The Beautiful Dead
A Tale of
K-Pop, Ghosts, and
Nine-Tailed Fox Women
by Jun Prince
Date of
Publication: September 22nd 2017
Publisher:
Apollo and Nyx Publishing
Cover
Artist: Damonza
Genre:
Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
A lonely Korean pop star learns her high school classmate died
five years ago. So why are they still texting?
BLURB
Yubin knows she’s different than
the other girls in the pop group SIITY. Yes, they all got sucked into the same
machine, giving up schooling and signing ridiculously long contracts before
anyone knew if they'd be successful, but that's how pop stars are made in
Korea. Yubin is supposed to be thankful for that, but she isn't. She doesn't
even like the girls she performs with.
She’s more connected to her
former schoolmate Jieun, even though all they ever do is text. Over the last
two months, Jieun has become her confidant and best friend, connecting Yubin to
the real world in a way she desperately needs. Now that SIITY is going to
appear on the reality show The Incredible Race: Asia, Yubin will need that
connection more than ever, which is why she’s devastated to discover Jieun has
been dead five years and is actually haunting her.
If that weren’t enough, Yubin’s
not the only SIITY member with issues. Rena’s father is emotionally abusive.
Somi has a learning disability, and after a near death experience, Tae-eun
becomes a nine-tailed fox woman. The only way they’ll survive the show, each
other, and the supernatural currents buffeting them is to work together and win
the hearts of their fans. Because if they don’t, they have nothing to go back
to even if they survive what's trying to kill them.
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Excerpt
Jieun
She was
still unaccustomed to spirit combat, but a small tempest swirled in the
underworld around her. Humans too felt the wind she created, their muscles
tightened, and more than a few quickened their pace to evade the chill. Scraps
of litter spiraled over real world concrete, and whips of black hair whirled in
an angry nimbus around Jieun’s face.
The
shadowman looked up. She'd expected empty pits of darkness where eyes should
have been, but when the creature ceased feeding, a set of all too human brown
eyes that now lacked eyelids appeared in the monster’s head. They contrasted
with the rest of its body in that while the majority of the creature lurked in
shadow that was darker than everything else in the Dead World, these two
spheres burned as if absorbing all the spirit light that should have detailed
the shadowman’s body. The flow of spirit energy that connected its ugly mouth
to the girl stopped, and the ghost realized that she held the creature’s
attention.
The shade
of an eerily human face like black paint on even blacker canvas contorted in
what could have just as easily been taken for triumph or rage. It unleashed an
otherworldly snarl that was anything but human and charged Jieun. Though it had
a man's body, it rushed in an inhuman lope on all fours that seemed more like
an animal. Jieun darted out of the way—it wasn’t a conscious thing, and the
instinct may well have saved her dead life. If she hadn’t known before, alarm
she felt made her certain; ghosts could die a second death.
She
whirled after the attack expecting the shadowman behind her but it had
vanished. She sighed in relief. Then, without warning she saw the black shape
leap from the roof of a magazine stand just outside the subway station. She
cried out in alarm, and before its feet had touched the ground its giant mouth
fastened on her shoulder. The weight of the attack forced her to the ground,
and in a moment of dawning horror she realized it was impossible to escape.
She
shrieked. The pain was beyond anything she imagined possible for a spirit to
experience. It wasn’t like trailing her fingers through the wall, or even
passing completely through a physical object. Those pains were an affirmation
of life, cold shocks that, while not comfortable, served as a reminder that she
was still in some sense alive. The feeling of her spirit body being torn apart
by the shadowman’s teeth seemed as if the devil had run away with God’s scalpel
and used it to peel thick ribbons of her soul away from creation.
Though
the shadowman looked like and had similar features to a man, it made low growls
that were far distant from human speech. It wasn’t a language at all – if it
had been she’d have instinctually understood it. It shook its head like a
starved wolf and further tore into the fabric of firelines that composed her
spirit body. Its breath smelled of rotten flesh, and she could hear the pulse
of bestial rhythmic snorting in her ears. She needed a weapon. She didn’t have
one. This was it. Jieun would die… this time for real.
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Author Info
Jun has lived in Asia for the
better part of the last decade. During his years in Korea, he made a point of
learning about and getting as close to the Korean entertainment industry as
possible while writing his first novel "The Beautiful Dead." He
enjoys telling stories about monstrous humans and humanized monsters.
He has a MFA from the University
of California - Riverside, graduated with a BA in English Cum Laude from the
University of Washington - Seattle, and attended Yonsei University in Seoul,
South Korea as an exchange student.
How
would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your
work?
I'm
a very character focused writer. I
enjoy creating new personalities and sinking as far into a protagonist's head
as I can. It's a lot of fun coming up
with personality quirks, and exploring the same people and events through very
different eyes via PoV shifts.
You'll
find that The Beautiful Dead starts out introspective as you get to know
each of the protagonists and their struggles inside and out. The novel then accelerates into more of an
action story once you have a strong foundation of character
What
are some of your writing/publishing goals for this year?
I
hope to finish my second novel Grey in the next month or so, and begin writing
another novel. The next book will either
be a character specific Novella focusing on one of The Beautiful Dead
protagonists, another urban fantasy, or a LitRPG.
Do
you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows
naturally for you?
Yes
to both. There's a creative seed that
lives inside most fiction writers, but
it has to be nurtured to become wonderful.
I
have a BA in English from the University
of Washington and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California . I'm not going to say that my path is the
only way to become a good writer, but an MFA program will continually challenge
you to become better, and your professors and classmates will (or at least
should), call you out on everything that's not working. This forces you to become better, and teaches
you how to be critical of your own work.
It's
entirely possible to learn the same skills without a formal education, but in
my experience friends and family are more reluctant to be critical. This puts more pressure on the writer to
learn how to look at their own text, say
"OK this sucks," and
make it better.
No
one starts out amazing. Writing takes practice, but you need to have
something "natural" as you say
to build on.
If
you could spend one-week with 5 fictional character, who would they be?
Hmm...
Tough choice since there are so many characters I love.
Here
are a few:
May
Kasuhara - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle - She cracks me up. It'd be hard to be in a bad mood hanging
around her.
Fred/George
from Harry Potter - Mostly because they aren't too concerned
about rules, and they could hook me up with all kinds of wizard goodies
(potions, etc) to bring back to the
non-magical world.
Pattern from The Stormlight Archive - Again, he's hilarious. It'd be fun to talk with him.
Hexelent from Corpies - I like her attitude
I'm not sure about the last
one.
Where
would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere? What would you do with
this time?
The
Moon, assuming I had a means to stay alive.
I'd write my ass off, enjoy zero gravity, and go star gazing every
night.
Can
you share you next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details?
My
next novel Grey is almost finished. It's a modern sci-fi about Alien Abduction
in the Pacific Northwest . It's my first novel with a first person PoV,
and a male protagonist. I wanted to
explore what alien abduction might be like for skeptic, who actively resists
tin foil hattery and yet has uncanny UFO
experiences he can't otherwise
explain. It's a very different
kind of story from The Beautiful Dead.
After that,
I'm intrigued by the idea of trying my hand at a LitRPG, or further
expanding The Beautiful Dead with a character specific novella. I've also had an urban fantasy zombie
apocalypse on the backburner for a while.
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