Koryo Hall of Adventures OSR Conversions Document Published!

I just thought I’d drop a note mentioning that my OSR Conversions Document for the Koryo Hall of Adventures book has been published.  For those who don’t know, Aurélien Lainé (another expat in Korea) published a 5E-compatible setting book based on Korean history and mythology. It was a crowdfunded project, and was published this year as The Koryo Hall of Adventures. (The book is now available from the publisher’s website.) By the way, on the publisher’s website I’ve been posting a series of posts titled “Appendix K” on different Korean media—music, books, movies, and TV shows—that could be inspirational for …

Continue Reading

FERMENTVM NIGRVM DEI SEPVLTI Now Out!

So, my first real RPG project has been published as of a few weeks ago, and it out in the wild! It’s bananas seeing pictures being posted and seeing the first few reactions to it out there. I haven’t posted about it here because, let’s face it, the blog has lain mostly dormant for years. (Long story, for another time.) But man, look at this book: The adventure is set in a brewing monastery, because, you know, write what you know? Okay, I’m not a monk, but I know a fair bit about beer and historical brewing, and was reading …

Continue Reading

“Sojourn” in A City of Han

So my latest publication is out! Not in the usual sort of place, though! A City of Han is a collection of short stories set in Seoul, hence the title. Anyway, “Sojourn” is a low-key story that’s set in a world of mutants and superheroes and super-powers, but which is really about people trying to live normal lives in such a world—and what a titanic struggle can be for those a little away from the peak of the bellcurve. It’s also very much about the hakwon-teaching experience. I’ve written more about it in my post on the story, along with …

Continue Reading

Another Prodigal Reprint

I got another book in the post the other day! Supposedly the publication date for this one in in July, but it seems available at some places, at least: Somehow, my shaggy dog story has been reprinted in three languages so far—Chinese and Czech, along with English—and appeared in two Year’s Best collections so far! This one is The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois  and published by St. Martin’s Griffin (which is MacMillan). It’s the second time Gardner has selected one of my stories to appear in his annual anthology, and as always it’s an honour, …

Continue Reading

More Prodigal News… and a Blowfish in a Pear Tree

With the intensive courses I’ve been teaching, I haven’t had time to reflect much on 2016, or all the stuff that happened last year. (And since today’s my wedding anniversary, I won’t be doing it now.) I’ll have a little time for things like that soon—after my courses end and I get the grades uploaded, sometime next week or early on during the week after—but for now, some happy news: I’ve finally received my contributor’s copy of the December 2016 issue of Analog! Pretty exciting. I’ve actually had it for about a week, but have been too busy to mention it here. In …

Continue Reading

Two More Stories of Mine Published

So, a couple of my stories have been released into the wild… er, I mean, published in different books this month, both of which are available digitally, which means yes, you can go and buy them right now! Like, right now. (Just what you were hoping I’d say, right?) The first story is titled “The Rite,” a weird story that is about a famous ballet that caused a famous musical riot when it premiered in Paris a hundred years ago, and the pagan/magical roots of the musical content, as well as questions of the composer’s (Igor Stravinsky’s) uncertainty regarding how to …

Continue Reading

Review in Kyoto Journal #77

New as of right now: my long-delayed review of B.R. Myers’ The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters is out in the current issue of the Kyoto Journal (#77). Though the title is goofy — “Minjok Mama Madness! and Other Fairytales From North of the 49th Parallel” — the subject is serious, and the review is overall quite positive. My review isn’t in the online preview, though, so you’ll have to get a copy of this fine journal in order to read it. I’m enjoying my contributor’s copy, and can recommend the issue (and the journal) without …

Continue Reading

New (Free) Essay On Gaming, Education, and Agency in Korea, Published in The WyrdCon 2012 Companion Book

For those interested in RPGs, their use in language and other teaching, and what I see as the potential political subversiveness of RPGing in Korea, you might want to check out my newest essay, which is included in the WyrdCon Companion Book, which was just published the other day.

WyrdCon is an annual American convention focused on Interactive Storytelling–which includes LARP, ARGs, and more. I’ve never attended (or even larped, really), but the editor for the non-academic section of the book, Aaron Vanek, invited me to contribute an essay after reading what I wrote about Dread and my return to gaming.

My essay is titled “Thinking Big: RPGs, Teaching in Korea, and the Subversive Idea of Agency,” and it deals not only with my own experience using RPG-like systems in language teaching, but also how RPG-like approaches to interaction might be just what’s needed to fix Korea’s utterly broken TEFL paradigm… and maybe to instill a deeper sense of agency in young people whose literature, education, and upbringing seem specifically to stifle that sense. But I’ll add that it’s just as much about my return to gaming as it is about the stuff mentioned in the title… and there’s a lot of other interesting stuff in there, too.

The WyrdCon Companion ebook is free to download from here.

Continue Reading

Miracle Books Story Collection Deal

So last Saturday, I signed the contract on a book deal that had been in the works for a while. I had only hinted at it until now, but since the contract’s signed, I feel I can say something about it. The twist is, the book’s a Korean-language project: the publisher is 기적의책 (Miracle Books, a small independent Korean speculative fiction publisher), which has published a few projects so far, including Korean translations of Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, Ray Cummings’ The Girl in the Golden Atom, and Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky. (As well, of course, as involvement in the Miraekyung …

Continue Reading

Publication News: A New Story Out, and a Reprint in Good Company

I am in the habit now of not announcing things until they’re definitely announced by the publisher, but I have some publishing news that’s definitely out of the bag, and I’m pleased about it, so here it is: First off, my Clarkesworld story “Of Melei, of Ulthar” is going to be reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu II, from Nightshade books. Checking out the Table of Contents, I am frankly bowled over to find myself in the company of the likes of Fritz Leiber and William Browning Spencer, two authors I’ve been reading since I rediscovered speculative fiction as an …

Continue Reading