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. 

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...

writing updates, 10/27/2014

Ace & Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy has rejected my manuscript.

...but very gently. 

You remember how I interrupted the tale of my Southeast Asia tour to tell you that A&R liked my query and wanted to see the full manuscript of Revival? 

Well, they sent me this email on October 14:

Dear Mr. Post,


Thank you for submitting Revival to Ace / Roc. I apologize for the continued delayed response—but part of the delay was you were under consideration for longer! I appreciate the opportunity to read your submission, but I’m sorry to say that in the current crowded market, this does not sound to me like a book that we can make into a success.

Your novel shows potential in you; perhaps you should try to find an agent. A literary agent can be a great way to start on the road to publishing, as they can offer writing guidance and help you find the best publishing houses to submit your work to. THE WRITER’S MARKET (www.writersmarket.com) lists literary agents, as does PUBLISHERS MARKETPLACE at www.publishersmarketplace.com. SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) has information on finding reputable literary agents (and avoiding scams) at www.sfwa.opg/for-authors/writer-beware .

You can also look to find writer’s groups in your area, who can help you to develop your own writing.

We do wish you the best of luck with other publishers, and thank you again for thinking of us.



Regrets and best wishes,

The Editorial Staff

Ace/Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy 

A rejection, yes. But as kind and encouraging a rejection as any aspiring writer could hope to receive. 

It was also a wake-up call. I'd been mighty puffed up and hadn't realized it. I shouldn't have ignored Moonrat's advice to never submit without an agent. 

It was also a seminal moment. This is the first time that I've ever been rejected and still felt that the work in question was worthwhile—that it wasn't a steamy pile of crap and should be burned to a crisp and scattered to the four winds. I haven't had the urge to go back and gut the story, rewriting and editing for endless hours until it's fit again for human eyes. It seems Ace & Roc just didn't think it was a paying proposition, that's all. That doesn't mean the work itself was irredeemably awful. It has potential. 

Well, I guess you know what this means, folks. It's time for ol' Andy Post to square his shoulders, edit Novel #3, finish Novel #4, commence Novel #5...

...and wait to see what the editor at Baen Books says. 

They've got my manuscript now too, remember? I sent it off to them in late June, when I thought that Ace & Roc would never get back to me. Baen's reporting time is 9-12 months, so I've got to sit on my laurels for a while.

But I won't be idle. I'll be writing short stories (a 1,600-word piece entitled "Emeritus" was sent to Daily Science Fiction last week) and working on the aforementioned novels. I look at my first rejection by a major publisher as a blessing in disguise. Thin disguise, in fact. 

Oh, and in other news...it looks like Stephen King totally ripped off the title of my magnum opus for his next novel! Why, that ham. My idol has stabbed me in the back.

Postie out. 

let not dreams be your master

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim...

                                                                               --- Rudyard Kipling, "If" 
       

Would you like to hear a funny story (and by "funny" I mean "relevant to my career, and yours too if you're a writer")? 

My hobby is trapshooting. It's where five people get together in a line and stand a set distance away from a small mound. Beneath this mound is a mechanical launcher which, at the first shooters' word, slings small discs made of frangible clay into the air in different directions and trajectories. The first shooter puts on his shooting glasses and earplugs, raises his gun to his shoulder, and shouts "Pull!" The scorekeeper, typically seated on a chair behind the shooters, presses a button and activates the launcher, which throws a random bird out from beneath the mound and into the line of fire. The first shooter does his best to blow the little target out of the air with a shotgun blast. If he or she hits it, then the fragile disc disintegrates into a million tiny pieces and falls to earth in forlorn fragments. If the shot was a miss, the disc wings off into the distance and shatters on impact with the ground. Then the second shooter raises his gun to his shoulder, shouts "Pull!" and the whole process kicks off again, and continues until each of the five shooters has shot at 25 "birds." 

It looks kind of like this:

I've done this dozens of times, and I've never gotten a perfect 25. 

Why?

Because I always psych myself out. I get to 24, and then I start to sweat and grit my teeth and clench my gut and think of that lovely "25" patch I could sew onto my shooting vest, and I invariably jerk the trigger too hard and miss the final bird. 

Sloppy. Eager. Shaky. 

Too much speed and too much noise.

Today I realized that I have been approaching my writing in the same way.

Most of you guys know by now that I'm a science fiction guy, but I do fantasize about mainstream fiction occasionally. One of my favorite books is The Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna. It paints a dynamic and emotionally moving portrait of the life of a simple machinist's mate Jake Holman, who serves aboard the U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo. The vessel and her dedicated crew of "Sand Pebbles" patrol the Yangtze River in China, mostly a dog-and-pony show to intimidate bandits and warlords who are keen to rough up American businessmen and missionaries in the area. The book also brings to life the grand scale, social mores, political upheavals, and intimidating personalities at work in China in the 1920's. The action takes place right on the eve of Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition, and the Kuomintang and the unification of China are central themes. More than a simple novel of an ignorant country boy at sea amid the oppressive hostility of the Orient, however, The Sand Pebbles is also an insightful commentary on the human condition: the raw power (and irrationality) of love, the madness and chaos of war, the eternal struggle of old traditions and new ideas. 

It's precisely the kind of historical fiction I wanted to write. So, in 2012, between penning the first and second novels of my epic sci-fi series, I did NaNoWriMo. What I wrote was a 52,000-word piece called Mugunghwa (the rose-of-Sharon, Korea's national flower). Apart from a few lackadaisical edits here and there, I haven't touched the manuscript since. 

Then, just recently, I picked up Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong. Not historical fiction by any means—it was published in 1997, the same year that the U.K. handed over Hong Kong to mainland China. This handover, while merely a peripheral event in Theroux's novel, nonetheless forms the catalyst for much of the action. I'll give you the Wikipedia summary: "Kowloon Tong is a novel by Paul Theroux about Neville "Bunt" Mullard, an English mummy's boy born and raised in Hong Kong. The story is set in the days leading up to the handover to China of Hong Kong from the British. Bunt is made an offer for his textile factory by the shady Mr. Hung from the People's Republic of China, and has no choice but to accept, when it is made clear that Mr. Hung knows all about the part of Bunt's life that he has kept secret from his mother Betty, namely his frequenting of the 'blue hotels' of Kowloon Tong and furtive sex with one of his workers, Mei-Ping."

Sounds quite tawdry and sinister, don't it? And it is, certainly. But more than that, it does precisely what The Sand Pebbles (published in 1962) managed to do: paint a vivid picture of a time, a place, and a savage cultural clash. I'm halfway through it and I can't put it down. The backdrop of Hong Kong is enticingly exotic (and lewd) and the characters simply sizzle off the page like bacon fat jumping from an overheated skillet: the weak-chinned Bunt, his overbearing mother Betty, the vicious Mr. Hung, the shy and vulnerable Mei-Ping, the slimy lawyer Monty, and the lascivious Filipino prostitute Baby ("Let we make fuppies!"). Here is yet another type of mainstream novel I should like to write: one set in a foreign country (an Asiatic one), concerning a culture utterly foreign to the reader, and yet which manages to faithfully portray the nitty-gritty details of that culture with beautiful, vivid detail—with a pressing social issue as its canvas and inborn human nature its paints. 

So I came up with a timely idea which I could write about: the plight of North Korean girls who decide to escape to China and the promise of work and income, only to be coerced into slavery by unscrupulous Chinese and sold to rural farmers in the northeastern provinces, and there sexually abused and worked like cattle.

Whatever. The idea isn't what's important.

What's important is the undue stress which reading Kowloon Tong caused me. 

I am a weak, insecure, spiteful, and needy man. I put too much pressure on myself. I read something good and I immediately want to emulate it. No, not just emulate it—surpass it. That in itself isn't a bad thing, but I go to extremes. I tell myself that I'm a failure if I don't manage to write something at least as good. I question my own worth and talent. I rail at myself that I'm not as keen an observer of culture and linguistic subtleties as I should be. Moreover, I'm usually in an all-fired hurry to complete the work. Paul Theroux wrote a damn good book, and I need to produce something similar now, NOW, d'you hear me, or my life as a writer is fucking over. This, or something very like it, is the loud, insistent, humbling message which my id splatters all over my craven ego. 

I put way too much pressure on myself. 

I've written three books and am halfway through another. (One of those books—the complete manuscript—is currently under review by the editors at Ace Science Fiction, an imprint of the Penguin Group.) I've penned dozens of short stories. But I remain unpublished. And that, to my mind, is simply not good enough. 

I put way too much pressure on myself. 

Now that one of my books is under review by a major publishing house, I feel an insistent need to edit the sequel into a refined state of readiness, while simultaneously finishing and editing the third installment and even the fourth. And these aren't short books, either: both the first and the second novel manuscripts turned out to be about 110,000-115,000 words each.

I put WAY too much pressure on myself. 

But I've been in a slump lately. I haven't written anything new since my appendectomy last May. I haven't touched my second novel manuscript; the writer's block just won't go away. 

And then I realized that it wasn't writer's block. It was that pressure. It was the background noise. It was me thinking about leaving Korea, moving to Las Vegas, missing Miss H, getting published by Penguin (or worse, not getting published by Penguin), winning the Hugo & Nebula Awards (or worse, not winning the Hugo & Nebula Awards), feeling inferior to Paul Theroux, wondering if I was even capable of writing something as good as Kowloon Tong or The Sand Pebbles, wondering, wishing, waiting, worrying. 

Enough. Enough already. 

I was taking notes on my new idea (about enslaved North Korean women) and I realized something. There was a feeling in my chest like a great big ship's boiler, overheated and ready to burst. My veins felt like cracked valves and my head was constantly pounding. To my shock, I discovered that this wasn't a new sensation: that knot of roiling, boiling pressure had been there for weeks. No matter how many bike rides I took along the Han River or the Yangjae Stream, no matter how many walks through Ttukseom Resort or Seoul Forest, no matter how many of my students wrote perfect descriptive paragraphs because I'm an awesome teacher, I was still stressed out. I was going to bed stressed and waking up stressed, stressing out with every word of every great author's that I read. And I was about to commence writing a fifth book with that lump in my chest. I was about to write it the same way I've been writing every short story and editing every novel manuscript: too quickly, too eagerly, and with too much background noise in my head. 

No more. 

The dam broke this morning. Something snapped inside me. My stress washed away, my head cleared, and I caught myself before I fell. I looked down at my notes and an inarticulate thought trickled into my skull, like sunshine after a rain shower. 

"Even if this isn't as good as anyone else's, it'll still be fun to write, won't it? I should just focus on having fun."

I don't know why it took me so long to remember that. Writing is supposed to be fun, you know. Even when it isn't. Even when it's agonizing and painful, like childbirth, or humdrum and dull, almost like work. It's still cathartic. It's still an escape. It's still a kick in the pants. Somewhere along the line I forgot that. I put too much pressure on myself to write a lot and write it well, better than anyone else. As an egocentric male, and as a human being who wants to leave this world richer than he found it, I stressed myself out trying to succeed on the first try. And predictably, my creativity suffered. I have to remember —and something tells me that I will from now on—that writing is not (just) about the destination. It's about the journey. 

Writing is like driving. You have to do it often to stay in practice. If you're only doing it to get paid and eat, it's no fun. It's nice to just take a quiet, pleasurable Sunday drive and see where you wind up. But not too fast: if you keep stomping the accelerator, you'll get frustrated and sloppy. You'll probably burn out your engine, too. Oh, and turn that radio down. It's good to listen to the sounds of the road. Too much background noise and you can't concentrate on what's important. If the engine starts acting up and you slow down, then it's time to take that baby to the repair shop—maybe even trade it in for a newer model. Get the picture?

Long story short, writing is an act of creation. And any act of creation, be it sculpture, oil-on-canvas, sand castles, babies, or fictitious worlds, should be a pleasurable one. 

Revelation over. 

the bridge on the River Kwai

...as seen on TV.

After lunch, it was off to the River Kwai bridge, made famous by both a book and a movie, which I've read and seen respectively. In actual fact, the tour turned out to be 50 minutes at the perplexingly planned and poorly cared-for Jeath War Museum, and about 10-20 minutes on the actual bridge itself. 

What does this have to do with British P.O.W.s dying horribly?

And the bridge wasn't even the "real" bridge—that got bombed out by the Allies during the war. (The museum had mistakenly depicted American jet bombers attacking the bridge in a large painting on one wall.) The bridge I stood on that sweltering Saturday of July 26, 2014 was built entirely by the Japanese as part of their war indemnity. 

The whole thing felt half-assed, to be frank. There were some cute little leopard cubs at a petting zoo nearby, so there was that. 

writing updates, 7/24/2013

There's only three of them, so pay attention:

ITEM ONE:
Novel #2, the one I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year, is almost ready. I'm half done with the second-to-last edit. (The final edit's just going to be a glorified proofreading.) After that I'm formatting it and e-publishing it for the Amazon Kindle. We'll see what comes of that...it'll be a test case. I'll make sure to properly advertise on this here blog so you can run to your nearest e-reader or tablet and buy it as soon as it's launched. The title will be Mugunghwa: The Wreck of the Rose of Sharon.

ITEM TWO:
Novel #3 is half-finished as well. It has a title, a table of contents, and 51,000 words or so. Nearly ten chapters out of 19 (planned) are complete. As I said earlier, I'm 50% finished with being 66% ready to sign a three-book deal. In case you forgot, Novel #1 and #3 are Books 1 and 2 of my big sci-fi magnum opus. (Novel #2 is historical fiction.)

ITEM THREE:
I got rejected again. Sad day.

Just before I left Korea I submitted a 1,700-word short story (entitled The First Twenty-Five Years) to Daily Science Fiction magazine. After the customary wait, I got an e-mail back. Instead of the usual rejection notice (which I'd received for the seven or eight other stories I'd sent to DSF), this e-mail was different. Here's what it said:

Andrew,

We have good news and we have bad news. The good news is that your story has made our second round, rarified company that more than 90% of submissions do not reach. While half or more of our second round stories will not ultimately see publication under the DSF rocket, this story has reached the final go/no-go before launch.

The bad news--and I promised you some bad news--is that it will take us time to make that final decision. Expect an additional two weeks or so, but don't be surprised if it's a month from today. Thanks for your continued patience, and thanks for sending us this worthy submission.

  - Daily Science Fiction Staff

Wow, huh? You may imagine the palpitations my heart went through as I read those words. After all these months and months of writing crap stories and languishing in impoverished rejection, I'd finally made the grade. Okay, not "the" grade. "A" grade. I'd gotten past the initial rejection phase. I'd landed myself in the second round of review. Not bad for a beginner, eh?

Unfortunately, about three weeks later, I wound up with the same old rejection slip in my inbox. Ah well. At least I know now the caliber of writing I must put out in order to be considered for publication. And I've assayed the market and know what kind of stories they like. Now I can sit back, think of a good idea, stick in all the ingredients, and hopefully get accepted next time around.

Wish me luck...

writing updates, 12/18/2012

Boy, have I got news for you! I finally submitted another story somewhere!
On December 11, after a long dry spell, I sent a short piece to Daily Science Fiction. They customarily take stories under 1,000 words in length. I figured there was no future for me as a writer if I couldn't write something that brief. So, in the space of roughly 30 minutes, I thought of an idea, slapped it down on paper, edited it, and submitted it.

And then, of course, I realized that I'd made a mistake. Like I always do. I hadn't properly understood DSF's submission guidelines. When they say "plain text only" they're not just talking about omitting all the fancy symbols and stuff. They mean sticking your Word document onto Notepad and thereby converting it to ASCII format. Before you submit it.

Great. Nice going, Postie. Way to break into the world of science fiction, fudging the submission guidelines and all. 

I don't know what to expect. I submitted the story (entitled "The Maze") a week ago. DSF's guidelines said to allow three weeks for a response. I'm not sure whether they'll politely ask me to redo my formatting and resubmit, or tell me to hit the bricks. Either way my heart's in my mouth until I find out. I'm filling the time by kicking myself vigorously.

The second big chunk of news is that my brother (who is a stage actor in Los Angeles) e-mailed me out of the blue to ask me to help him with something. Apparently he's writing a novel, too. I'd hardly spoken to him in two years, so I didn't know what he was up to. But yeah: he's writing. And like me, he's encountering some degree of frustration. He asked me for help in honing his work-in-progress and revising it, which I was glad to do. I was quite flattered, in fact. In return, he's taking a look at some of my stuff! He's already give me loads of assistance with several of my short stories (more about that later). He may even aid me in my larger endeavors, like my NaNoWriMo project and my magnum opus.

This is extremely encouraging, to say the least. I had not been able to find a beta reader who was suitably well versed in literature and dramatic devices to be able to critique my work properly. Most people I gave my stuff to just corrected my grammar, or line-edited, or made a few vague comments about characterization. Not my brother. He's picking me to pieces, but doing so in an encouraging, engaging and lively fashion. This is precisely what I've been needing all this time. We've only been at it a week and I feel like we've accomplished a lifetime's work. It's the best feeling in the world. Thanks, bro. I only hope I've been as much help to you.

So, while I'm excitedly waiting to see what our family think tank churns out, I haven't been idle. I've resolved to get back on track with my writing and actually publish some stuff. I'm going to start writing like I actually mean to be a writer someday, in other words.

Discipline is key. Up to now I've been juggling too much. It's been difficult to strike a balance between work, physical activity, leisure and writing. Focusing too much one one threw the others out of balance. But now I'm going to take aim at one and let the others fall into place. I'll try to submit a short story (no matter how short) at least once every two weeks. I'm going to move forward with revisions on both my NaNoWriMo project and my science fiction novel. (I should really think of codenames for both of these works so I can stop referring to them as "my science fiction novel" and "my NaNoWriMo project.")

Progress will be made. Poor writing shall be made rich. Mistakes, shortcomings and inequities shall be rectified. Flaccid prose shall be made taut and strong and hearty. And in the end...sweet victory. I'll be on my way to fortune and glory (and $32,000 bottles of Scotch) in no time.

Wish me luck...

I finished my first NaNo!

...'nuff said.

But that's not the end of the story (so to speak). My project came out of the oven looking so good that I think I'll try to get 'er published. I'm 20 pages into the first revision, and the prospects are getting rosier all the time.

I'm doing two things with this first rewrite. Well, three. First, I'm converting all of the romanized Korean words to the outdated McCune-Reischauer system. If that sentence made no sense to you, hear me out. At first I was just winging it. The M-R system didn't exist back in the 1860s, and I figured my narrator and protagonist would just make up whatever transliteration looked good. But then I thought I'd better standardize. I don't want to cause my readers undue confusion, or give the critics another reason to howl and dribble. Using this obsolete system does two things. Due to the accent marks and apostrophes and umlauts and stuff, the words look antiquated and alien, which is a rather nice effect for a book about one of the first Western expeditions to the interior of the Korean peninsula. Really heightens the mood, y'know? Moreover, the McCune-Reischauer system was originally created to help foreigners pronounce Korean words. If the book's going to have mass appeal, I can't have my readers chucking it across the room because they can't sound out all the Hangul.

Second, I'm trying to homogenize the tone of the novel. It was written in first-person perspective—the perspective of a 30-year-old Protestant missionary from the Dakota Territory. I'm trying to make sure this book sounds like it was written by a well-educated American man in the 1860s. I've always admired the erudite diction and complex sentence structure I observed in Jules Verne's stories, and I'm trying to emulate it. But I'm not accustomed to it, and regulating it is a constant battle.

Third (and this one's the kicker): I'm revising it for historical accuracy.

Since Miss H was home for two weeks back there in mid-November, she graciously agreed to pick up a book for me. It's called Intrepid Americans, Bold Koreans: Early Korean Trade, Concessions, and Entrepreneurship by Donald Southerton. This slim volume contains a detailed account of the 1866 General Sherman incident (detailed in my previous NaNoWriMo posts), upon which this novel was based. My work is historical fiction, of course, but I'd like for my account to be as realistic as possible, particularly since this is my first stab at mainstream commercial fiction. A fine kettle of fish it'd be if my debut novel got skewered for glaring historical inaccuracies. Even though this is supposedly the crappy novel I promised I'd write, it came out far better than I expected, and have high hopes for it.

Anyway, I've only just begun Chapter 3 of Intrepid Americans, Bold Koreans—the one detailing the General Sherman incident—and already I've made several important corrections to my manuscript as a result. There's been numerous small things, like romanization errors or geographical tweaks. But it looks like there are some big revelations in store, which may lead me to make some major insertions (no dirty jokes, please).

Props to Miss H for picking this up for me. Quite empowering, that woman is. I should tell her that more often.

Anyway, wish me luck in my revision. I aim to get this thing on the fast track to publication the moment I'm satisfied that it's as historically accurate. And once the tone's as homogeneous as it's going to get. When those two conditions are met, it's on its way to the publishers. That's a promise.

Stay tuned...

the home stretch

Well, I have good news and bad news. With one night and one day to go, I have finished my NaNoWriMo story. The bad news is that, due to my complete lack of planning (I always was a pantser), I've come up 2,500 words short.

Shazbot.

The Taedong River, which runs through Pyongyang, in the 19th century. This is where the real story, the one involving the General Sherman, went down in 1866.

Now I gotta comb back through the book and find places where I can pad it out. That's no problem. I was a bit scanty in my description of Ganghwa Island and Chongjijin Fortress (my story takes place on the Han River, which runs through Seoul). So I'll lengthen the story about the crew's expedition on the island. Maybe I'll introduce a new character...some British or American castaway who washed up on Korea's beaches in the early 1860s but can't leave because of the Joseon Kingdom's strict isolationist policies. Yeah, perfect drama bomb.

Wish me luck...

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...

well, rats

I can't say much right now because it's 1:26 p.m. KST and I have work in thirty minutes. But I've been having a hard time lately. Somebody's karma ran over my dogma or something.

Long story short (pun intended), I'm five thousand words behind on my NaNoWriMo project. I have three tests left to grade and input. Miss H has gone home for two weeks to get some stuff done. The cat's acting crazy and I'm getting over a head cold. But hey, at least the weather's nice. It's cool and moist. There was a luscious thick fog at 5:00 this morning and it was so dense I couldn't even see the neon sign on the church a hundred yards away. (Yes, the churches here light up their crosses with red or blue neon lights, and usually have illuminated names, too.)

Excuse me, I'm going to go grade the hell out of those tests and then eat me some stir-fried squid over rice (ojingeo deopbap, for your edification). TGIF, people. TGIF.

From the correct side of the International Dateline, this is Postie. Over and out.

SF reading wish-list

You know the story. No matter how many books you devour in a year, it seems like you wind up with a to-read list that's twice as long. For every book you read, two or three more rise up to take its place. This literary Lernaean Hydra has been plaguing me lately. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's because I've gotten back into reading for pleasure now that I'm in Korea and working the afternoon shift.  Or it could be that I've decided to take a more proactive approach to my craft. Perhaps I just spend too much time on TV Tropes.

Whatever the reason, I'm going to share with you some of the titles on my reading list. Some of 'em are classics, as usual; and some of them are little-known series which deserve more love. If you're interested in seeing what's out there in the world of SF, both old and new, give the following litany your perusal.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Once again demonstrating his genius for creating credible and deeply speculative SF (with historical context), Asimov created the Foundation series, which went on to critical acclaim. The main character, Hari Seldon, is the creator of an esoteric school of mathematics called psychohistory, which draws upon the law of mass action to effectively predict the future on a large scale. Using his research, Seldon foresees the imminent collapse of the Galactic Empire, Seldon creates the "Foundation"—a hidden enclave at the end of the galaxy where all humanity's accumulated knowledge is stored. The series documents Seldon's struggle to establish the Foundation and the attempts by the remnants of humanity to reestablish the Empire according to "the Seldon Plan."

I picked up a few books in the series for a few thousand won from an outgoing English teacher. I figured I'd give it a read...even though Asimov's I, Robot is still sitting unread in a box back in my closet in California!

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Matt Cruse is a 15-year-old cabin boy working on the airship Aurora. One day the Aurora encounters a drifting zeppelin with a mysterious old man mumbling about "beautiful creatures," who dies shortly thereafter. A year later, the Aurora is brought down on a tropical island by air pirates, where Matt and the wealthy Kate de Vries discover the truth of the old man's maundering.

This is another series I heard about by clicking around on TV Tropes. I know absolutely nothing about these books, except that Adam Young likes them. I've always been a fan of aviation in general. But something about those tales of weird aircraft and zeppelins and air pirates (particularly in the context of steam punk and alternate history) sets my imagination on fire. The Airborn series has an added twist: strange creatures and scientific discovery. What could be more awesome?

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve


It's a grim dystopian future. The Earth's crust has been ravaged by a horrific war. Human cities are no longer sedentary, but are mounted upon gigantic treads which roll about the cracked, blasted surface of Planet Earth. More horrific yet, these "Traction Cities" devour each other with huge mechanical jaws to gain precious resources. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and the outlook is pretty bleak. Throw in Earth's ancient technology, a few long-lost superweapons and a load of characters and you have a pretty decent story, if a rather dark one.

I know next to nothing about this series, but can't wait to get into it. Cities rolling about on giant caterpillar treads is something that's fascinated me ever since I saw the film John Carter (based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series). The Mortal Engines series has garnered quite a lot of (positive) critical attention, so at the very least it won't be a boring read, right? 

Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker

This series edges farther toward fantasy than I'm usually comfortable with. The concept is convoluted, so bear with me. In the first book, we've got your typical space freighter, the Stehekin, captained by one Nathan Brazil. There's a bunch of other people on board, too. They get a distress signal from a planet called Dalgonia, where there's an archaeological team doing some research on the long-dead Markovian race which once lived there. The Markovians were known for building planet-sized computers with which they attempted to fathom the secrets of the universe. Upon arriving, they discovered one of the archaeologists, Elkinos Skander, has murdered the others and disappeared. Tracking him to one of Dalgonia's poles, the crew of the Stehekin are sucked into the Well World, which is divided into "hexes," each hex being subject to different rules, laws, and inhabited by a different race. But here's the catch: entry into one of the hexes means that the person entering is transformed into the race native to that hex. One by one the crew members change into exotic alien forms; in these new bodies they must solve the mystery of the Well World, find out how to stop Skander and turn themselves back into humans. And Nathan Brazil discovers something extraordinary about himself, too.

Weird, right? So weird I feel like I have to read it. I just want to see how the team gets transformed, and what they all morph into. Call it morbid fascination. Chalker himself was quite taken with bodily transformations as well; the rest of the Well World series and quite a few of his other works deal with it. 

In the Balance (Worldwar, Book One) by Harry Turtledove

In a nutshell...

Smack dab in the middle of World War II, Earth is invaded by the Race, a horde of spacefaring reptilian warriors bent on galactic domination. Both the Allies and the Axis unite in the face of mutual destruction and rise up against the invaders.

I used to hate historical fiction. Then I cautiously read the first book of the Destroyermen series (see below), and I thought, "Hey, this isn't that bad." (Heck, I might even go see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this weekend.) I'm something of a World War II buff, so combine that with an alien invasion (in which the human race not only holds its own, but actually fights back successfully in unexpected ways), and you've got a recipe for a fangasm.

Crusade (Destroyermen, Book Two) by Taylor Anderson

Into the Storm, the first book in the Destroyermen series, details the origin of Anderson's world and characters. The U.S.S. Walker, an aging World War I-era rustbucket of a destroyer under the command of Captain Matthew Reddy, is on the run from the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi. Pressed into service in the desperate first days of World War II, Walker and a half-dozen other worn-out vessels were tasked with defending the Navy's main base in the Philippines. Overrun by a massive assault, Walker and its sister ship Mahan are now fleeing the pursuing Japanese fleet.

That's when a mysterious storm appears out of nowhere, sucks up Mahan and Walker, and dumps them out...well, somewhere else.

The geographical features are the same. The coastlines look just as they should, and all the islands and reefs are in place. But Captain Reddy and his crew are startled to see dinosaurs roaming about on shore, and monstrous fish and other creatures swimming in the ocean. Traces of human civilization are nowhere to be found. Reddy's amazement deepens when the Walker runs straight into a battle between two completely inhuman races: the Lemurians, lemur-like humanoids who live on giant floating cities, and the Grik, savage reptiles with insatiable bloodlust. It seems humans never evolved in this world. Reddy's intervention in the otherworldly battle makes the Walker allies of the Lemurians and enemies of the Grik...and things only escalate from there.

In Crusade, the second book of the series, Reddy and his crew learn that Walker and Mahan were not the only ships to fall through the storm and into the new world: the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi made it through as well, and now it's in the clawed hands of the vengeful Grik...

Come on, do I need to explain this one? A parallel Earth? Inhuman races vying for supremacy? A savage world full of strange monsters and ancient beasts? Bamboo technology mixing it up with World War II capital ships? Freakin' humanoid dinosaurs versus freakin' humanoid lemurs? BARs and Springfield rifles? This is just too cool. Taylor Anderson is no William Faulkner, but he writes well enough to illustrate his world and populate it with vivid imagery. I got all the books in the series (so far) at What the Book? in Itaewon last month, and I'm going to start working on them as soon as I finish my Jules Verne kick (The Mysterious Island and Around the World in Eighty Days).

In addition to these sci-fi titles, I've got The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley waiting in the wings.

Oh! The joy of reading!

Listening to: