The Year of Soaring
It’s 2025 so that means I’ll be planning to head to S. Korea between Oct and Dec. That means after The Harlequin is out and published (March 14, 2025), everything will be focused on writing Soaring, a sci-fi fantasy alternative history work that has been worked on since about 2014. I talk more about it here.
Long story very short, it would be my first time outside the US (traveling is expensive, especially if you weren’t born with money, which is my case), second plane trip in my life (first time was going to ATL for Multiverse. I didn’t die, therefore yay). So this all means a lot of research on simply traveling since that’s all brand new to me and the last I want is to lose things or have everything go awry just because of some “well known unwritten rule” that I plain didn’t know about.
I already have been trying to get things put away so that I can have a lot of screw-up room for traveling. I know 5+ languages, including Korean, so I don’t have to worry about how to read signs or things like that. I’m just going to have an apartment to myself, as far from any foreigner hot spots as I very much can (there’s a reason why I’m going to the other half of the world. It’s not because I really like japchae), and all I plan to do is spend all my time writing. Y’know, the same stuff I do here, self-isolate and work on my works.
That means also being on radio silent. I don’t post or do much of any internet-related stuff when I write. The most internet related stuff I plan to do is access the decade of research I accrued (which will hopefully get compiled to something remotely comprehensive during the summer) and that’s probably it. I don’t even plan to be outside my apt very much, besides grocery shopping for the most part. It sucks I can’t transfer my Lotte points internationally ;_; I may attempt to visit Dominant Industry or Colorverse but they’re ink makers so of course I would, probably.
I already have Kakao, I’ve been using that for years so everyone who I need to interact with in the US (friend taking care of my cats, my doctors, friends who are native to Korea, etc) is already lined up.
Because I don’t want to risk my disorders flaring up before I leave, I’m going to be pretty strict with my time and interactions. I do have a couple promotional things to do for The Harlequin getting worked out currently but that’s it. Right now, it should be about 3 in-person events at the total max. As always with every event I do, I have a mask on and I strongly prefer people who attend to do the same, especially if you want to talk to me for longer than 15 seconds. I’ve never caught Covid and don’t intend to any time soon. I already am not that much of social butterfly (well, sometimes I am, sometimes I am not) but yeah, expect some awkwardness and weirdness, I suppose.
The Harlequin is coming out this year, “Stalwart”, my short story in the anthology Yemoja Tears, is supposed to be coming out this year. So it isn’t a case of nothing will be coming out. I have no idea how the publishing schedule will be affected once I am back. I have no idea what will be affected when I am back. I will be limited in checking my emails – mainly when I am on break between books so if someone sends me an email between Oct and Dec, I hope it isn’t urgent because you’ll be waiting for roughly a week or more to hear back – and like I said above, if it isn’t Kakao, you’re probably not going to get through as fast as you would like to think. I regularly leave my tech devices on Do Not Disturb or straight up disconnect them from the internet when I am writing. There’s a reason why I am uber social and interactive now, because I sure as f#ck won’t be then. Once I’m off the plane in S. Korea, if I didn’t know you personally before I left America, I will have -34556423321% desire to when I am there. The one thing I do stress to people, friends included, is that when I am working … I am working. Especially since travelling to such a faraway place is not at all cheap. I’m saving money because I’m not going for Super Happy Awesome KPop Time and I can already understand the language but still, plane tix and apt rental is still pricy.
Since I’m doing all the planning myself, that means there’s going to be things I will probably miss so that’s why I’ve been spending the pandemic doing a buttload of prep work. Seeing what I do need to bring, seeing what I don’t need to bring, how much stuff costs, etc. The less I interact with others, hopefully the less things will go awry.
I plan to work on some pretty heavy subjects, such as war and human rights, so I’m probably not going to be a massive bucket of sunshine anyways. I already am very easily pissed when someone or something interrupts my writing in general, I bet dollars to donuts I’m probably going to be omega worse after writing a passage that features the Holocaust, Cambodia’s Year Zero and/or the Middle Passage. I already have local saunas earmarked in the area I’m staying in, on the off-chance I get to use any of them so I can decompress. I probably will be in VR to definitely decompress. By myself.
Yes, I have seen the recent S. Korean news about how they can’t basically go 40 years without someone tossing the nation into martial law. It doesn’t really phaze me, I’m American, we have much worse here. At least they arrest their presidents there. I feel like a lot of people paint the US as a much friendlier and nicer country than it actually is. We literally have mass shootings here. They don’t over there. Big difference. I’m from Baltimore, I already lived through martial law. Besides, I plan to keep to myself so nothing is that big a deal to me.
Long story massively short, I plan on hyperfocusing on just my works and all related matters. I hope things will not go awry, especially since I am trying my best to make sure they don’t.
