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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 18/09/2026

Bandit heroes, horse-dragons, beheadings that don't stick, and warlords who become gods. Old Chinese lit is wayyy trippier than you think. And John Zhu built a podcast that retells it in English! See our #flightsoffoundry interview with him at 7PM CDT tonight: www.accelevents.com/e/flights-of...

Picture of John Zhu under the "Flights of Foundry" banner, with "Guest of Honor: A/V Narrative" and the dates and slug of the Flights of Foundry convention (Sept 18-20 Virtual, https://flights-of-foundry.org, "The round-the-clock, international convention for speculative creatives and fans")

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 18/09/2026

How do you plan a creative project that will last 3+ years? John Zhu knew bringing ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS to English podcast form would take at least that long. 12 years and 4 Chinese epics later... See us interview him 7PM CDT at #flightsoffoundry! www.accelevents.com/e/flights-of...

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 18/09/2026

Ancient Chinese literature is rife with melee fights, larger-than-life characters, & the supernatural. John Zhu is making these epics accessible to modern English audiences -- as a podcast! We'll interview him as #flightsoffoundry Guest of Honor, today 7PM CDT: www.accelevents.com/e/flights-of...

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 21/05/2026

I am still very sick so have a ramble about "r"! In my Mathematics of Word of Mouth thread, someone linked me to these very cool slides by @swilua.bsky.social They show correlation between various factors and sales. But what is "r"?

Slides that show various factors affecting book sales, with lots of text:

(slide 1)
Book characteristics correlated with sales

Size of author advance r = 0.4
Relative fame of author (includes major awards) r = 0.4
“Carryover” (association with something famous) r = 0.4
Cover likability score r = up to 0.4
Number of Amazon reviews r = 0.4
Number of author’s Twitter followers r = 0.3
Starred reviews in SLJ, PW, or Booklist r = 0.3
Higher number of pages (likely due to crossover appeal) r = 0.3

These are all marketing factors

(slide 2)
Book characteristics likely correlated with sales

Book was acquired at auction or in a pre-empt r = 0.2
Book was acquired as part of a multi-book deal r = 0.2
Book is part of a series r = 0.2
Author has and maintains a website r = 0.2
“The book made me feel ‘yearning’” r = 0.2

These are primarily marketing factors

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 19/05/2026

Anyway, we're all prob familiar with graphs like this from covid -- (source: Simon CM. 2020. The SIR dynamic model of infectious disease transmission and its analogy with chemical kinetics. PeerJ Physical Chemistry 2:e14 doi.org/10.7717/peer..., CC-BY)

A blue line zooms upward and then levels off at 80% (cumulative cases). There's also a red line showing a small high bump matching the blue zoom-up (infections) and a green line that zooms down from 100% opposite the blue line to plateau at 20% (susceptible).

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 12/05/2026

It's always such a gift to be reviewed by a reviewer I already respect as much as @vanessafogg.bsky.social. The full Locus review on THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is stunning and wow this pull quote:

Text: "THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is a sharp, brilliant book with ambitious, high-concept worldbuilding and ideas. It's also devastating, with an ending that haunts me days later. I'm calling it now: This will be one of the most talked-about books of the year." --Vanessa Fogg

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 07/05/2026

Ok this is hard to capture in a photo but this is legit one of the PRETTIEST hardcovers I've ever gotten There's all sorts of texturing it's such design porn I just want to pet it forever

Shiny, gleamy textured dim sum on a book cover that you seriously want to eat

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 19/12/2025

Can someone from @sfwa.org please explain what this means? Genuine question, as the other rule already covers text, so it's clearly not about text... This would seem to bar any use of say a search engine in writing research (all modern search engines use LLMs, including the non-gen results list)

"Works that used LLMs at any point during the writing process must disclose this upon acceptance of the nomination, and those works will be disqualified."

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 05/11/2024

Until I tried "how private is voting". This one is INTERESTING Unlike the others, it's more quiet at elections and then gets BUSY right around 2022 ...what happened in 2022...

A line graph that's near zero with a few small spikes, then starts zooming up and down higher and higher like someone fed it Miracle Gro

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 05/11/2024

So I moseyed over to Google trends and tried different variations of "is my vote secret" or "is my vote private". Some had the usual bumps you'd expect before every election, like this:

A line graph with little spikes, most of which approximately match election years in the United States.

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 09/05/2024

hey hey, I have a Reddit AMA tomorrow (Thursday) starting at 10am CDT! Come by r/fantasy and ask me questions! Proof that it's really me:

Photo of me holding a sign that says "Reddit AMA - Name: SL Huang - Username: slhuang - May 9, 2024 - 10am CDT"

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 12/01/2024

I love this mini-review! Especially the last bit: "exciting and thought-provoking... but if you have any triggers, they are probably in this book; and if you want your reads to comfort or reinforce your Western expectations, moralities, or pieties, you are in the wrong place."

Screenshot of text: "The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang - This wuxia novel, which is set in an alternate Song Dynasty China and based (in queer and genderbent ways) on the classic Chinese novel Water Margin, is an exciting and thought-provoking sword & sorcery adventure, but if you have any triggers, they are probably in this book; and if you want your reads to comfort or reinforce your Western expectations, moralities, or pieties, you are in the wrong place."

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 23/12/2023

Omg THE WATER OUTLAWS is one of @sarahgailey.bsky.social's top ten of the YEAR 😭😭

Screenshot of text: "The Water Outlaws by SL Huang: I had no idea how much I needed this book until I read it. SL Huang delivers cinematic action and champion-level worldbuilding within a story of magic, court drama, and flawed justice. This book is fun as hell to read, but still delivers deeply contemplative reflections on the nature of violence within an intricate universe."

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 10/12/2023

I can do you one better -- I went and pulled captions from the video so you can see the descriptions. Skip to page 2 for the books :)

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 30/09/2023

You’ll see this convo among book collectors, where earlier printings can be valuable... Or, yanno, among people like me who are just TOTAL DORKS This is the first time one of my books has had a second printing (YAY!), so I might go out & buy it so I can have a copy without the “1” 🤣🤣🤣

The bottom of THE WATER OUTLAWS copyright page, reading "0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1". The "1" is crossed out in red with the notes "The 1 will be DELETED!!" "Go away 1!!" and "Get outta here!"

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 30/09/2023

Have you ever looked at a copyright page and seen this line? This is the “number line” or “printer’s key” & the lowest number tells you which printing a book’s on! (I think 0 is 10 here, so 1's lowest = 1st print run) For the second printing... drum roll... the “1” will be DELETED!!!

The copyright page of THE WATER OUTLAWS with a line at the bottom reading "0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1". It's boxed in red with a note that says "These numbers right here!"

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SL Huang [THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS is out!]🎇🦑🌌] @slhuang.com · 28/09/2023

So many notifs, all this Strange Horizons love, I love to see it! Also Bluesky is apparently not stable enough yet to show me all of it whoops I tried again, Bluesky. I tried

Screenshot of a Bluesky feed that reads "There was an issue fetching notifications. Tap here to try again"

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