Korean Job Discussion Forums

rapier · Joined: 16 Feb 2003

Ok you budding Tolstoys and grishams of the novel writing project...
Give us your opening paragraph..just a taste for all of us to enjoy, despise or whatever.

So..are you sitting comfortably? Then lets..begin!! Laughing

Chapter 1.

It was hard to sense any centre to our town. The road approached the sunbleached houses quite seriously, and the cars slowed. After perhaps a single red-rimmed signpost, the road urged anyone to keep going to other, more important places.Yet in your blind spot baked 70 houses perhaps, blinking and winking in the heat, echoing to the sound of bored and idle dogs.

Dan The Chainsawman · Joined: 05 May 2005

At least that was the center of the town prior to the cruise missle that obliterated it. The once humble atmosphere of peace and tranquility ruined in one savage explosion of intense fury. I can still remember that peaceful sunday like it was yesterday. In fact it was yesterday that the horrible event happened.

I was walking home from church. The birds were out and about, and the sky was clear. The town square was full of children playing in the park. It was a scene of bliss, and community harmony. In one corner of the park a few old folks chatted, and fed a few pigeons. Not far from them a few young people had set up easels to paint. This lovely scene not having much longer is still branded into my mind.

The missle was a special payload variety that dispensed a cargo of deadly cluster bombs. Flying over the park at low altitude if rained down a violent curtain of death. The submunitions flung out a steel rain of killer shrapnel that converted once healthy people into torn chunks of bloody meat. The cruise missle then by some fluke of random fate completed its misguided mission by ramming the side of a building just off the town square.

As a child I can remember the inside of that particular building quite clearly. I had played in it, and even gained my first kiss under the bleechers. The community gym that the cruise missle had struck was now a largish crater. Even more haunting was the 100 or so of my fellow citzens all enjoying a basket ball game. One could only imagine the hectic scene of the local town basketball hero going for a lay up as a cruise missle crashed through the windows to end a young promising NBA career.

rapier · Joined: 16 Feb 2003

I guess i'll only get to read all your bestsellers when you become rich and famous. Rolling Eyes

the_beaver · Joined: 15 Jan 2003

chiaa · Joined: 23 Aug 2003

I know you got novels here, but this is a funny little bit out of my book that is coming out sometime this winter in Korean. There will not be an English version and unless you are a blood relative you will not read it in English (I think the book is silly too, but they are paying me). Here is a tid bit and the first paragraph is a bit rough (I immediately wrote it after they left the store so it was fresh in my mind):

Sometimes I just know as soon as a customer comes walking through my door whether or not I am going to have some kind of problem with them. In walk these two guys with an older Korean gentleman. The Korean guy must have been 25 years senior of these two guys. I have seen this a million times, the Korean guy is either their boss or he is friends with these foreigners because it is free English lesson time. Right off the bat I get a bad impression about these two guys. On top of hanging out with some old guy, they look a bit dorky, and just walk into my store like their shit does not stink. One of the two white guys comes up to my counter and tells me that he wants to trade in books. I say to myself damn it, but smile to the fellow and ask him what he has. He proceeds to take the books out of his backpack.

��I am leaving the country so I am looking for cash�� he announces to no one in particular. I look up and smile and continue putting his books in different price piles. The older Korean man asks ��Are these books for lending?��

��No, I am selling them��.

��Why are you selling them?��

��Oh, these books I don��t like. The books I like I don��t sell, but since I don��t like these I am going to sell them.��

I am cursing under my breath at this point. I get a couple of these guys a mont in my store. I know as soon I tell him how much I am willing to offer for the books there is going to be some kind of comment out of his mouth. These are the customer��s that I dislike the most. There is no way I can make them happy unless I offer them some kind of amount of money that will in no way allow me to turn any kind of profit. Furthermore, if you do not like the books, what makes you think that I am going to be able to sell them?

I add up all the books. I am let him know the amount.

��That��s it??�� he yells loud enough to be heard in Busan. You are only going to give me that amount for these books?

��Yes, that is all I am offering you. I already have five copies of The Goblet of Fire and you said yourself that these books are not very good. If you think they are not very good then how do you think I am going to sell them? Weddings for Dummies is not really a hot seller in Korea you know.��

��This is the third store I have gone to today and they offered me a lot more. One store was double of what you were willing to give me.��

Inside I am laughing my ass off. The third store he has gone to today trying to sell six books��.

I know without any shadow of doubt that there is no way that one of the other two used bookstores would offer him double what I was offering. I send people over there every month to sell books to them. When my mother was visiting she even went over and sold a couple of books and asked a million questions about how they operated. That��s good business. I have absolutely no respect for my competitors at all, but, that does not mean that I do not keep an eye on what they are doing.

VanIslander · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:05 am Post subject:

Picking the lock took so little effort that the boy wondered why he hadn't tried it before. The knob turned easily and as soon as the living room could be seen, the smell of whiskey, cigarettes and stale sweat rushed out faster than he himself had hours earlier. For a second he stopped and re-considered whether to doze off under the tree in the yard. It was two hours to dawn and the lampshade next to the front steps looked warm. The chilly October air pushed him in. The door closed as quickly as it'd opened.
Half-way there, he smiled, imagining his bed.
Snoring rose and fell, nearly in rhythm with the skipping of an old classical music vinyl that'd warped more than once in the fingers of its careless owner on a hot summer's eve. A man lay asleep on the carpet between the couch and the shoved coffee table, his outstretched left arm supporting the hand of his bent right and his head, like a swimmer in midstroke, his right foot likewise pressed against his left. Dad. It was a classic position of his, second only to bobbing sleepy head at the kitchen table.
"Whadyerbindoon?"
Nothing will ruin this night. The boy took a deep breath, stood still and half-retreated into the memory of the first, second, eleventh, twelfth kisses he'd just had with the girl who'd call him in nine hours to go to the park and confirm their going-steadyness.
Soon the zzz's returned and he made it to his room.