2014...as it relates to 2015

The Akashic Records. Okay, no, not really. It's actually Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo courtesy of navitascoach.com)

Once again it's time for my customary look back at the previous year, and a peek ahead at what's to come next year. Without further ado, here's a list of the things I accomplished in 2014: 

•  brewed a bunch of beers with the guys, including a lip-smackin' ginger IPA
•  completed The Art of Manliness's 30 Days to a Better Man challenge (January)
•  submitted a query, along with 10 pages of my manuscript, to Ace & Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy in January; sent in the full manuscript in August; rejected in October
•  took a trip to Sapporo, Hokkaido in February
•  rode the train through all the way through Japan (took a full day and then some) 
•  said farewell to Adam in Busan
•  moved to Gangnam-gu in March
•  got my appendix out in May
•  sent my full manuscript to Baen Books in June; rejected in December
•  traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong from July 12 to August 7
•  took the Reunification Express through Vietnam, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City
•  ate lo mai gai, bun cha, banh mi, and pigeon-heart pho in Vietnam
•  traveled across Cambodia by bus, and ate khmer amok and beef loklak
•  drank cocktails at the top of Bangkok's tallest building and watched a thunderstorm
•  took the train from Bangkok to Butterworth, and hung around in the Hong Kong Bar on Penang Island, drinking cheap Tiger beers and talking to Chinese, Brits, Russians, and Brazilians 
•  rode a miserable bus through Malaysia
•  spent a hot, humid, overpriced weekend in Singapore drinking eponymous slings and riding open-top buses (and the Flyer)
•  met up with Miss H in Hong Kong and spent four lovely days there, eating Hokkaido ramen and Moroccan lamb and MSG-laden Cantonese and English beer (and going to Disneyland)
•  saw Miss H go back home before me in September
•  moved into a oneroomtel in Gwangjin-gu that same month
•  finished reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in November
•  read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Terror by Dan Simmons, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux, Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Korean War: A History by Bruce Cumings, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Dune by Frank Herbert, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany, and some other stuff
•  found the best burger in Seoul (at Bartwo, a beer-and-burger pub in Oksu-dong)
•  ...and the best Mexican in Seoul (Gusto Taco, near Sangsu Station in the Hongdae area)
•  tasted seolleongtang, makchang (large beef intestines), fermented soybean paste, hoe deopbap (raw fish over rice), chicken bulgogi, shrimp gimbap, and barbecued ox hearts
•  ate at the Casablanca Sandwicherie in Itaewon (lamb chili sandwich and a Berber omelette, yum!)
•  completed the shooter challenge at Gecko's Terrace in Itaewon, and now have my name inscribed on a brass plaque above the bar with the following motto: Bibo Ergo Sum
•  discovered Jack White, The White Stripes, Jeff Buckley, Sky Sailing, Cage the Elephant, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis
•  took up pipe-smoking and honed my appreciation for good pipe tobacco (with a nip of bourbon or rye)
•  completed another NaNoWriMo and took my first steps toward becoming a paperless writer 
• started two new novels and abandoned a third
•  submitted ten short science fiction stories to Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Space Squid, Daily Science Fiction, 3LBE, and Fiction Vortex (all rejected)
•  joined Twitter (11 followers so far!) and revamped my blog and Google Plus pages (to build my writer's platform)
•  added some delicious dishes to my cooking and baking repertoire, such as chicken piccata, vegetarian lasagna, penne pasta with vodka sauce, New York cheesecake, and stuffed bell peppers
•  wrote and submitted pieces to ElectRow magazine
•  went to the HBC Festival and drank beer and ate doner kebab
•  rode my bike all the way to Gwacheon 
•  walked from Gwangjin-gu to Itaewon 
•  walked 10 miles in one day 
•  went to the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art
•  hiked Achasan and Yongmasan
•  hiked Namhansanseong, the ninth of Korea's UNESCO World Heritage sites I've seen (out of 11 total)
•  tried the hamburgers at Fire Bell, Libertine, and Left Coast
•  visited the doctor about some heart palpitations, and started taking magnesium supplements for excessive stress
• on a related note, I lost 20 pounds between August and December
• visited a buddy in Gunsan, North Jeolla (and rode first class on the KTX back to Seoul)
•  planned a wedding in April 2015 (my own!)
•  scored an interview with a tech start-up in Las Vegas 
•  made dozens of new friends in seven countries
•  finished my final semester at Sejong University
•  prepared to depart Korea on January 7, 2015

And here's what I hope for 2015: a job in January, a wedding with the love of my life in April, a wedding in England (congratulations, Jeff & Jenn!) in July, Wasteland Weekend in September, a literary agent by December, and burning off the rest of my gut at the gym. And keeping it off. Twenty pounds gone already, as you saw above.

Postie out. 

writing updates, 12/24/2014

Baen Books has rejected my manuscript. 

...but also very gently.

I got back to my apartment after stepping out to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (overlong and excruciatingly over-acted) and I see this email in my inbox:

Dear Mr. Post,


Thank you for your patience as we considered your novel. While your narrative style was entertaining, unfortunately we will not be able to find a place for this story in our lineup.

Due to the volume of manuscripts we receive and the press of other business it is impossible for us to go into particulars. Please do not take this rejection as necessarily a reflection on your work; we can accept fewer than one percent of the manuscripts submitted to us.

Best of luck in another market. We hope you will consider submitting again, when you have another story you think will fit the Baen line.


Sincerely,

Gray Rinehart
Contributing Editor
Baen Books

While not as detailed as my rejection from Ace & Roc, this is still benign. Benignity is probably par for the course for these things, I realize. People are so hypersensitive these days that one whiff of brusqueness from an editor would invite an expletive-packed tirade from the irate, insecure author. Editors have probably learned to tiptoe quite carefully around a rejection email like this one, hand-picking the most vaguely encouraging euphemisms. 

Even so, Mr. Rinehart didn't have to say that my narrative style was entertaining. That was mighty big of him. I guess that earns me one point in the cosmic scheme of things. Huzzah!

That wasn't all, though. Today I received a rejection email from Daily Science Fiction, letting me know that they weren't interested in my 1500-word short story "Letter from the E.T. Killer."

My own stupid fault, really. Stories about serial killers are a dime a dozen. I should have realized that before I wrote it. Oh well. I can't help what my Muse tells me. 

[sigh]

So that's it. No more lines in the water. The manuscript of my first novel, my baby, my magnum opus, the reason God or Zeus or the Great Green Arkleseizure put me on this planet, the glorious creation I was brought into existence to bring into existence, has been rejected by two major publishers. Every story I've written and/or submitted this year has been hurled back in my face with an F.O. letter attached. 

Bummer, dude.  

But let's recap. Since I began keeping track of my submissions in late 2012, here's where things stand: 

1. Tues, 12/11/12 - Daily Science Fiction ("The Maze," 770 words) - REJECTED

 2. Sun, 12/23/12 - Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine ("Incommunicado," 3,440 words) - REJECTED

 3. Fri, 1/4/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("Liquid Courage," 1,140 words) - REJECTED

 4. Wed, 1/16/13 - Fantastic Frontiers ("Liquid Courage," 1,140 words) - NEVER HEARD BACK

 5. Fri, 2/8/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("Plea Bargain," 1,130 words) - REJECTED

 6. Fri, 4/19/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("The Time Gun," 2,830 words) - REJECTED

 7. Thurs, 6/03/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("The First Twenty-Five Years," 1,740 words) - MADE 2ND ROUND OF REVIEW - REJECTED 

 8. Fri, 6/26/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("Only One Boot," 980 words) - REJECTED

 9. Wed, 8/14/13 - 3LBE ("Liquid Courage," 1,140 words) - REJECTED

 10. Wed, 8/14/13 - Space Squid ("The Time Gun," 2,830 words) - REJECTED

 11. Thurs, 1/23/14 - Asimov's Science Fiction ("Plea Bargain," 1,130 words) - REJECTED

 12. Wed, 1/29/14 - Asimov's Science Fiction ("The First Twenty-Five Years," [revised] 2,700 words) - REJECTED

 13. Wed, 1/29/14 - Ace and Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy ("Revival," 112,000 words) - REQUESTED MANUSCRIPT 8/27/14 - REJECTED

 14. Mon, 2/10/14 - Daily Science Fiction ("The First 25 Years," [R] 2,700 words) - REJECTED

 15. Wed, 3/12/14 - Daily Science Fiction ("The Body Politic," 2,600 words) - REJECTED

 16. Tues, 3/18/14 - Analog Science Fiction & Fact ("Plea Bargain," 1,130 words) - NEVER HEARD BACK

 17. Mon, 4/21/14 - Daily Science Fiction ("That's Gratitude For You," 1,130 words) - REJECTED

 18. Fri, 5/2/14 - Daily Science Fiction ("Boxing Day," 1,080 words) - REJECTED

 19. Mon, 6/30/2014 - Baen Books ("Revival," 114,500 words) - ID No: 10240 - REJECTED

 20. Mon, 10/20/2014 - Daily Science Fiction ("Emeritus," 1,630 words) - REJECTED

 21. Thurs, 10/30/2014 - Fiction Vortex ("The First 25 Years," [revised] 2,700 words) - REJECTED

 22. Mon, 11/17/2014 - Clarkesworld ("The First 25 Years," [revised] 2,700 words) - REJECTED

 23. Mon, 12/8/2014 - Daily Science Fiction ("Letter from the E.T. Killer," 1,500 words) - REJECTED

Well, looky here. Two measly submissions in 2012. Eight in 2013. Twelve in 2014...getting better. And two (going on four) more novels written since then. 

I guess I must be serious about becoming a writer, huh? 

Twenty-three submissions, twenty-three rejections. I'm going to try to triple that next year. My New Year's resolutions for 2015 are: write every day; submit at least two or three times a month; finish up Novel #4 and Novel #5, and finish Novel #6 (whatever that may be). Do another NaNoWriMo (Novel #7, I guess). And most importantly, find an agent. I've decided to start querying them anyway, even if I don't have a body of published work. I may be shouting into the void, but there may be a faint echo. Who knows? 

Wish me luck. 

Paperless? Who, me?

So here's the deal: I won NaNoWriMo. Yay me.

But the novel itself is far from finished. I get the feeling the word count'll be 120-150K by the time I'm through. A beast such as this requires some planning. My pantsing days, I've come to realize, are long over. 

Second, while I've based books and stories on historical events before, Charlie Ward is the first project I've ever based on a person: Frederick Townsend Ward, an American sailor and soldier-of-fortune from the 1850s. I moved the setting into outer space and made the titular character female, and Charlie Ward: Interstellar Soldier-of-Fortune was born. 

My productivity since November ended has been abysmal: I think I've added a mere 5,500 words to the manuscript since December began. (Blame final exam prep.) My MC is currently slogging her way through the frozen mud of the Crimea a gigantic Earth-like planet where the Crimean War a great interplanetary war's going on between Russia, Turkey, France, and England four mighty planets battling for territorial supremacy and a warm-water port mineral rights and economic posturing. 

As you might expect, it's proven difficult to remain faithful to the source material and still portray futuristic space combat realistically. That, and I know jack-squat about the life military. Yesterday I had to call up an old high school buddy who was in the army to get help with the lingo, abbreviations, and politics. 

That means I've had to take a lot of notes for this story. Fred Ward's life (with a few strategic embellishments). Military abbreviations and SOPs (that aforementioned buddy of mine sent me the whole dang U.S. Army field operations manual—all 213 pages of it). An entire fictitious regiment and its captain, lieutenants, sergeants, and forty-odd privates, all with first and last names, disparate personalities, family histories, and unique homeworlds. The political climate of the eighteen or so planets I've had to invent for the purposes of this story, not to mention their masses, rotation speeds, meteorology, ecology, economics, culture, sociology, biology, and geology. Technologies out the wazoo, like a Podkletnov device for anti-gravity, a negative-mass particle generator for warp drive, MAHEM guns for ship-to-ship combat, a skyhook, robotics, communication devices, antipersonnel weapons...sheesh. And I haven't even gotten to the bit about ground warfare yet, or mining technology, both of which I'll need to mention in some detail for the first big land-battle sequence to make sense. 

Notepad just wasn't going to cut it this time, and I knew it. 

So I made the quantum leap to Evernote.

And it is simply splendid.

Click the pic to expand it and take a good, hard look—everything's right where it needs to be.  On the left are my separate notebooks, organized however I like them. I only have one notebook so far, for this particular story. Inside that notebook are five notes: some research I've done on space warfare, a page devoted to random snippets of quotes and dialogue, a discussion of planets and stations that populate this galaxy I'm building, a list of Charlie's unit on Achore (which is visible there on the right, as it's the one selected), and a rough outline of the story. 

Formerly, I kept all this crap in one single Notepad (.txt) file, and had to scroll up and down and poke through it every time I needed a bit of information for a story. No more. It's all in one place, organized and easily accessible. "Convenient" is simply not the word to describe it. "Heaven-sent" would be more like it. 

I'm going to take a day here after finals week ends (and I'm not busy in Seoraksan National Park or the nearby city of Sokcho over in Gangwon Province, or down in Gunsan in North Jeolla Province with my buddy Beau) and transfer EVERY FREAKING ONE of my Notepad files concerning the Revival series and Mugunghwa (my historical novel) onto Evernote.

Next step: find out what Scrivener's all about. I'll do a post about that soon, too. 

6 splendiferous books I read in 2014

Jamie Todd Rubin, of whom I am now a steadfast devotee, just did a similar post on his wicked-cool blog, so I thought I'd do one of my own. I didn't read quite as many books as I wanted to in 2014 (between two moves, Miss H going home, two semesters at Sejong University, a train trip through the Japanese Home Islands in February, and an overland transect of Indochina in summer), but at least I made it into the double digits. Some of the titles I picked were real jim-dandies.

Without further ado: 

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
I'd read Heart of Darkness, and appreciated it for all it was by itself. But there was something about Conrad's oeuvre—his flair for painting vivid pictures of the exotic corners of the earth, and the colorful folk who people them (born of his own experience as a sailor)—that captivated me. That same flair wasn't lacking in Lord Jim. Conrad tackles questions of duty, conscience, guilt, penance, and moral courage, all while weaving a colorful tapestry of both human and natural scenery in Indochina and the South Pacific islands. A heck of a good read, and an absolutely flabbergasting ending. It'll either reaffirm or destroy your belief in karma. 

Dune by Frank Herbert
A friend bullied me into reading this. I'd caught snippets of the 2003 TV miniseries with James McAvoy, and heard bits and bobs around the Internet from those teeming millions of slavering fans, but never really considered it to be up my alley. Well, I wasn't wrong; I don't think I'll be continuing with the series. But I can easily see why this book has been called the greatest masterwork of the science fiction genre. Herbert does a spectacular job of world-building, touching on economics, politics, sociology, religion, and biology, while never losing sight of the overarching narrative nor the gigantic cast of characters, giving each one enough limelight as he or she deserves. It was so well done that I didn't even realize it was an allegory about oil politics in the Middle East.

I have to admit, the shai-hulud were pretty freakin' awesome.

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Don't get me wrong: I absolutely hated this book. But I can hate a book and still acknowledge its intrinsic worth. I'd like to give you a synopsis of this door-stopper, but I'm afraid it's...impossible to describe. Even William Gibson, the noir prophet, the father of cyberpunk, the man who coined the term "cyberspace," the first winner of the science fiction "triple crown" (the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award), and the author of the masterful Sprawl trilogy (which I have yet to read), doesn't quite understand what Dhalgren is about, and admits as much in his foreword. Whoever did the jacket copy couldn't quite verbalize it, either. But therein lies the book's pull: it teases you into believing that you have the story and its deeper meanings pinned down, then erases them and lays something completely different over them, until you wind up with a palimpsest of cultural significance and societal commentary that's impossible to sift into a nugget of moral truth. Even the title's meaning is left up to the imagination. It's a book that reads like a poem (and indeed, Delany was a prolific poet), and is just as enigmatic and florid. I hated it because I wasn't smart enough to figure it out. 

Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux
I'd read plenty of Theroux's travel writing, but never his fiction. This was my first taste. (I intend to read Saint Jack and perhaps The Lower River at some point in the future.) A chilling tale of Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, as told from the viewpoint of Bunt, a milquetoast business owner and British citizen born and raised in the city by his domineering mum. The bad guys are sinister, their motives devious, and even the innocent are guilty of something. A book I could hardly put down, thanks to its faithfully-reproduced setting and sizzling characters. 

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux
A bit of a cheat to stick in two books by Theroux, perhaps. But this title is nonfiction, at least. A follow-up to Theroux's epic journey through Asia by train in 1975 (chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar), Ghost Train is Theroux retracing his former route 33 years later, as an older and wiser but just as curmudgeonly man. So much has changed since he last came this way that he has to change his line of march; chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan force him to deviate through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan instead; Vietnam is no longer divided in two, and he may now travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Kunming, China, in an uninterrupted line; and he stops off at a few disused gulags in Russia, just because he can. He meets old friends and makes new ones along the journey, seeking, as he himself says, trains...and finding passengers. 

The Korean War by Bruce Cumings
I'd wanted a straight, no-nonsense, battle-by-battle account of the war, and I didn't get it. What I got was an examination of the social context, geopolitical causes, and back-room wheeling and dealing surrounding the war, and a scathingly revisionist one at that. Cumings takes the United States sharply to task for, among other things, assisting Syngman Rhee to quell the Yeosu Rebellion and thereby stifling true democracy in the nascent Republic of Korea; committing the No Gun Ri Massacre; and for making no effort to understand or sympathize with thousands of years of established Korean cultural norms and traditions before slashing a line down the 38th Parallel and calling it even. The book was tough to swallow—especially as my grandfather fought in that forgotten war, and almost certainly lost some buddies in the process—but on the whole, I'm glad I read it. If you want an unvarnished account of the political, social, and cultural fronts of the Korean War, this is the quickest and simplest book to read. 

There, that's done! As you can see from my new widget from Goodreads at the bottom right of this page, there, I'm knee-deep in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (fantastic; "Me Imperturbe" is my favorite poem so far) and The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. Miss H and I are reading that one together. She's never read any Vonnegut (gasp!) and I needed to read more, and I figured TSoA was as good a place as any to resume.

One more thing: I don't think I managed to even read 20 books this year. Horrendous ratio, not at all up to my standards in high school. I have some friends on Goodreads who read fifty books this year! It's all because I was bound up in Anna Karenina since October of 2013, and then a coworker gave me Dhalgren. Well, 2015's going to be different. I'm going to do 35 books, or I'll be a Rhode Island Red.

Until next time, fellow bibliophiles...

sardine can redux

A few of my more enthusiastic followers have been insisting that I put up a picture of my actual oneroomtel room, so you can get a good look at the floral print wallpaper. Well, here ya go. This is for you, Carrie and Virginia: