I don’t know about you, but I’ve been receiving a lot of emails these days about spring cleaning. They remind me that I need to clean my desk, but the weather has been so glorious here in Los Angeles that I’ve put it off to go outside and enjoy birds singing and my white mulberry tree bursting with fruit! The berries are so sweet! Alas, I just couldn’t wait any longer. My desk was covered with paperwork for my next novel, RED SEAL, which is due to come out this October! It feels like I published my debut a few months ago, but it’s already been almost a year and a half, and the next one is right around the corner.
March was a blur! While I was on a trip back east, I received my copyedits from my publisher. I ignored that for as long as possible, so I could enjoy time visiting my daughter in NYC and attending a few bookish events. I tried to focus on The Journey, which is what I call this newsletter, and how I want to approach my writing life: center on the process, not the result. I tried to postpone looking at my copyedits until my trip was over. And I’m so glad I did!
On my flight home from Baltimore, I finally opened my laptop and dug into my copyeditors’ comments (I had three copyeditors!). Copyeditors pay close attention to timelines, characters, and word usage to ensure there are no inconsistencies, factual references are correct, and there is continuity and flow in the manuscript. There were hundreds of inline queries that required my attention, but I managed to get through the first one hundred pages on my five-hour flight. Phew! They were mostly minor questions, like whether I was using the Korean method of counting age, or the traditional one. In Korea, you’re one when you’re born, so I somehow managed to mix up the ages of the protagonists in my narrative. The copyeditors did a global check on all my age references, so that was a great help. This is a picture of me celebrating my first birthday party!
When I got home and reviewed the next chunk of my novel, however, I realized I made a timeline error on how quickly communism was adopted by people in north Korea after WWII. In RED SEAL, the child who is inspired by my father attends a Korean school in the north when the country was temporarily divided in 1945. I had written that he immediately became indoctrinated into communism, but the copyeditors queried the existence of certain leaders and groups at the time, which led me to realize that the process of converting to communist ideals was more gradual. It took me days to correct that section, but I’m glad my copyeditors did their fact-check, and I had a chance to revise!
My characters also use various names throughout the book. When Korea became liberated from Japan in 1945, Koreans were allowed to use their given names again, not the Japanese ones they were forced to use. I made the error of referring to the same person by another name, since there were multiple names for the same person. And some identified more strongly with a certain name, even though they weren’t using that name anymore. Since RED SEAL is about claiming one’s true name, it was important to get everyone’s name right! That’s why I thought it was imperative to have a family tree in my next book. I hope readers will be able to follow the story along better with this aid. Here is a picture of my father and grandmother around 1952 when they were using their Korean names.
Finally, I had to incorporate my cultural research reader’s comments in my copyedit responses. My novel deals with many challenging topics, like discrimination, loss, grief, and the fear and violence of wartime, so the cultural research reader wanted to ensure that I handle these subjects with sensitivity and respect. She identified areas where I might have unintentionally demeaned how someone speaks by using an accent or offended a person’s nationality by using a noun instead of an adjective, like “the Chinese” instead of “Chinese people.” I agreed with much of her approach and revised accordingly.
My Messy Desk
While working on these copyedits, I was unable able to manage the flow of information falling around my desk! Therefore, the mess!
These materials included emails from my production editor about when materials will be available and are due, such as my copyedits and proofread edits, the Advance Reader Copies for advanced reviews, and praise quotes deadlines. I had many drafts of my Author’s Note strewn about, where I talk about the inspiration for RED SEAL. I had started my Acknowledgments but kept thinking of more people and organizations I needed to include. It takes a village to write a book, and I didn’t want to miss anyone! The Reading Guide was also on my stack of papers, and I was glad I had started that one earlier.
Then there were copies of the first round of cover concepts for RED SEAL! I loved the two images my cover designers came up with, but they needed some refinement. One was great because it showed the central relationship between mother and son, but the colors seemed muted and some of the background elements, like a train. looked blurry. The second concept was attractive and vivid, but the connection between the woman and child didn’t seem clear enough. I also wanted this cover to tie in aesthetically with WHITE MULBERRY, and thought we could use more simple shapes and complementary colors. There’s so much that goes into a cover!
I was also asked to approve the cover designs for the Korean and Italian editions of WHITE MULBERRY, which are gorgeous! For the Korean edition, the publisher had misspelled my last name, and I had some questions about the Korean word they used for “mulberry tree,” which we resolved. For the Italian edition, the first concept had the female figure wearing a sleeveless dress, and I asked them to include sleeves to be more in line with traditional Korean clothing, which they did. I can’t wait to share these images with you soon! The Slovakian edition is out, and they used my original cover, which is beautiful written in Slovakian. It was selected as the Book of the Month by my Slovakian publisher. So exciting!
My desk is finally cleared and ready for the proofreader’s comments to come in. I am grateful for my publisher’s editorial support and collaboration. Spring cleaning is at least done, for now.
Past and Upcoming Events
I started my east coast trip last month by attending a Shabbat service at Central Synagogue in NYC given by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the first Korean American rabbi and author of the memoir HEART OF A STRANGER. I first met Rabbi Buchdahl when she came to LA for a talk at the Wilshire Temple and wanted to gift her my book. My friend and President of the Korean American Community Foundation, Kyung Yoon, helped facilitate a meeting with her after the service and I’m so thankful. Kyung also arranged to interview me about my book for the Asian American Life series hosted by the City University of New York, called CUNY-TV. That will be airing soon!
On the same day as my interview with CUNY-TV, I enjoyed an intimate “fireside” chat with Korean American trailblazer Karen Choi at the residence of acclaimed movie director Jean Shim. I spoke to a room filled with high powered women in New York who lift up other women, and I was so blessed to be in their company for a lovely evening. It was a perfect way to kick-off Women’s History Month.
The next day, my good friend and author Hyeseung Song drove me to Baltimore to attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference, where over 10,000 fellow writers convened in Baltimore to connect and be inspired. I participated on a panel about my debut experience and was delighted to see a room packed with interested listeners. A highlight was meeting an aspiring author who attended my panel and came to see me at my book signing with her service dog, Delta. It was a full circle moment to sign books and engage with readers, when just a few years ago I was nervously waiting for my debut to be published.
This week, I’ll be doing a reading with other local authors for the Peninsula Library Friends Foundation, where tea and refreshments will be served. I’ll also be in conversation with friend and local author Christine Ma-Kellams for a “Food & Fiction” event at the Redondo Beach Public Library, so please stop by to sample Korean food represented in our novels!
I will be going to three books clubs this month, hopefully selling some books at the LA Times Festival of Books and giving a talk for the Kauai Writers Conference online series on Landing a Two-Book Deal. I love having the opportunity to connect with writers and readers!
I’m especially excited to participate in an exhibit at the Korean Cultural Center of LA centered on Korean literature. It will showcase its evolution alongside related artworks. While relatively small in scale—given the breadth of over 5,000 years of Korean history—KCCLA has included a section dedicated to diaspora literature. I’ll be one of the featured authors on opening day, April 15th, along with many other authors and institutions attending. Here is the RSVP link for the opening. And here is the link to the KCCLA Korean Literature Month 2026 program! I hope to see you there!
Check out all my upcoming events on my events page.
Have you done your spring cleaning? What are you up to this spring?
Please comment below to let me know! I always love hearing from you. Thank you for following along!
What I’m Reading
Dreamt I Found You byJiminHan
My dear friend Jimin Han, who blurbed WHITE MULBERRY, is coming out with her latest novel this month! She also has a lovely newsletter, which is an inspiration for my own. Please subscribe to her newsletter and preorder her book.
When Dahee Shin was nine years old, she made a promise to protect her favorite cousin, Channing, who has always been like a sister to her. Now, at thirty, Dahee has found herself in a Korean American community in a New England beach town, once more running to the rescue of her debt-ridden relative. Ever the idealist, Channing—who has spent her life haunted by the tragic story of Chunhyang and Mongryong, Korea’s parallel Romeo & Juliet—has fallen in love with Minjae Oh, all the while fending off the advances of powerful, manipulative Kent Cho, a local politician. As Channing and Minjae’s romance blossoms, and as Kent’s suspicion and obsession grow, Dahee begins to realize that it may be up to her to make sure her cousin and beloved escape Chunhyang and Mongryong’s doomed end.
