Random Thoughts on a Foggy Day

Sometime this week, I'll begin writing about defining the wuxia genre that I've identified as "heroic fiction", but commonly is referred to as "martial arts" fiction. If you're interested in an advanced view of my point of view, then check out "The Wandering Blades Blog" on my author's website: www.thedragongateinn.com

As I've mentioned on that website, "The Wandering Blades Blog" will lay fallow for awhile as I develop this new blog as I'm hoping that a blog on Blogger will be easier to find and more open to developing a community of readers of wuxia genre materials, which includes movies, and those with related interests.

I'd also like to mention here that I've just heard from two readers who joined up when my novel, Dream of the Dragon Pool, was first published. They are both in Mainland China now and it would be great to hear from them and learn how they're finding life in China nowadays.

My life in China happened back in the mid-80s when I spend six months in Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese government. In those days, China was offering positions to foreigners as "foreign experts" and I was hired to help in their book publishing industry as an adviser to a English language publisher in Beijing.

I haven't been back to the Mainland, spending most of my subsequent time in Taiwan, since then and I know there have been tremendous changes. So it would be interesting to hear from my reader-friends on how they are finding life in the "new" China. And it would be great to hear from others in China and elsewhere who are interested in fiction writing, wuxia, and related interests. Everyone is welcomed here.

In the coming weeks, I will be referencing a very interesting article by a former Harvard professor and friend regarding the nature of wuxia literature. If your Chinese is REALLY good, you can get a jump on this by checking out: www.bostonchinesenews.com. Go to the Sept. 7th issue and check out pp. A1 & A2. Starting from the front page of the newspaper and going over on the complete second page is my friend's very learned article on wuxia. He has also included the email correspondence between us attempting to create a definition of this genre. I will be writing about the seven points he puts forth in that article to define wuxia.

In tomorrow's blog, I will post my definition of wuxia that appears in that email and tell you its backstory.

FYI - When I was trying to find a publisher for Dream of the Dragon Pool, the most frequent reason for the many rejections I got was, "There is no audience of readers for English language wuxia fiction." What do you think?

Zaijian!

The Innkeeper