The Shin Kyung-Sook Plagiarism Scandal

Given how rampant plagiarism is in many fields in South Korea—and it really, really is, despite some limited attempts to address it—I figured it was only a matter of time until some famous contemporary author here got accused of it… at least, on a stage public and prominent enough for it to make it into the English language news. Well, that finally happened earlier this year, in September… accusation, scandal, flubbed dismissals, and finally an apology… well, sort of. (Kind of a non-apology apology, of the sort that’s very fashionable these days everywhere.) It happened back in September, but I’ve been busy so I’m only posting …

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In Other News…

It’s been such a busy time I haven’t updated much, but a lot has been going on, and not all of it relates to poo, diapers, 3:00am feedings, and baby wipes… There’s been some movement on several fronts, in fact: fiction writing & publication, RPG/game writing, and a workshop I attended just before Noeul was born. Publication News: Back in late September I got my copy of Cthulhu Fhtagn!, which contains my story “The Return of Sarnath” alongside new, original works by a number of Lovecraftian notables, as well as some authors new to me. Here’s the copy I got in …

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Noeul

The last week is a blur, in part because while this was what we did on Friday, the 23rd of October: That was just outside the ob/gyn office, where we’d just been told the baby had to come out by the due date… which was November 1st, incidentally. He must have been listening, since the little guy decided to show up a week early, on the evening of the 25th of October: As one friend noted, he’s already giving people the side-eye.

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The Spurned Bride’s Tears, Centuries Old, in the Rain

“The Spurned Bride’s Tears, Centuries Old, in the Rain” appeared in issue 5 of Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, a wonderful publication out of Singapore. During the winter of 2010, I spent approximately two months in Indonesia (with much of that time spent in Depok, an exurb of Jakarta), where my then-girlfriend—now my wife—was studying Bahasa Indonesia, the official national language of the country. Indonesia’s not an easy place to be, at times: Jakarta’s traffic is pure insanity, and I got the worsst food poisoning of my life there. But the place had a powerful effect on me: rereading …

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