my NaNoWriMo project, revealed

I know I've been cagey about the title and premise of my big sci-fi magnum opus, and for good reason. I'm very protective of it, because, well, it's my magnum opus. It's my baby, and I'm its protective father. I'll die of grief if it gets born prematurely or perishes in childbirth, or it comes out incurably deformed and mangled, or (worst of all) someone kidnaps it. I'm keeping the whole bloody thing under wraps until the proper time.

Concerning this novel, though—the one I'm doing for NaNoWriMo—I'm not guarded at all. It's not nearly as close to my heart as my magnum opus is. In fact, it's that crappy novel that I said I'd write. So here it is—you can have it. It's high time I told you what I was doing anyway:

The title is Mugunghwa: the Wreck of the Rose of Sharon. The Rose of Sharon, obviously, is the name of a ship. Mugunghwa is the title and "the Wreck of the Rose of Sharon" is the subtitle. (Subtitles aren't supposed to be capitalized, right? Or are they? Do I need quotation marks around the ship's name?)

Anyway, Mugunghwa is a historical fiction piece set in Korea (or "Corea" as it used to be known) in 1864. It's based on a true story. In 1866, the General Sherman, a well-armed trading vessel owned by a British company, attempted to open the isolationist Joseon Dynasty to trade relations with the Western powers. Things didn't go so well. The ship sailed up to the Keupsa Gate on the Taedong River (near present-day Pyongyang). The crew made contact with the Koreans and told 'em they wanted to trade. All offers of commerce were refused, but the crew was told that the Joseon Dynasty would provision them for their return voyage. The Sherman was ordered to wait at the Keupsa Gate until higher-level officials in Pyongyang could be consulted, and...

Wait, I already told you about this.

Anyway, you know the story. The ship was burned and the crew killed. Nobody really knows why the Sherman sailed on past its agreed anchorage. Whether the crew was motivated by greed, or bravado, or impatience...we may never know. But it makes a smashing good story, so I've adapted it for my own novel. I've changed the names of the sailors and some of the particulars, and I've moved the action to the Han River and Seoul instead of the Taedong River and Pyongyang. But the story's the same. A merchant vessel with an American, Chinese and Malay crew sails to Korea looking to trade. On board is Jabez Fuller, a Lutheran priest and the expedition's interpreter. He's a calm, cautious man, something of a worrywart, unlike any other protagonist I've written. Most of my M.C.s are snarkers, malcontents, cynics or loonies. Fuller is my first man of the cloth, and my first temperate and nigh-timid man. I say "night-timid" because in the end of the book, he...well, you'll find out when it's finished.

Other characters include O'Reilly and Fields, the salty boatswain and boatswain's mate, who have befriended Reverend Fuller; the iron-jawed and icy-calm Captain Richard Henry Pierce; the perpetually grinning chief mate and helmsman Lester Dawkins; the reclusive and neurotic engineer, Isaac Randall; his Chinese assistants Bohai and Chonglin; the fat and friendly Malay cook, Samad; the brave and noble deckhand Tong Lai; and the corrupt, self-centered, and unstable company man H.B. Morton, Pierce's employer and the steamer's owner. There's also the ship herself: the Rose of Sharon, a half-ironclad with wooden uppers—weathered and creaky but armed to the teeth.

The title, Mugunghwa, is a Korean word which means "rose of Sharon." The rose of Sharon is the official flower of Korea and has been precious to the nation's people since time began. In relation the novel, the word mugunghwa encapsulates the Korean's insular nature and their strong sense of nationalism, and the Westerners' misguided attempts at bridging the gap between the two worlds. It symbolizes how even the most genuine and heartfelt gestures can be badly misinterpreted by a radically different culture.

Anyway, that's the story. As of today I'm 14,919 words into it. Our ship and its little crew have penetrated the first line of Korean bureaucracy, thanks to Fuller's negotiation skills. Morton's instability continues to threaten the integrity of the mission and the safety of the steamer's crew. The Rose of Sharon is now steaming toward Seoul, and is close enough to hear the great bronze bells tolling every morning and evening. What will happen when these intrepid men come under the eyes of the suspicious and potentially hostile city, the capital of a hermit kingdom which has spurned all foreigners before? Will Morton's dangerous behavior and bigoted greed bring the expedition to disaster? Or will defeat come from the most innocuous and unexpected source?

I'll have to discover that as I scribble on. This has been my first experience writing fiction under a deadline, and the process has been eye-opening. But there's more to it than that. I started the novel with a clear idea of how it would begin and end, but only the vaguest notion of what would occur in the meantime. In the course of writing, so many unexpected things have danced from my cortex onto the laptop screen, things I didn't see coming until they were literally at my fingertips. The story has changed and twisted and turned in so many unexpected directions, with myriad plot twists and dramatic events coalescing at random. I never expected to have so many characters, for one thing. I started out with only Fuller, Morton, Pierce, O'Reilly and Fields, basically. I knew I'd introduce some other named crew members at some point, but not this many. It's awesome. They're all full-fledged and three-dimensional, too, not flat or generic or stereotypical (I hope). All in all, this novel is fulfilling my dream of writing a book similar in voice to The Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) and similar in theme to The Sand Pebbles (Richard McKenna).

And so, to sum up, here I am. Happy, inspired, energetic, curious, and only four thousand words behind schedule. (Tee hee.)

Further bulletins as events warrant...