It’s still rather early to talk about this, but seeing as the Amazon.com page is up, I guess this is a decent time to announce my new book — and my first novel. It’s titled YOUNG-HEE AND THE PULLOCHO and it is coming out in the spring by Tuttle Publishing.

(UPDATE: I just found out the book is coming out in Asia in January, but Amazon.com and the West probably won’t get it until April or May).

THE PULLOCHO is a fantasy novel, in the vein of Alice in Wonderland or the Narnia books (or The Wizard of Oz or Hayao Miyazak’s movies or the like). As you can guess from the title, it is set in Korea and it is about a girl named Young-hee.

So what is it about?

So annoying.

In Young-hee’s life, everything feels wrong. It seemed like only yesterday that her world was just as it should be. But now her dad is gone, her mom is overextended, and Young-hee is forced to move back to Seoul—and not a nice part of Seoul, either. To make matters worse, the girls at her new school are nasty, and her little brother Bum is an insufferable, attention-hogging pain.

Then Young-hee stumbles into a magical world, where the Korean fairy stories of her childhood are real and all the frustrations of her everyday life fade away—until Bum is kidnapped by a goblin, and the only way Young-hee can save him is by finding the magical pullocho plant. Soon, she is plunged into an epic quest, encountering dragons, tigers, ghosts and other fairytale creatures, and facing decisions that affect not only Bum, but the fate of an entire world.

Fyi, a pullocho (불로초) is a kind of magical ginseng root. In addition, I also retell a whole bunch of Korean traditional folktales, weaving them into Young-hee’s story.

After years of writing about other people’s art (movies, music, etc.), it feels good to have created something of my own. YOUNG-HEE AND THE PULLOCHO comes out next April or May, but already you can pre-order it on a lot of online retailers, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, Indigo (in Canada),  and Kyobo Books (in Korea).

Much more to come as the publication date gets closer!