.

The publisher has said that there will be eleven stories in the collection, and provided teaser quotes and images for three of them: 'The Island Where I Said Goodbye to Her' (告别她的岛屿, pinyin: gaobie ta de daoyu), tagged as 'caged nightingale/wild rose'; 'Spring in the North' (北境之春, pinyin: beijing zhi chun), which seems to have a scifi/post-apocalyptic theme given that it's tagged as 'cool commander/loyal 'mutant'; and 'Patient, Please Take a Number' (这位病人请先挂号, pinyin: zhewei bingren, qing xian guahao), tagged as 'himbo death goddess/grumpy doctor'.

Orders can be made on Tmall via a number of bookshops, including the following:

• Manyu
• Xinshidai
• Chuanshu
  
• Jinxin
  
• Tuyou
  
• Changjiang
  
• Kuaile

Each copy comes with a poster of the cover art, several photocards, and a couple of paper bracelets (details here). As usual, each of the bookshops listed above has commissioned its own merch, details of which can be seen on their respective product pages. The first 500 to 100 customers to order (depending on the bookshop) will receive a copy signed by the editor.