WRITE LESS

“Yeah. No, it's funny because the first draft of this was a complete mess. It had so much like shootings and explosions and just very outlandish, childish quips and the jokes that didn't work through and through. There was like a nuke briefcase and a little girl they had to save, all sorts of tropes and those kind of got gradually toned down because I wanted to make this a little more grounded, something more focused. But yeah, no, I mean, the initial drafts were pretty much like a direct to video kind of action films.”

“So there's a lot of infighting that goes on in Korean communities. And it's almost as if we all turn inwards because we have the sense that like the resources allotted to us are limited and the ground that we can take is limited. So we have to fight over what we have. And the easiest target is each other. So I wanted to sort of highlight that a little more to sort of show fellow Koreans how we fight with each other, even though we don't have to.”

“Well, I think it's because all those three characters are versions of me, I guess. There are all these different ways of being Korean that I've experienced as a member of the Korean diaspora abroad. And at first, obviously, I wanted this to be between a South and North Korean and their perspectives in a foreign land. But I also realized that I want to add a third character, the sort of the, I guess, hold on, I'm just trying to like think through this. The third character that sort of reflected me more closely as a Korean-Canadian.”

“I feel that there's always beauty in saying less and then allowing, allowing the reader to sort of like think more about something. This is not to say that you should be, you should be very scant with your, with your descriptions or something like that, leave it all to imagination. But I think if, if, if, if there's an opportunity to sort of describe it a little less, so that you could let the reader's thoughts breathe a little bit more, then that is that you should definitely follow that instinct.”

“I mean, my dad still doesn't speak great English, and he's been living in Canada for decades now. And he just says like, well, I just can't, like, Korean is my primary software. And I think that's it, like once a mindset or a language becomes your primary software, it's just difficult to have it paired with another so perfectly that you can navigate both fluidly. And I kind of wanted to show that through this authoritarian dynamic.”

“Things like when the mentor spy Doha is telling the, that link is prodigy, Yohan, like, you know, don't be seen. Always, you know, put your head down, be nice, because if you're rude, that's how they spot you and they point you out. These sounded like the kinds of, you know, the pressures that the Asian diaspora face as having to do with the model minority myth or just being that docile, like, immigrant that society demands you to be.”

“The first very scene that really set the book in motion was when I was in Oxford, and I was still in my honeymoon phase of being in a creative writing program in such an ornate and historical city. Honestly, it was just like a thought. I was looking at those cobblestone streets, just walking by and thinking, a car chase would be quite amusing here. That got me the idea for a spy game story between a North and South Korean.”

“So I think, I think restaurants is where people can kind of let their guard down. It's where people can be a little more vulnerable. Because food is just comforting like that. It's where, especially for Korean food, it's where people oftentimes abroad, it's where people come to feel at home, to have a taste of home that they can't find elsewhere, unless they obviously go back home to their motherland.”

“Eventually, I think what I wanted them to do was to define their own sense of what home is. But not as a place, but where the people are, I think. I think home is more about people rather than place. Who you, like, who cares about you, who you care about. A lot of these things. And it doesn't matter if it's Korea or America or Canada or the UK, for instance, if you don't have the people who really back you up when you're, when, you know, especially moments when you're desperate and you're struggling.”

“And I always shout out Julia Kim, my editor at Dundurn Press, who has now left the press and is now a literary agent working for the rights factory. She was the one who made this book, like she really was the one who made this book what it was in many, in many sense, in large parts, because she was, being a Korean herself and knowing what the experience is like, she was able to pinpoint out these parts that say, this really speaks and this doesn't. And back when I began the editing process with her, this book was like 80,000 words, and then she cut it down to like 50,000. And then I wrote back 10,000 more words based on her comments.”