A little episode at O’Hare Customs…

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The customs agent was taking his time, and my wife and I knew that was a bad sign.

Then he pointed. A worse sign. And he spoke — the worst.

“You need to go over there. There’s a problem with her biometrics.”

Problems, you can count on those with US customs, and so can the fifteen or so people in this room.

Including the Chinese farmer.

From the countryside, he had come to visit his son. This was his first time out of China, first time on a plane, he speaks no English, and for his inauguration to the US, customs has sent him to this room, with no explanation. (( I know they explained it, but since he doesn’t understand English, I doubt hand gestures are adequate ))

He’s walking around, wondering what’s going on. A customs agent approaches him.

“Go sit down.”

But jet-lagged, 12,000 miles from home, the farmer is going tharn.

So our customs agent, well-trained in the subtle art of cross-cultural communication, digs deep.

“GO. SIT. DOWN.”

Fantastic. I never imagined that simply RAISING MY VOICE was all it took to break the language barrier.

Guess that’s why I’m don’t work for US customs.

It fell on my wife to calm him down. Soon — in comparison to say, geologic ages, not the lives of mortal men — they gave my wife back her passport, having fixed whatever problem was keeping us here. We left, not without an encouraging word to the farmer, getting his paperwork straigtened out, his biometrics corrected…

Or a fucking typo, for all we know.

Two Little Red King Sample Chapters

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Two sample chapters from the novel Little Red King are now available. The first deals with John’s introduction to expat nightlife. It’s found here.

The second is LRK’s first real chapter, following The Seven Year Laowai 1. It’s found here.

Set in 2008 Wuhan, Little Red King is more or less about the doomed romance between a new foreign teacher and a Chinese graduate student. The never-sent query is here (or the post right below this one), and the structure of the book goes 7YL1, Ch 1, 7YL2, Ch 2…and so on, with the 7YL departing midway through while the main story takes over and returning at the end to help tie everything together.

More sample chapters are coming. The next one will be about a bad baijiu hangover, based on a true story of a certain former expat who had the bright idea of mixing Sprite with ricewine, to mute the taste. Unfortunately, it worked.

I said it in a Facebook message and I’ll say it here and I’ll say it again and again: I want Little Red King to be a fucking gut punch. So, while things will start out innocent enough, keep in mind this is a doomed romance. I want the sense of doom to set in, and I want it to set in quickly. I want this story to linger in people’s heads for years.

I want a lot of things. Right now, what I want most is for people to read the damn thing.

So feel free to have a look, and yes, I am open to feedback. Some four to five years on, the book remains a work in progress, though less of a work in progress than last time. So what do we call that?

Progress?

Little Red King Query Letter (Welcome to Hell)

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If you’re lucky enough not to know what a query letter is, I’ll let Nathan Bransford explain:

A query letter is part business letter, part creative writing exercise, part introduction, part death defying leap through a flaming hoop. (Don’t worry, you won’t catch fire and die during the query process though it may feel precisely like that at times). In essence: it is a letter describing your project.

The following is a query letter for Little Red King. I never sent it out. As of now, I don’t have a final query letter that I’m ready to send. From here:

“Hold strong,” Michelle, a traditional Chinese woman, tells John Ingram as he tries to use chopsticks. John has come to China to teach English, and thanks to her, he learns how to use chopsticks. He holds strong.

He holds strong when he finds himself more sideshow than teacher.

He holds strong as he descends into an expat lifestyle of cheap alcohol and easy women.

And right as he finds the strength to put that life behind him and pursue Michelle, another teacher assaults a student. John finds himself being blamed.

Now he must hold strong, or lose Michelle forever.

LITTLE RED KING is literary fiction complete at 123,000 words.

Gimmicky as hell, but the Hold Strong metaphor is vital to the story.

Tribute to the Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place

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I’m no Tom Carter, I haven’t even traveled half of China, let alone the whole place, but I won’t let that stop me from saying the following:

I know where the best Muslim noodles were in China.

Wuhan.

WUSE’s backstreet, specifically, and I use ‘were’ because it’s not there anymore. You IMAG1141understand. Things change. WUSE went from a xueyuan to a daxue, and WUSE’s backstreet went from home to the best Muslim noodles in China to rubble, to make way for highrise apartments. Good. If there’s one thing China lacks, it’s overpriced real estate.

Part of my introduction to China was a trip to the Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place. Did the restaurant have an actual name, I hear someone in the peanut gallery asking…why yes, I’m sure it did, but none of us knew it. They were Muslim. They made noodles. The noodles kicked ass.

Hence the name. It’s descriptive, if nothing else.

But what exactly do I mean by Muslim noodles? Muslim noodles, or Uyghur noodles, were made outside, twisted and swung with an occasional hard slap on the table, just to keep you on your toes. Then they took the noodles to the back, to cook, add spices.

Add drugs.

That’s what my wife said: they put drugs in the food. At first, I dismissed this — stereotypes die hard in China — but after a while, I wasn’t sure.

And I didn’t care.

Drugs? Okay. Who cares? Boil it in liquid crack, just keep em coming. Breakfast lunch dinner and second breakfast second lunch midnight snack…

I introduced new foreign teachers to the place. For initiates, the food there had a peculiar side-effect that physicians refer to as Immediate Bowel Release, which provided another sort of introduction to China.

The Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place.

Gateway to the good life in the Middle Kingdom.

A backstreet three years ago, rubble today, highrises any day now. Well, Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place, it’s a pity I wasn’t around to say goodbye.

Next time I come to China, I hope the highrises are finished. I hope they’re populated.

I plan on lighting some firecrackers in your memory.