Books, blog and other blather

Month: August 2015

Taking stock

Summer is still nasty hot out, but the end is in sight, as at last temperatures are falling somewhere close to okay in the middle of the night. With my son on the verge of turning 1 year old, I thought this might be a good time to take stock of where I am and how things have changed over the past year or so.

  • Baby is nearly a year old. Hard to believe he’s so old already. But as the saying goes about parenthood, the days are long and the years are short. It’s pretty amazing seeing this little guy getting so big and alert and human-like. Kind of annoyed with myself for waiting so long to do the parenthood thing.
  • New job. A little over a year ago, I left a pretty bad newspaper gig for a really nice job with a big Korean conglomerate—and, much to my surprise, it was actually pretty good. Smart and good people, decent hours, interesting content (nuclear power, desalination plants, etc.). But last week, I left that company to start as a director at Edelman Korea; it’s a lot more challenging, but I’m enjoying the potential for the job for the future.
  • Writing. Young-hee & the Pullocho finally came out a few months ago, which was great. I also finished a couple of short stories over the past year, and hope to find a hope for them soon. And I’m about halfway through the sequel to The Pullocho (yay!), and am lined up to write a horror novel after that.
  • Moving. We’re about to leave Hongdae at last, to try living in a totally different part of Seoul. It’s about as far away from where I live now as you can get and still be in Seoul (geographically and metaphorically). But with the baby getting older, perhaps it is time for a change.

To everyone who checked out one of my books or read this blog, thanks much for your interest. And hopefully I’ll have more to interest you soon.

Summertime (and the bloggin’ ain’t easy)

Erg, August already? Apologies for the lack of updates. It’s been a hot, soggy summer in Korea, one that doesn’t really lend itself to blogging.

On the plus side, I’ve been making some decent progress on the writing. Finished one short story (very short) and I’ve been cranking away on the sequel to Young-hee & the Pullocho. Most significantly, I think I finally worked out a few bugs in that story and nearly gotten through a re-write. But still a long way to go.

Back in early July, Bank Street Bookstory in New York City was nice enough to have a reading of The Pullocho. That was a wonderful surprise, but I was even more surprised to discover they filmed the reading, and put some highlights up online.

  • Also, there have been a couple more reviews of The Pullocho, at London Korea Links and ATK Magazine (very positive reviews, too, so big thanks to Philip and Cindy, and huzzah!).
  • Publisher’s Weekly did a very nice writeup of Ed Greenwood’s new publishing ventures … something that should directly relate to my own writing (eventually).
  • Hey, the Wondergirls are back, with a very, very ’80s song:

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