My guest today is Singaporean author Eliane Boey, who is about to release her novella Small Bites by Space Cowboy Books. I’ve read it and can attest it's weird, moving, powerful, and that you should get it if you can. You can also find Eliane at Instagram.

In other news, the Hyperspace might skip some weeks until it returns with new short interviews. Meanwhile, there's a meaningful backlog of interviews full of recommendations and releases for anyone to come back to!

Tell me more about Small Bites and what made you write it.

Small Bites is a feminist horror novella about reclaiming space, creative expression, and hunger, for more than food. 

Hammie is a mother who has lost her hunger, and her belief that she is, in fact, totally fine. Until the day she locks herself in the storeroom with a large spider and learns to recapture what she lost; beginning by breaking down everything that now occupies her space, and feeling her appetite return. 

I wanted to tell a story about the erosion of the self in motherhood, the difficulty of finding space in your own life, let alone for creativity, and the dilemma of "selfishness" when a parent in a primary care-giving role wants more than just what's essential. It's body horror, but I like to think it's also self-affirming.

You travel between science fiction (as in Club Contango and Other Minds), weird horror and blends several subgenres of the speculative very well in your works. I'd love to learn more about how your mind functions when deciding what to write!

I read almost anything, in and out of genre. Stories generally come to me as premises or characters first, and the world will colour itself in from there. Club Contango had to be SF noir, and set on Freeport, to be able to tell Connie’s struggle against hyper-capitalism.  For Small Bites to hit home, I needed it to not only be contemporary, but also strip away and minimise the world, to focus on Hammie’s internal conflict.

Speaking of mixtures, Brazil is often seen as a blend of Indigenous cultures with Western/Portuguese and African. We tend to learn that Singapore is a mixture of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and British cultures. Is that something appropriate to say when speaking of Singapore? How much of this "mix" affects what you write and the way you think your worlds?

Singapore is very much a melting pot culture, being an immigrant society, formerly of the British empire. My work doesn’t necessarily centre Singapore by intention, but it is inescapably Singaporean in its themes of survival anxiety, continuous search for roots and relevance, and regretfully, the eagerness to adopt new technology and to self-curate. Singapore’s diversity naturally mirrored itself in the world of my space station, Freeport. Club Contango has a culturally rich cast, and I hope that it comes across as authentic for those who read it.

The characterization in Small Bites is so nuanced and deep. There's a lot to absorb. How do you build your main characters?

This is a hard one, because I find that the more I try to “create” a character, the faster it descends into tropes and types. Characters usually come to me via their premise, so that’s the first clue of who they are and where they belong. Sometimes, I start to “see” a character by thinking of short stories they might fit into. Slice of life flashes, or a twist that will reveal their inner selves. Some of these initial pieces make it to the novel or novella, or as stand-alone short stories under different names, others remain part of the drafting process.

Tell me some of your inspirations! It can be anything! A place, an author, a picture, a mood.

I try to read as widely as possible. I pick up random books at the library for the slightest reasons. I try to listen to people I disagree with, for as long as I can bear. These are the situations that get you outside of your head, outside of your comfort zone, and sometimes, plant a little idea.

Of all the little writing habits, silence is the essential one for me. I will wake up earlier and earlier just to capture that silence where I can “selfishly” think of my work.