Watering Heaven

Peter Tieryas Liu has almost 200 publications in magazines and joumals including Adirondack Review, Camera Obscura Journal, Evergreen Review, Gargoyle, Indiana Review, Word Riot, and ZYZZYVA, and was the recipient of the 2012 Fiction Award from Mojo, the magazine run by Wichita State University. He has also worked as a technical writer for LucasArts, the gaming division of LucasFilm. By day, he's a VFX artist who has worked on movies like Men in Black3 and Alice in Wonderland.You can find him at www.tieryasxu.com... as well as traveling the world with his wife.

What would you do if you found out your girlfriend laid an egg every time she had sex? Who would you be if you were invited to a party in Beijing but had to make up a brand-new identity for six weeks? Peter Tieryas Liu's Watering Heaven is a travelogue of and requiem for the American dream in all its bizarre manifestations and a surreal, fantastic journey through the streets, alleys, and airports of China.Whether it's a monk who uses acupuncture needles to help him fly or a city filled with rats about to be exterminated so that the mayor can win his reelection bid, be prepared to laugh, swoon, and shudder at the answers Liu offers in this provocative debut collection.

PeterTieryas Liu's ear is expertly attuned to the zeitgeiSt-the tangle of our social networks, our cubicle culture, the language of science-but the brilliant, haunting stories in Watering Heaven are always leading us somewhere deeper yet: that fathomless reservoir of human need and longing. Like flashing neon sigus with some of their letters shorted out, Liu's characters are sundered, yet continue to function, their messages unmistakable as they urgently attempt to communicate with one another and us, again and again.