Chasing Home

WITH JUNE HUR

Interview by Gillian St. Clair Written by Juliet White

“In a land where silence and obedience are valued above all else, curiosity can be deadly.” So reads the chilling tagline for The Silence of Bones—a title already designed to provoke a shiver of suspense. The land in question is 19th century Korea, where damos serve as some of the earliest female police officers in history. When you unite this intriguing setting with some stealth girl power and a dash of murder, the outcome is June Hur’s debut novel. The plot centers around Seol, an orphaned girl, who helps a police inspector investigate a noblewoman’s murder— even after he becomes the prime suspect. “It began with the opening scene where a 16-year-old is following a group of police officers to a murder investigation,” Hur explained. “Initially, I wrote it as women’s fiction. Chapter one was a murder, and the rest focused on the protagonist’s journey, discovering her identity, her sense of agency. Then my friend read the first chapter and love reading and watching murder mysteries and thought, ‘Maybe I’ll give it a try.’ That’s how it turned into a mystery novel.” Just as Hur shifted genres, she also remained flexible with her main character’s personality. “When I first wrote [Seol,] she was supposed to be this sharp, cynical, dark, anxious girl. I had this scene of her jumping off the stairs, full of joy. This childlike wistfulness kept surfacing in her character and I realized the way I was trying to write her was not who she’s meant to be in this novel. That’s the first time I felt a character take over.” As Seol revealed her personality, Hur became conscious of how she differed from her creation. “When there is something that needs to be done, Seol will dive into that situation, looking for the truth because her curiosity’s strong. I have a sense of self-preservation, so I don’t think I would risk my life searching for the truth. She’s also very loyal. She risks everything to reinstate the reputation of the inspector

she’s working for. There’s a naïve hopefulness to her, but I’m a very cynical person and so I appreciate that side of her.” By today’s standards, Seol’s traits seem admirable but, in the 19th century, women’s role in society was much more constricted. “When I studied the Victorian Era or the Regency Era,” Hur said, “there’s the domestic sphere and the public sphere. Women were supposed to be contained within the home. I didn’t think it would be the same with Korea, though it makes sense—patriarchy is a worldwide issue. Korean society was way more gender segregated than it was even in England.” “For example, with the way mansions were built in Korea, there was the outer sphere and then there was the inner sphere. Women had to stay within the women’s quarter and men weren’t allowed in there except if they were family members and, even if they were family members, they could only visit. They lived separately. The damos existed because male policemen weren’t allowed to touch female victims, corpses or suspects. They would hand that job over to the females.” Hur’s novel takes place during the Joseon (or Choson) Dynasty, which lasted for five hundred years. The culture featured a strict social hierarchy or caste system. Korea followed a policy of isolationism to limit the influence of the West. An influx of French Catholic missionaries threatened this stance, leading to persecutions and killings of both foreigners and local converts. Hur selected this as the backdrop for The Silence of Bones. “The murder has a connection to the political and religious tensions of the time,” she said. “Korea was a hermit kingdom. When I studied why Korea was closed to Christianity, it made total sense. They were trying to preserve tradition, and Korea’s been invaded so many times throughout history. I am a Christian, but I totally understood why they didn’t want any influence, especially the Catholic influence because it had ties to Western power. I made sure that the hero throughout the book remained a Buddhist—a lot of the women back then were Buddhists—and I introduced Catholic characters, but they were based on historical letters that Catholics sent to their parents when they were arrested.”

Hur’s beliefs did influence one of key themes in The Silence of Bones: the notion of home. “With a lot of Christians, there’s the concept of Heaven as home,” Hur explained. “It’s the idea that, as we live on Earth, we’re constantly longing for home. I was all, ‘Oh, it’s a nice way to tie in my faith with my own homesickness.’”

“When I was writing about Korea, I saw a reflection of myself and my values that I’d never experienced before. “

“I haven’t lived with my parents since I was sixteen or seventeen because they live in Korea, and I came back to Canada to study at the University of Toronto. When I was writing about Korea, I saw a reflection of myself and my values that I’d never experienced before. My longing for home and for my parents surfaced. In Korean history, filial piety—being loyal and obedient to your parents—that’s a big value. That’s a value I grew up being taught. Being able to make that connection solidified that this book is going to be about home. It is a murder mystery, but the core of it is about one girl’s longing to find home, to find her family. Hur is used to having one foot in two worlds, a position that at times provides an interesting perspective and at others can feel precarious. “Something I’ve been really interested in is the concept of diaspora writers,” she commented. Traditionally “diaspora” has referred to Jewish people who maintained their culture and religion while living in other countries. However, the Japanese invasion and the country’s division caused many Koreans to similarly scatter across Asia and beyond.

The writings of members of this group have been dubbed “diaspora literature.” “There is this terror. I can write for the Western audience but, oh my gosh, if this gets translated into Korean, I’ve done my best to research but did I do something wrong?” Hur said. “Did I miss something first gen Koreans know that I don’t?’ There is certain information that we’re barred from [because] we have that language barrier. That’s been a struggle. A lot of the Korean scholarly materials aren’t fully translated and my Korean level is like kindergarten, so it takes a lot of time for me to read scholarly sources and translate it. There are translated sources but, when it comes to very niche topics, there’s almost nothing available.” “My novel is about damos—one of the first female police forces with arresting power in the world. There’s a Wikipedia page about it but, besides that, the references are very scarce. Researching itself takes so many hours. But I love history. Being able to find that one detail, it’s like scavenger hunting.” Given their shared upbringing, Hur’s sister is an invaluable reader for her early drafts. “I’m always, ‘Can you read this chapter? I won’t get angry if you’re honest with me.’ But then she’s honest and I’m like, ‘How could you say that?’” Hur confessed. “Besides my sister, no one else in my family has read my book before. My parents sup

ported me going to university to study English literature and history because I wanted to be a better writer, without thinking about another career in teaching or anything like that. They just trusted me. Then, for the first time, my mom wanted to read my work. I sent it over to her and she’d be using the dictionary to understand what I was writing. She was like, ‘I didn’t know there were so many words in the English language.’” “The things she really liked were the references to home. My mom always felt she sent us off when we were too young, and so there’s a bit of remorse and wondering if she did the right thing. I’ve told her I wouldn’t trade the experience of living away from them for anything because I learned so much. I bonded with my siblings. Being able to live together in Canada, just on our own, created this strong sense of partnership. As my mom was reading the book, she was able to see not the tragedy of homesickness, but there’s a sense of something beautiful about knowing there’s a home and longing for it, and being okay with that—even if you don’t figure out at the end where home actually is.” In fact, it wasn’t until Hur addressed such a personal theme in her writing that she found publishing success. Previously, she crafted romance novels and historical romances, before transitioning into historical fiction. She adored the Victorian Era and

and Regency Era, which served as the setting for her manuscripts. “I was writing and querying for around ten years, more or less. I’d write and I’d query and rewrite that same book and then query again. Agents kept asking for revisions and so I was like, ‘There must be something good about it,’ but I kept missing the point that they wanted me to revise, or maybe it wasn’t the right time for this book, or my skill level wasn’t there. Finally, I gave up. I was so tired of England because I’d been writing about it for so many years.” Hur’s identity as a reader led to the next stage in her writing journey. “Out of the blue, I was like, ‘I want to read about my history, some cool murder mystery set in 19th century Korea,’ but I couldn’t find the book I was looking for. With Victorian mystery novels, there are tons of them, but when it comes to Korean 19th century murder mysteries, I found nothing. I decided to write what I wanted to read.” The result was The Silence of Bones. After achieving a life goal, it’s easy to forget the level of uncertainty we experienced along the way, when we traveled with no guarantee of reaching a desired destination. On her path to publication, Hur realized that her drive for that prize had swallowed her love of writing. Many of us fall into the trap of putting our lives on hold until we accomplish something specific—as if only then will we be worthy of fully inhabiting the world. Once Hur allowed herself to consider the possibility of not making it, she regained her creative passion and also discovered a second career path in line with her values—working in libraries. “I’ve been able to see the library really connect the community and also serve people who don’t have access to information,” Hur commented. “When people are criticizing libraries, they think, ‘Oh, I can get all the information online, or I can order the book so cheap from Amazon.’ But we forget about the people who can’t afford Internet or who don’t know how to use it. What I love about the library is that it really stands for the freedom to access information without discrimination. It brings community together and neutralizes barriers for others who might not have the same access to books, information, or just knowledge in general, as someone who’s much more privileged does. That’s one major thing

privileged does. That’s one major thing that I remind people, when they’re like, ‘Libraries are dying. They’re not needed.’” Broadening her professional life along with a healthy dose of self-belief spurred Hur on through periods of doubt. “It’s important to be humble, to embrace critiques, to always learn from what people say is your weakness,” she explained, “but, at the same time, it’s important for writers to have some arrogance. I told myself, ‘This book is going to reach out to a homesick youth and make them feel better.’ It might; it might not. But you need that conviction to carry you through all the rejections. I convinced myself, ‘This book is going to change the world.’ That kept me going through three, four rounds of querying.” Since Hur struggles with anxiety, that tactic proved vital in handling the subjective, competitive industry of publishing. “To give you a glimpse into my anxiety, I was invited to a panel at my university to talk about querying and agents. A week to two weeks leading up to that event, I was in the fetal pose. Anxiety runs throughout my family and, as a creative, I overthink the situation. The way I cope, is I journal a lot. Pursuing this career as an author, I really have to teach myself to embrace the fact that I’ve actually gotten a book published, and it’s published because people are interested in my work. When I get too anxious, I remind myself to slow down, be more confident, take a deep breath. I try to get perspective. I focus on that to cancel out all the noise in my head.” Short term distraction can be an effective coping strategy for anxiety—reading and TV totally count. Hur enjoyed Descendant of the Crane, a Chinese-inspired fantasy by Joan He. “Her writing is fantastic. It’s complicated. There’s a bit of mystery involved in her work,” Hur enthused. Other favorites include books by author Julie Dao and the novel We Hunt The Flame by Hafsah Faizal. If you finish The Silence of Bones and feel tempted to linger in that time period, Hur recommends the Korean show Joseon X-Files. This TV drama blends West with East. It takes inspiration both from The X-Files and from this era of Korean history, showing that when two different but enthralling things come together, the result can be greater than the sum of their parts. The Silence of Bones will be released 04/21/10. junehur.wordpress.com/books/

1. Online Book Friendship: Makes the reading experience even richer. 2. Audiobooks: I love listening to audiobook when I’m doing chores or working out or just too busy with life to open a physical book. 3. Muji Highlighters and Pens: I use these to take notes as I read books or when I’m revising my own manuscript. 4. All books by Tana French: She’s the novelist I always turn to when I’m in the mood for a mystery novel. 5. Bullet journal: I use them to record book related things, like thoughts in general about what I’ve read and what I’d like to write about in my own book. 6. Coffee mugs with Quotes: Something about these mugs put me in the right mood to curl up on the couch to read. 7. Book quotes on postcards: I use them whenever I need to send mail to readers and writers! 8. Framed book covers: Book covers themselves are works of art. 9. Bookmarks: I can never remember what page I left off on without a bookmark. 10. Bookends: They make my collection of books look even lovelier.

SHARP CURVES AHEAD

WITH MAUREEN JOHNSON

Interview by Gillian St. Clair Written by Juliet White

Maureen Johnson began writing young adult fiction just to prove that she couldn’t! One headstrong moment translated into a plethora of books, along with screenplays and even a Harry Potter video game! So next time you’re polishing your stubborn streak, remember that doubling down sometimes pays off—unless your name happens to be Stevie Bell. The protagonist of Johnson’s Truly, Devious series is determined to solve a cold case tied to her school. This means convincing her parents there’s nothing dangerous about remaining at Ellingham Academy, an isolated institution in rural Vermont. But navigating the mountain roads leading to the school is a hell of a lot safer than being one of its students. The first two novels of the series delivered hairpin twists. Now a third book, The Hand on the Wall, promises a similarly high-octane ride without a guardrail in sight.

Ellingham Academy markets itself as a place for the intellectual elite. The unsolved double kidnapping that took place here? Not in the school prospectus. But one corpse isn’t enough of a challenge for people in a boarding school for overachievers and, with The Hand on the Wall, the death toll rises to three. Stevie, a true crime buff, thinks she knows whodunnit and she’s not about to skip the glory of a big reveal. Even if that means defying an evacuation order and staying at school during a massive storm, to confront the killer.

“I decided to set a school up the side of a mountain that could be easily cut off because that’s when it gets good,” Johnson said. “I had to create a machine in which a detective, who is in high school, would have to solve this on her own. I broke the rules of mysteries by doing it in three parts—you don’t do mysteries in three parts. I know it was naughty but, when I write future mysteries, they will be one-book mysteries.”

“When I started this series, I made a chart of motives and methods to get to

to get to the bottom of the mechanics of the mystery. Everything was plotted from the why, and then the who and the how. You have to have every movement tracked. In the first book, people need to be in certain positions that make sense in book three. Mysteries have a very different procedure than say a romance or a contemporary novel, where I have more ability to change what happens. With mysteries, you start by knowing everything. It was like doing a word or a logic problem for four years, which as a kid I did obsessively, so I’m perfectly happy doing that.”

In fact, Johnson’s always adored detectives and mystery novels. “My first reader crush as a kid was Hercule Poirot! I loved him beyond measure. I also love a will reading, a locked room, that house on the hill—all of the classic setups. I like strangers on an island, so I loved And Then There Were None. I was obsessed with The Westing Game, too. I read it every year and it’s always good. “I was an only child and I read a lot. There’s a benefit to sitting in your room really bored. It’s a great motivator.” From around age eight, Johnson envisioned herself becoming a writer. “But I didn’t know what the job of author looked like. It’s like saying, ‘You’re going to become a tree!’ It was pre-Internet so there wasn’t even a sense of how people got books made, or what was going on behind the scenes—because I would have been crawling all over that. It’s hard to explain that not very long ago, you had no idea what you were getting yourself into, which means you’re not scared of stuff that you’ve heard whispers about. You just go and explore.”

“When I started out, there was very little YA. Someone said, ‘Would you consider writing YA?’ and I said, ‘Well, no, because I went to school inside a convent. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. I have no stories to tell.’ They said, ‘Well why don’t you try it?’ And I was like, ‘I’ll try, to show you how bad I’d be at it!’ It turns out that having pent up feelings is great; it’s a fine starting place.”

That’s how Johnson found herself in the thick of the writing world. “YA is such a passionate community. And I mean passionate. You will get feedback and I like that. You can’t change what you do based on it, because you’ll get a 1000 conflicting

voices. People will say, ‘I love the mom. Get rid of the mom. There’s a mom? Make the mom a dad. Make the mom a cat. You hear everything. So, you’ve got to do what you’re going to do, with the sense of trying to get better at telling stories.”

“I write completely out of order. I don’t even understand how people write in order —I view it as a mystical gift.

“Although Johnson’s deft at creating complex novels with satisfying endings, the way she crafts books is fragmented. “I don’t sit and contemplate my own method or style a lot,” she said. “But I write completely out of order. I don’t even understand how people write in order—I view it as a mystical gift. I start with what I see, so you can’t read a draft of mine midway through because it’s just a bag of parts. Luckily there are programs now like Scrivener where I set up outlines. It’ll have little files for each chapter so I can keep the sections I’ve written and then stitch them all together. It’s very handy.”

This quirk, though intriguing, is nowhere near as elaborate as some developed by other literary figures. P.G. Wodehouse, an author Johnson admires, “had an amazing method where he would write his pages—they’d be typewritten—and he’d hang them around then room and then read them. If any of them weren’t funny enough, he would tilt them on an angle. The book wasn’t done until all the pages were straight.”

In terms of process, writing for the gaming industry proved one of the less flexible experiences of Johnson’s career. “My husband works in video games and was at Electronic Arts Inc., where the Harry Pot-

ter team was located. They needed a writer [and] said, ‘Wait a second, your girlfriend, could she help us?’ And I went in and talked to them and they said, ‘Will you write this script for this game?’ and I said, ‘Sure, let’s see what happens.’” Everything was very carefully checked so you would write a lot of stuff and it wasn’t usable. It was Harry Potter, so you couldn’t change anything, and it was a little tricky but very interesting—unlike anything else I’ve ever done.” Johnson managed to add one name to the world of witchcraft and wizardry. Bucket list goal unlocked!

Regardless of the project, completely detaching from work doesn’t come naturally to Johnson. “I like what I do. I have been told by my husband that I’m bad at taking time off. He taught me how to go on vacation. We went to the Caribbean and I whipped out my computer and started writing. He said, ‘Why are you working?’ And I said, ‘What am I supposed to be doing?’ And he said, ‘Sitting on the beach doing nothing.’ He’s English, and Europeans in general have a better sense that you’re supposed to take time off. I just do the things I like, with people that also do the same thing.”

“There’s a group of us that travel together and help each other and work out story beats. I’ve been on retreat twice this year. We were just in Greece, so part of the day is, you get up, write, eat, swim, write, talk story… The days are broken up like that. It’s not a job, it’s a behavior. I’m real

ly lucky that somehow I’ve found a lifestyle that accommodates a behavior of mine.”

“That’s how I ended up writing some stories, because Cassie Clare is a good friend. It all came from us making jokes about things that could happen to the characters in her books, and she was all, ‘Why don’t we do this?’ So we’ve created three sets of Shadowhunters short stories. Writing is a job you do on your own, [so] getting to work with other people is always nice.”

Johnson has also collaborated with John Green and Lauren Myracle on a book comprising three holiday romances, which has since been made into a Netflix movie. “We wrote short stories for Let It Snow. It takes a couple of weeks to write a short story—not very long. I decided to interlay elements of The Wizard of Oz and the yellow brick road into mine; I don’t think anybody noticed. It’s just fun—if you do it with a light touch.”

When it comes to symbolism and theme, Johnson encourages readers to bring their own interpretations to her work. “What is a book if not the thing that you get out of it?” she asked. “It’s not a math problem. The answer isn’t 4 or cosine x—I don’t even know if cosine x can be the answer to anything! If you can substantiate it, then it’s a theme. It’s that simple. That’s all scholarship is at a certain level: knowing what previous scholars have said about symbols and themes and then you come along and say, ‘I

found a new one. Here’s my case.’” Take The Great Gatsby as an example. “If you pick that book apart, you can see there’s a lot of colorwork. [Ftizgerald] may or may not have been doing it on purpose. But you have a sense in your head, a swirling sense of color, shape, or sound. With writers who write to music, you’ll see that wave running through. You’re taking in a lot of different sensory information and varied life experiences and processing it down into words, like little bricks that you’re putting one against the other.”

The meaning people glean from books is unique to them, an interplay between the story and the reader as a person. That’s why Johnson shies away from recommending specific novels to add to a TBR list. “Reading is so personal that it feels inappropriate to tell anybody else what to read until I know them because I have to sit down and talk to them. I feel weird about questions like, ‘What’s your favorite book?’ ‘What should I read?’ I’m always like, ‘Well, who are you? What would make you happy?’”

“How I read right now, I’m trying to get it a little more focused. The world is so broken and seems to just crash and reset every hour. It hurts our attention span. While I give my full attention to a world with 800 pages over here, crazy shit’s beeping off my phone. How we consume words, media, and information is changing. It’s becoming more and more important to take care of ourselves and take care of what we consume.”

When trying to decide what to read, librarians can be a great resource. “When I was in high school, we didn’t really have a library,” Johnson said. “There was a room called the library. We were generally not allowed to go in it. The librarian was 95-years old—there’s nothing wrong with being 95-years-old—I also am not sure she was a librarian. She was just the nun assigned to the library, who seemed to think that most of the job was to keep us out of it. She was obsessed that we were going to break her copier with a bent dime, and she would say, ‘No bent dimes,’ like a haunted message. We had a local library where I went and checked out loads of books. I thought it was magical.”

For grad school, Johnson attended Columbia. “[It] has like 26 libraries—they

took us on a tour of the main one with a research librarian, and that was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. I was like, ‘This is nothing short of wizardry.’ When you were doing your thesis, you could make an appointment and say, ‘I’m looking into the following subject or specific question.’ And they would say, ‘Okay, your appointment’s at 10 o’clock in a week,’ and you’d show up at the library and they’d have a giant table where they pulled all of this information for you.”

Even with school growing smaller in the rearview mirror, librarians continue to impress Johnson. “In Philadelphia right now, where I’m from, there’s a huge heroin and opioid problem. Apparently, the place that people gather is the green outside the Kensington library. So, all of the librarians got trained on naloxone, [a drug intended to reverse overdoses]. One day, while a librarian was being interviewed by the big Phili newspaper, somebody OD’d and the librarian busted out in the middle of the interview, administered a dose, and saved somebody’s life.”

“In doing this job as a YA author, I travel the country and other countries, and I meet a lot of librarians. Libraries are our last refuge. They’re being eroded left and right, but librarians are truly the keepers at the gate. If a book is banned in some part of the community or in a school, frequently the library will go and get 10 more copies. I’ve got to see how librarians fight to defend keeping books on shelves. Also, especially in Texas, they like to party! There is no conference like a librarian conference. Never underestimate a librarian.”

Whether you cruise over to your local library or to a bookstore, be sure to check out The Hand on the Wall, the latest addition to the Truly, Devious series. The Hand on the Wall was released on 01/21/20. www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/books/

1. One decent pen. Seriously. One decent pen. Don’t take other pens. And when you find the pen that you love, you get that pen. The pen does not have to be expensive. Mine is a Uni-Ball Air. My husband got it from work and I practically wrestled him to the ground to get it away from him. He abscond- ed with it, so I bought my own. Do not give anyone your pen. 2. A giant pile of notebooks you don’t use. Would you like to visit my haunted drawer of nice notebooks that have nothing in them except one page of notes about something I have long forgotten? Come this way! (I use one notebook. I’d burn the others, but they are haunted.) 3. Customized clipboards! I got crafty one time and bought a few cheap, plain clip- boards, some nice wrapping paper from a fancy store (the kind that comes on a rack and has no folds), and some Mod Podge, which is craft sealant. I made matching proj- ect clipboards and hung them with… 4. Command hooks. If they all stop working at once, my life will come apart. 5. A label printer. My husband bought me one for my birthday because he gets me. I will make a nice label for anything, even you. nd of minimalist in design with room for my legs and two shelves built in so that I can have whatever I need—research materials, random novels, bags of candy—easily at hand. 6. Plants. My plan is to fill my office with them slowly until I disappear into the leaves. 7. A small altar of things I like. Above my desk, there is a shelf of photos and plants and assorted objects to bless my day. Elton John and Kate Bush smile out from the plants. 8. A yearly calendar. I buy one every year from Paper Source. 9. Kickflip. This little piece of plastic is ge- nius. You stick it to your laptop and it props it up at a perfect angle. You flip it back when you are done. WORTH EVERY PENNY. 10. The No No Jar. Look, sometimes, you’re going to have to get down to it, and you’re going to have to make it physically impos- sible for yourself to do anything but work. For these times, I suggest what I call the No No Jar. The real name is the kitchen safe. You stick your phone in there, you set the timer, and it locks. You’re not getting back in.