Why I Wrote It the Way That I Did

In case you missed yesterday’s blog post, my novel, Eye in the Blue Box: Book One of Eyes of Awakening, is finally available for purchase! I hope you'll give my book a try, especially if you like my blog. As you’ll see in today’s post, my book, despite containing the more spectacle-oriented traits typical of fantasy and action & adventure works, really revolves around philosophical questions and human experiences, much like my blog posts.

I previously wrote about why I write in general, but I’d also like to explain why I wrote Eye in the Blue Box the way that I did. Why this story? Why dark fantasy and action & adventure? Maybe it’s because friends and family know I’ve been through a lot in life and that I’m not afraid to be vulnerable about my experiences, or maybe it’s because many of my short stories and all of my blog posts take place in the here and now and lack any and all fantastical elements, or maybe it’s because I’ve always been vocal about Asian/Asian American culture, history, and rights. Whatever the reason, people who know me well have often been surprised that I didn’t write more of a present-day-drama type of book or even a memoir, much in the fashion of Amy Tan.

Indeed, I’m a bit surprised myself. After all, genre fiction usually isn't my go-to genre for pleasure reading. The majority of my literary choices have always leaned toward classics and just about any other kind of work you’d assume to be a requirement in a standard English major curriculum. What contemporary books I do reach for often tend to be calm and cozy, heartfelt, and devoid of the fantastical and violent. (I’m a big fan of John Green and Robin Sloan, for example.) 

So, how did someone like me - a lover of cozy reads and classics and someone who only seems to talk about problems that exist in the real world - end up popping out a book like Eye in the Blue Box? There's literally nothing cozy or grounded-looking about my book, after all. The cover alone features a giant wolf and a weird tree producing a bunch of even weirder eyeballs. Such a book does seem far removed from the type of literature one would expect me to write.

At least, it does at first glance.

And that's because most people, even my loved ones, aren’t aware of the types of stories that have profoundly touched or changed me as a person. I’m not talking just about the books I like to read for pleasure. I’m talking about stories from across all mediums, literary and beyond, that have impacted my life for the better. Such stories have, for whatever reason, been predominantly fantasy and action & adventure with dark and/or violent undertones. Historical fiction, especially the stories that showed lots of drama, exercised liberal amounts of flexibility when portraying real historical details, and/or showed excessive amounts of battles and brutality, also had a profound influence on me.

When I was nine, for example, I started taking a proactive approach to self-discipline and education thanks to The Royal Diaries book series, especially the installment that was told from the perspective of Elizabeth I when she was a young adult. I read that book on repeat, savoring how powerful and, well, badass Elizabeth appeared whenever she was going about her rigorous geometry and Latin courses or clapping back at her sister, Mary, with educated and articulate words. I started making “royal schedules” for myself, complete with specific times to learn and practice different kinds of art so that I, too, could be cool like Elizabeth. And such organizational skills, admiration for education, and a growing love of the Renaissance all fed into major life skills and decisions later on, even into adulthood. 

The Harry Potter series helped reinforce my belief that reading a lot of different books for fun is actually a thing, and a good thing at that. TV, movies, and all the rest were great, but binging books was pretty sweet too and was to be seen as a first resort for entertainment, not the last. It was also Harry Potter that caused me to dabble in creative writing for the first time via writing a LilyxJames fanfic. (That’s right. My first serious attempt at fiction writing was in romance, though I’m relieved to say I had a dark flair even back then.) 

The fantasy, action & adventure manga, Naruto, changed me from a hopeless and jaded teenager who wanted to commit suicide to a hopeful young adult who was willing to take chances on people again.

Genre fiction films were also the pillars upon which my childhood was built. Braveheart, for example, was a "comfort watch" that my dad and I would indulge in almost every night when I was a kid - much to the disapproval of my mother. The only stories we watched as much if not more than dear old William Wallace’s was The Little Mermaid and Terminator 2: Judgement Day - again, to the disapproval of my mother. Gladiator was released not long after, and you can bet I watched that about a million times. (My mother had long given up by that point). Even as I grew older, my dad introduced me to everything from Tarantino to Bruce Lee to classic samurai films. My mom, who also loves movies and art in general, introduced me to films like Amadeus (a very dark movie but at least it doesn't show Scotsmen getting shot in their asses with arrows) as well as Miyazaki movies, and a lot of the K-drama series that entranced us (and the rest of Korea) in the 90s and early 2000s were set in ancient Korea (like YeoInChunHa, Dae Jang Geum, and Hwang Jini). 

Science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and action & adventure - in other words, genre fiction - laid the first layers of soil in my young mind from which my adult imagination would grow. Also, because genre fiction was such a huge part of my childhood, I can't help but feel a very strong bond with it, so much so that every time I watch warlord Ichimonji lose his son to a sniper’s bullet, or William Wallace scream, “FREEDOM!” while being disemboweled, or Salieri manipulate Wolfgang into composing a musical masterpiece even as he slowly fades on his death bed, or Arnold Schwarzenegger give child-version John Connor a final thumbs up while slowly sinking into a pit of molten steel, I just can’t help but feel like I’m being held in my mother and father’s arms again. (And yes, that’s a joke. I have a dark and weird sense of humor too.)

Point is, the stories that really meant something to me during my formative years were predominantly characterized by fantastical elements, a feeling that something important happened long ago, action, adventure, violence, and darkness. They were also works that tended to appeal to a mass audience and were considered to be mainstream. In contrast to “classier” works, tropes, cliches, sensationalism, and/or star power usually abounded in such stories and overshadowed a lot of the actual substance, so much so that it is fair to say these stories either contained big chunks of non-classy “trash” or were, themselves, just one big heap of trash. But my family and I didn’t care. These stories were fun! And we had the great pleasure of enjoying them together. 

And then I went to college and became an English major.

The great classics, high-falutin literature, literary theory and research - in other words, all the academic, “classier” stuff - became my bread and butter for four intense, overachievement-driven years. Everything from Robert Frost to Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, TS Eliot, Samuel Johnson, medieval bestiaries, Beowulf, Old English lessons, Latin lessons … I threw myself into all the standard hoity-toity stuff and studied it all so ardently that I graduated with over a 3.9 GPA from one of the best English departments in the world. (And I know many an English major will now protest and say that Chaucer, Shakespeare, and even Beowulf qualify as trash. I agree. But considering the average person struggles to learn, read, and understand, never mind enjoy, older forms of English, I classify all of the above as hoity-toity, academia-friendly trash and therefore, stereotypical “class.”) 

And here we are today. I'm a full-grown adult, and I have written a dark fantasy novel that takes place in modern day but toggles between reality as we know it and another dimension composed of its own intricate and ancient history, hungry monsters, and eerie dreamscapes. You can bet there will be action. You can bet there will be adventure. And blood, oh yes. But more than anything, there will be heart. Because all the stories, classy or trashy, that truly influenced me as a person ultimately had some kind of message beneath all the spectacle or, at the very least, some kind of human moment that showed the best or worst in people. 

I guess you can say that all of my books are equal parts class and trash. Class because you will absolutely find all the fancy literary devices that not only basic college essays but also graduate-level theses demand you know and analyze, including symbols and metaphors, foreshadowing, allusions, and the like. I also use a myriad of abstract means to explore philosophical questions like: What does it mean to be a true friend? What does bravery look like? What is love, really? 

But have no doubt that my books are also trash because I did NOT write a boring series that is zero spectacle and all artsy-fartsy, educated-people-only lecturing. After all, even the most insightful and intelligent lecture will put a class straight to sleep if it’s monotone. I have spectacle, and I am proud of it. Everything from surreal landscapes that are visual feasts for the mind’s eye to car chases to sword fights to good old-fashioned drama. It’s all there. My first and foremost core value in writing fiction has always been to entertain. As artsy-fartsy as I can be, I’m still a pragmatist, and the reality is that I can have the most meaningful truths sown into my book, but no one will ever get a chance to ingest them if the soil is bone-dry. But unlike complete junk food, my writing still has substance. I’m not including spectacle simply for the sake of spectacle. I’m just trying to cook up a dish that’s as palatable as it is nourishing.

I wrote Eye in the Blue Box the way that I did because like my book, I, as a person, am strange and unusual, and the stories which inspired me and taught me were not only elevated works of art but also entertaining works that anyone could enjoy. Maybe my book doesn’t come packaged in the typical way you’d expect something with deep moral lessons and explorations of the human soul to come wrapped in. But that’s only because I wanted to hold both sides of the coin in one hand. I wanted my work to prove that learning and fun can come side by side, that trash and class can coexist without canceling out the other and even help each other in a way that’s unique and meaningful. I wanted to give you, my dear reader, the best of two worlds. 

Won’t you come with me and experience both?  

Won’t you come explore the darkness and the light of the singular world I’ve created?

Paperbacks are available for immediate purchase! My cover designer and I worked very hard on the design. We're so proud of how these physical copies turned out!

Ebooks are now available for preorder! Preorders are crucial for a book's success as they determine how the book will rank online by the time of its official release. So, if you like ebooks (or if you'd simply like to help my book's rankings), please consider preordering. If you do, you'll automatically receive the ebook the date of its release (October 18th).