Legend of July 7

Continuing on my theme of Korean Folk Tales, the folk at Whistling Shade have published my re-telling of the Legend of July 7. Go read the story of the maiden weaver Jiknyeo and her true love Gyeonu. This story features the King of Heaven, a bridge of ravens, a flood that threatens the world, and a bittersweet ending typical of Asian tales.

Enjoy!

The Legend of Sim Cheong

From a series of Korean myths and legends I'm working on:

1.
Sim Bongsa was the greatest sail-mender in Old Port City, until he lost his sight from working with his eyes so close to the canvas. His wife had died years ago giving birth to their only child, a daughter, who was known for her beauty and loyalty. She tended her blind father the best way she knew, but soon they were very poor. Often she would pause and sigh, and say, “I wish…” but her father would curtly stop her speech.

“Your wishes are your business,” he would tell her. “I may be poor and blind, but my advice is good: keep your wishes to yourself till you find the one who can grant them. Otherwise, you are but a burden to listen to.”

The only time she was away from her father was to fetch what food she could from the market. As it happened, this took her by the docks where the sailors drank, killing time between voyages. One day, she heard some sailors in the street call to her, “Pretty girl, pretty girl, please look our way!” She resolved not to look, but the next thing they said made her think: “The Dragon King of the Sea himself would like to meet you. He could grant you any wish.”

She stopped short, and turned to them. “Any wish?” She said. “Of course!” Said the sailors. “He is King of the Sea!”

She thought. Then she said, “I do have a wish that I would dearly love granted… but…”

One sailor with a strong chin and honest eyes said, “There is nothing to fear! We know where he lives. We can take you there.”

Now, Sim Cheong was young, but she had heard from her father often that she should never trust a lonely sailor. But he did not tell her how convincing a desperate sailor could be. For the sailors she had fallen in with were deceptive in every way. They did not care for her wishes, but only needed a sacrifice for the Dragon King, to appease his anger at the storms that swept the trade routes and sent their boats to the ocean floor.

2.
And so the sailors took her onto the ship, and hid her in a small pantry so the captain would not find her. Every night, the sailor with the honest eyes would come to her room and whisper poetry and words of love into her ear. “You cannot love me,” she said. “I am bad, for I have left my poor father all alone, even though my errand is for his sake…”

“So,” said the sailor. “Your wish is for your father?”

“I cannot tell you my wish,” said the girl, though she felt something slipping away already.

“You are Sim Bongsa’s child!” he said. “You want his sight back! Oh,” he said, “I love you now, my Sim Cheong, and tomorrow, we when we set in to port, you and I will run away, and be together.” He told her the sailors meant to throw her to the sea as a sacrifice, and at this news she wept pitifully, but he promised he would spare her life, and he left her to sleep.

But he did not keep his promise. The next morning, they came to a part of the sea that looked like every other part of the sea, but for the storm clouds that were coming at them, the sky a great black boiling of anger. The sailors said, The Dragon King lies below. You will have to leap now. Sim Cheong cried some more and looked about for the sailor who said he loved her, but he was gone like his promises, and so with a farewell to the world that had never been kind to her, and with great peals of thunder ripping the sky apart, she leapt. As she fell, she thought:  Perhaps there is a Dragon King. Perhaps I will see him, she thought, as the icy water struck her like a stone rising, and perhaps her wish could still be granted.

3.
When she awoke she was in a lush, shimmering bedchamber, attended by women in gauzy, watery clothes. When she breathed it felt heavy, like her lungs were filled with water, for that’s exactly where she was: under water, in the halls of the Dragon King of the Sea. She was fed, and tended to, and when she regained her strength, the attendants led her through the pearl-lined halls of the Dragon King, where coral statues of gods and heroes lined a large hallway leading to his throne room. The Dragon King of the Sea stood enchanted before her beauty, and asked to hear her tale. She told him of her father’s blindness, of the way the sailors had tricked her. So touched was he by her loyalty and love for her father, that he took her in as his own.

“But … I have a wish,” she said. “Can you give my father his sight again? The sailors, they promised that you could…”

“Ah, child,” he said. “Those sailors were indeed bad men. By the ancient magics, yes, your father’s sight would have been restored had you not told your wish to them. But because you have disclosed your fondest wish, I cannot grant it to you.”

“But he deceived me,” she said. “He said he loved me! And I did not tell him – he guessed! And those other sailors – you must punish them, must you not? For they wanted me dead!”

“Ah,” said the Dragon King of the Sea. “I can understand your anger. But there are strange and ancient rules. You were sent to me as a sacrifice, so punish them I cannot. In fact, I am honor-bound to make sure they go home safely. Shortly after you arrived, the storm ceased, and they are warm in their bunks.”

“But…” she said. She prepared an argument,  but knew it would be no use. All the tales told of the ancient kings being unyielding. What were Kings, if not constant in their word? Better not to anger him: Worse than a spoiled child was the petulance of the otherworldly kings with their ancient rules.

“Oh, poor me,” she said. “To have not guarded my secrets more carefully! To not be more cunning in my loyalties. The world does not care for the innocent, it is true.”

Sim Cheong fell into despair. Here, she had come across the ocean to save her father, but her own foolishness had doomed him to blindness forever!

4.
Sim Cheong lay in bed, weeping, for ten days. Finally, the Dragon King took pity on her. He wrapped her in a lotus petal and sent her back to land, to reside in the emperor of the land’s palace, where the emperor, who was the son of the Dragon King, sat on the throne. Here, she studied at the great library, hoping to learn the secret ways of wishes, that hers might still one day come true, while the Emperor watched, and fell helplessly in love. She was not sure if she loved him back, but she’d become accustomed to the castle – it’s lovely sliding doors and warm fires in winter. She was tended on kindly, the food was delicious, and the library filled with fascinating things. As for the Emperor, his face, she soon realized, was not unpleasant, and his humor not unkind, so when he proposed marriage she accepted, on one condition.

It was that after their wedding, at the celebration dance, all blind men in all the three kingdoms should be brought to the banquet to receive a special blessing from the emperor. And on that day, as she had wished, her father appeared, frail now and older than she remembered. How time passed! At his side was an attendant in fine robes, a man strong in his jaw and honest in his eye, who Sim Cheong did not recognize at once.

When he heard her voice, her father said, “Sim Cheong. Is that you? What a strange tale I have to tell. After you left, I was in despair. I thought you had been stolen by thieves, and were being most horribly abused. Then, the strangest thing happened. A sailor came to me. He said he had met you and was bewitched by your beauty. He brought food, and hired a lady to cook for me. And some months later a man in silk robes appeared and took me to live in a house with high ceilings, where scholars of renown came to talk to me. They brought me fine silk and thread, and I discovered I could sew beautiful silk purses by touch. They were received with great renown by the wealthy, who paid me well for my craft. I have done quite well. And the sailor who came to me first stayed with me to care for me, and here he is now.”

And Sim Cheong recognized the sailor from the boat, the one who had not saved her when he’d said he would. “I am sorry, my empress” he said, bowing low, with a rueful tear in his eye. He told her that on that morning, he had feared for his life as the storm clouds built up on the horizon, that perhaps a sacrifice was the only way for them to come home, and that though his love did burn bright, perhaps he was not worthy of Sim Cheong.  “I survived. As soon as you jumped, the storm clouds went away. But my shame grew ever larger, even though I knew that had I saved you, the boat would have been ruined and we would all have died. So I went to your father, to atone for my sins the only way I could. I can only ask your forgiveness now.”

And the Emperor said, “It was my father who sent the this sailor, and the emissaries who followed. It was he who blessed hiss hands to sew silk though his eyes are blind. Because he could not grant your wish, Sim Cheong, he granted another, unspoken one: for his happiness. For your loyalty and virtue needed some reward.”

“Oh, dear,” said Sim Cheong. “There seems to have been much bother and poorly earned rewards over one little wish. And I didn’t even make it correctly!”

Her new husband said, “Though you have not received your wish, look at what has come of your virtue. Surely you are among the luckiest women in the kingdom.”

“Well,” she said. She drew her father close, and the sailor, and took them all by the hand. “I should think I’ve learned something. Though I don’t know what it could be.”

And so, in happiness with some confusion, did they live for the rest of their days.

A real dream I had

I’m hanging out with this nutty professor type who wants me to help test his latest invention. It’s supposed to be a way to safeguard money in the event of a future catastrophe, perhaps the end of the world. It comes down to this: We put a donkey in a crate. The valuables, which turn out to be a wad of money, maybe a million dollars, is tucked into a secret compartment of the crate. Then, we lift up the crate by a rope and dangle it from the bottom of a helicopter, and when the timing is right, donkey, crate, and money all fall into the center of the cloverleaf of a highway interchange. 


So we try it out, and the crate falls, and it all goes swell. Then we land the chopper and I go to take a peek at the donkey. Not only is the donkey okay, but the inside of the crate looks like a luxury hotel, and the donkey is in there lounging on the red velvet furniture. He’s really having the time of his life. He’s eating something, and it looks like the money. I say to the mad scientist, He’s eating the money, Doc! And the scientist says, My plan. It worked... perfectly!!!!

The MZD now available. Sample included.

Wow it's been a busy few days.

The MZD: A novella of undead horror, is now available for purchase on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. That's the cover, over there, on the right. I made it myself, and it's an okay cover, though I'm open to fan art for future editions. I had a surprise release party at Moe's bar, in Mokpo, South Korea, and I'm still a bit under the hangover. Thanks for coming, everybody!

So it's out now, ready for you, gentle reader. Please read and enjoy the book. If there are problems, like typos, or names that seem weird, or crazy breaks, please let me know. I proofed it, but these things slip through. I'll save up all the corrections and send everyone who sent them in a corrected edition when I make that happen, or a free copy of my next book, or a beer at Moe's, if you're in town. Plus, if this is well accepted, I promise to pay a copy editor for my next work, which will either be a saga of alternate realities, or a sensitive coming of age tale set in the golden glow of the early sixties, or maybe something with teenage dragon tamers who fall in love with mermaids and fight space commies. Yeee-hah!

Here's a sample of what you're getting in the MZD:

Joe's story:

Joe worked in one of the after-school academies called Hogwans. Koreans sent their kids to Hogwans after school for extra study. Some sent their kids to get ahead of the other kids, the rest sent them only so they could keep up. It was a vicious circle of achievement and keeping-up-withs that no one seemed interested in breaking, and it had earned for Korea one of the largest, richest economies in the world. To hear Joe tell it, he worked for one of the best Hogwans in Mokpo; one where the students were uniformly excellent and the owner was a vicious perfectionist; luckily Joe was one of the best teachers he knew, and the best compensated. Whether it was true or not no one knew - no one had seen Joe teach. What it meant for Joe was he went to work at three in the afternoon, and got out at ten at night, when he went straight to the bar, usually Capp’s, for a few drinks, maybe poker on Wednesdays, before heading home to bed. It was a cycle he was happy to repeat as often as necessary until he’d built up a nice nest egg for whatever came next. 


When he’d showed up at work today, everything had seemed normal. His boss’s car, a black Samsung, was parked squarely in his reserved spot, and kids were milling about on the sidewalk. But his boss wasn’t in the office, nor was he in the classroom. This was strange, because the boss was a workaholic who’d lived in Boston for eight years, which not only left him with a strange accent when he spoke English (How’s da weada? for instance), but an undying love for the Red Sox. He still took five shifts of teaching a day himself, hadn’t missed a day of work in the entire eighteen months Joe had been there. He was a machine for teaching, and a prickly stickler for details: he’d had a running argument with the janitor over where to store cleaning material, and how often the bathroom should be cleaned. Joe had more than once seen them standing toe-to-toe, red-faced and spitting, gesturing wildly at bottles of cleanser stacked on the shelves next to the supply closet tucked under the stairs behind the lobby. 


Lots of foreigners came and went, they couldn’t stand the boss. But Joe was an Army man, and his time there had been vast, and merciless; the Army wanted you attuned to detail, and  unquestioning in your execution. He’d done a tour in Iraq - an even more vast and merciless place than basic training. There in the sun, sitting and waiting for combat that never arrived, the will to serve in the Army was sapped right out of him, and when it came time to get out, he got out. Compared to the Army, Korea and the Principal’s whims were like a kiss on the cheek from your dotty old aunt. Condescending, but a degradation nowhere near real hardship.


But even with the boss gone, the kids were there. So Joe settled in to teach. The kids, mostly cut from the sheep-mold of middle school kids caught in the grind of the Korean achievement machine, showed up and sat down, and Joe ran them through the basics: the rules of how to make the present progressive, a game of pass the ball for amusement, then a few more drills. The second class had two missing students, the next was half full, and for the seven o’clock class he waited ten minutes past the starting time, but no students arrived.


Joe, without a Principal, didn’t quite know what to do. He supposed he should just wait, but after four straight hours, he also had to pee, so with the thinking that his pissing would give the kids a few more minutes to show, he went downstairs to the lavatory. He walked into the bathroom and pulled at a door handle for one of the squat toilets. All of the bathrooms here were squatting toilets, small porcelain troughs set flush with the ceramic tiles. He pulled at the door, but it didn’t open, which was strange, as the latches only worked from the inside, and it seemed dark and empty in there. He didn’t know how it would be locked from the inside and still be empty. Curious, he gave it another pull. He went down to one knee and peered underneath, but it was dark, he could see nothing. Not that he wanted, or needed, the squatter. So whatever. He turned to use the urinal, had a hand on his fly, when he heard a shuffling sound from behind the closed door. A definite rustling sound. The sound of air escaping lungs. Joe stopped, but he didn’t hear it again. Then, the door rattled. It rattled, and he heard a grunt like air escaping, and the door shook again. 


He didn’t ask who it was - he didn’t know the Korean, wouldn’t have understood the response, and the idea of language seemed completely absent anyway; he was suddenly terrified. He looked at the gap below the door and saw the toes of one slippered foot and another in a single stocking, and then he looked up to the top of the door and saw a hand curling over its edge, its fingers stained purple and bleeding from the cuticles and grasping to giving the door a great horrific shake, and then he left.


He ran down the hall to the stairs and around to the main hall where he saw the janitor moving away from him and dragging something that looked very heavy. It looked to be something largish, something trailing liquid, something wearing shoes.


“Hey,” said Joe, but the janitor didn’t turn around. He went into the supply closet, pulling the thing in with him. Surprisingly, it was dark: Joe hadn’t even noticed the sun going down. It was dark and the floor was wet, but Joe needed to let the janitor know someone was trapped in the bathroom. He needed to find out what he could, because Joe, the good teacher, the former Army communications expert, didn’t like loose ends. He was Army: he wanted to pass the buck up the ranks and go home. So he walked down the hall, being careful not to slip on the water. Then he looked into the supply closet and turned on the light. 


***


He didn’t want to say any more, there in Capp’s. “I think now I must be remembering it wrong,” he said. “You know how memories play tricks on you. But no. I’m pretty sure it really was... But I don’t really know what it was. All I known is what I saw. And I didn’t like it.” 


Finally Felix said, “What did it look like, Joe?” 


He paused, a sick smile that wasn’t of amusement on his face, then he said, “It wasn’t even water on the floor. It was red; it was blood everywhere. And it looked like the janitor was eating the Principal.”


________

The MZD: enjoy it today!

The MZD: FAQ continued

Since last I posted, there have been several more questions for me to answer: Here they are.

Q: So, what's The MZD about?

A: Okay, it's about this: Legions of walking undead are roaming the streets of South Jeolla province. All westerners know things change fast in South Korea, but a contagion of murderous horror is a bit too much. Now they’re running for their lives, and looking for help anywhere they can get it. Can the US Army help? Does a rogue filmmaker hold the secret to stop the destruction? Read now to discover the secret horror of... The MZD.

Q: How long did it take you to write?
A: I started in October, during 'desk-warming' time at school. I banged out a page or two a day till I had a hundred pages, then stopped. Then a re-wrote the whole thing a couple times.

Q: Can I get a free copy?
A: Sure. If you promise to do a (hopefully positive) Goodreads or Amazon review, I can send you a copy in kindle, nook, ebook, or .pdf format. Just leave a comment with your email address and I'll get one out to you. *quantities limited.

Q: And, what does The MZD stand for?
A: Well, that's a good question. I knew when I started, but kinda forgot as I went on, and now I just think it's kind of cool. If you think you know, post it in the comments.

Novel review: Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

As someone just wrapping up his own zombie novella, I felt this one was just begging me to read it. So I did. Here you go:

Colson Whitehead's novel Zone One attempts a difficult move - writing a genre novel with 'literary' intentions. Leaving aside what 'literary' might mean, we're left with the question of whether a) the zombie plot is any good and b) what the book 'reads' like.

The good news is that the central idea of this book is outstanding- a plucky band of paramilitaries attempts to clear Manhattan for re-settlement after a zombie holocaust has brought civilization to a standstill. The central character is a non-special guy who goes by the nom de apocalypse Mark Spitz - a name that's left unexplained for about three-quarters of the book. If you're the type who can't wait three-quarters of a book to find out why the central character is named Mark Spitz, that's the first clue this book isn't for you.

Mark Spitz is, in his own words, a solid B student, who got through life on his special skill of being completely un-special, attracting minimal attention, and being very ordinary. This is his survival skill, in fact, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to explain why when the zombie hordes inevitably converge on whatever hiding space he's in, he will slip away, un-noticed. If that's the type of humor that's for you, then you'll love this book.

As these examples show, Whitehead's execution is a bit off-setting. It may be its off-settingness which leads this to be labeled a 'literary' book. There are endless digressions into family history, a cyclical plot, flashes back and forwards in time, all of which is drenched in dense, artsy prose that is often a bit more than is called for. But, in his defense, this is a novel about zombie apocalypse, a topic where you have to come big or go home.

Whitehead has definitely read Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, and his social commentary runs towards the concept that America, and by extension the after-apocalypse cabal that runs the reconstruction, is under the control of jingo-heavy spin-masters more interested in PR than in actually fixing real problems. Just like modern America, in other words. It's a nearly shopworn conceit done better by others, one that a zombie scenario neither really enhances nor expands upon, though it leads to a final scene that is as zombie-tastic as any zombie climax you can think of.

Don't get me wrong - Zone One is a fun romp, and compulsively page-turnable, though part of the page-turning spree may be due to your glossing over the repetitive digressions and nearly-the-same flashbacks of previous 'safe' houses that continually interrupt the real plot. It's a book that could easily lose a few pounds. Whitehead has a real wit and a strong power of observation not common in contemporary novels, zombie or otherwise. But overall, this is a read for slumming snoots or zombie fan-boys with aspirations of snoot-hood, and the purple prose and endless digressions can make it a slow slog for many readers.

Coming soon: The MZD: a novel of undead horror

So my latest project is a bit of a diversion from my usual navel-gazing, 'literary' (pretentious?) type writing. I've gone genre, mixing my formerly mild obsession with zombies and my current job of teaching English in Korea. This means (can you guess?) I've written a novella of zombie horror, set in South Korea.

It's called The MZD, and it's pretty much done - just a little tweaking, then a conversion to ePub format, then it's ready for you, my adoring reader. So. I can sense the questions mounting. Here, then, is a pre-emptive FAQ:

Q: A zombie book?
A: Yup. zombies.

Q: Aren't there like, hundreds of zombie novels out there already?
A: I'd say there are actually thousands. The market's pretty saturated with them right now.

Q: Is that a problem?
A: We'll see.

Q: Okay, so, I'm a zombie fan, myself. But I'm pretty discriminating. Are they fast zombies or slow? Is it a virus or space dust that turns people into zombies? Is is a post-apocalyptic wasteland of cannibals and madmen? Are there gratuitous kills and bloody mayhem?
A: It's not post-apocalypse, but it's about the outbreak itself, and people in the early stages of dealing with society falling apart. The zombies themselves are pretty traditional, except for the means of re-animation - that's where it's a little different. I won't say any more - part of the fun is reading it and seeing where it diverges from other z-lit out there.

Q: What format will it be released in? How do I get it?
A: It will be an eBook available on Amazon for sure, and probably bn.com, and other outlets like Smashwords. I will also make it available as a simple pdf for people who don't have e-readers as well. Since it's relatively short (about 40,000 words/100 pages), it'll probably cost around 3 bucks.

Q: When can I get my copy?
A: By mid February, 2012.

Q: Any excerpts? A synopsis?
A: Coming soon. Be patient.

Q: What's your next project? Teenage vampires?
A: Sure, why not? But they'll be real vampires, ugly, and disgusting, with zits and bad taste in music.

Q: Are you worried that this work compromises the value of your more literary work?
A: I don't understand the question. Do you want to buy a zombie book or not?

Q: Where else can I follow your progress?
A: The MZD has a facebook page here. Go and enjoy. There are reviews of other zombie works, updates on future projects, etc. Plus, I tweet.

That's all for now. 

Post more questions in the comments below, and I'll get to them when I can.