Up Dates! Hao jiu bu jian!

Lots of working going on at the Dragon Gate Inn and I thought you might like to hear about it. Thanks to a new friend, I’ve learned about the HarperCollins (England) new website, http://authonomy.com. It is an interesting site for writers and book lovers. Authors get to put up new work and have it commented on by the site members. Further, and here’s a big plus for us struggling writers, every month, the HarperCollins editors will pick the manuscripts that are top rated by the members and read them with an eye to publication! Very nice idea!

So, I have a contemporary murder mystery, The China Virus, that I’ve been polishing up for the agent rounds and thought to give it a whirl at Authonomy and see what turns up. So, if your interested here’s where you can find me on that site:

http://www.authonomy.com/Profile.aspx?userid=7bd5fa9a-fbb3-4ac8-9243-2afae49e944e

And here’s where you can read the first seven chapters of The China Virus:

http://www.authonomy.com/ReadBook.aspx?bookid=2111#chapter

The China Virus is set in 1986, Beijing when I worked there as a “foreign expert” for the Chinese government. It wasn’t anything like that! I was advising an English language publishing company on subject matter that would appeal to the Western reader. Naturally, they ignored my advice! But it was cold and interesting and led to this novel, a pre-wuxia effort on my behalf.

I’m also working away at a TV pilot screenplay. I’ve teamed up with a very talented former BBC-TV screen writer and we are trying to create something I’d characterize as, “LOST meets BSG and Crouching Tiger” HA! Go figure that one out! We’ll see. Naturally, the “Crouching Tiger” part involves my beloved Tang dynasty and wuxia. As far as we know, there are no space ships in it.

I’ll keep you updated here!

Zaijian!!

The Innkeeper