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“The Designs of Designer Baby” Published in Uncanny Magazine

Uncanny Magazine (Issue Nineteen)

My poem “The Designs of Designer Baby” is available to read in Uncanny Magazine! The poem is about reclaiming your identity after living for other people all your (very, very long) life.

I got the idea for it after I read a news story about scientists editing the genomes of human embryos to make them perfect. Why did this hit me so hard? I didn’t know, but the idea burrowed into my mind and refused to leave. It was only after I started travelling around Asia that I realized what I wanted to say. In Ho Chi Minh City, I visited the War Remnants Museum. It was a deeply emotional experience, and I’m still processing what I saw. That experience, among other ones—like going to China and seeing, with my now-adult eyes, how certain family dynamics get passed down from generation to generation—shaped the poem into what it became.

Here are some of my favourite pieces from this issue:

Happy reading![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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“The Patrol” Published in LampLight Magazine

"The Patrol" by Millie Ho, in LampLight Magazine

My horror story “The Patrol” is now available to read in LampLight Magazine! I’m excited to be included in LampLight, which has published some of my favourite SF/F and horror writers like Kristi DeMeester and Rahul Kanakia.

I wrote “The Patrol” last November, right before I started travelling through Asia. The theme of the story, which is about family secrets and small town horror, was inspired by my own feelings about leaving Toronto and plunging into the unknown. I poured my fears into the story, and am proud of how it turned out—and so honoured that LampLight liked it, too.

If you enjoy dark fiction, please consider supporting LampLight by buying a copy below:

Enjoy![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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“Shrinkage” Published in Joyland Magazine

"Shrinkage" by Millie Ho in Joyland Magazine

Super thrilled and honoured that my short story “Shrinkage” is now published in Joyland Magazine! This story was inspired by my summers working in retail, and is about secrets between friends and how silence leads to shame (and vice versa). Edited by the fabulous Kathryn Mockler.

Some of my favourites from Joyland include:

Please check them out, and happy reading!

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“Heavy Moons” Published in Gone Lawn (Issue 22)

Gone Lawn Issue 22 Cover
Gone Lawn 22 cover, Alternate Flux by Kelley Stephens.

My story “Heavy Moons”, which is about lovers, a crime, and alternate realities, is published in Gone Lawn, one of my favourite online literary journals. This story was inspired by my suburban upbringing and Thin Lizzy’s Dancing In The Moonlight, a good song for nighttime strolls.

You can read “Heavy Moons” here: http://journal.gonelawn.net/issue22/Ho.php

Please check out the other writers as well. Enjoy!

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My Mother Forces Me To Draw Cats

Millie Ho With Cat Drawing

My mother forces me to draw cats.

I draw them for her birthday, for my birthday, for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, and that time I left home for university for the first time.

“Why don’t you get a cat if you like them so much?” I asked her once.

She shook her head. “Cats are too complex for me.”

I took it at face value at the time, but saw into her soul years later, on a drive to a restaurant, when she started showing the cat drawings to relatives who couldn’t have cared less.

“I call this one lao hu,” she said, pointing to a cat with stripes in its fur and teeth as sharp as a fishbone comb.

Lao hu, tiger in Chinese, the symbol of war and strength.

It wasn’t the complexity she feared, I realized.

It was the attachment.

Cats are complex, even more so when they die.