Welcome to Paradise
Ladies and gentlemen, this ^^^ is Paradise Casino.
My "About Me" section promised a blog post about writing Bluebird, so here it is. (I also have no idea what else to post about at the moment and I need to hurry up and get this website online.) Don't bother reading it, just read the actual book. When it comes out. Subscribe to the email thing on my homepage and then you'll know when it comes out ;)
Anyway...
Operation Bluebird is my next book, which I'm aiming to release in February 2021, though that is a very tentative plan and totally dependent on the speed and detail of feedback from beta readers and my ability to actually put together a decent ad campaign.
Operation Bluebird was never meant to be a book. It came about because my sisters and I are basically five years old and still love roleplay games, so Beth (middle sister) suggested one day that we each create a detective character and play as them while navigating the video game "Outlast". We made backstories for our characters, which is all Operation Bluebird was ever supposed to be.
Then I got a bit obsessed. I suppose I can't really go into too much detail here because spoilers (I mean, I'm sure plenty of them will end up happening if you follow me anywhere, but I'll at least try to hold back until it's actually released...), but far too many similarities and references started to randomly pop up in my life and it became a thing that was frequently in my head whether we were playing the game or not. It was a cool story to daydream about to distract me from my hecking busy work schedule, but it's also hecking sad, and walking off the plane in Incheon Airport on multiple occasions to posters for Paradise Casino was eek. (fyi that is not what the casino's named after, I just invented it and then discovered it exists in Korea, woops lol. In fact there are a few names that I made at 10pm in a hotel room in Vienna, then discovered/was reminded they actually exist -.- too late, they were already cannon, please don't sue me. istg there is no actual similarity or intention going on there. This casino is in London and full of gangsters)
Anyway, it was eek. And I couldn't talk to my sisters about it because metagaming (the players aren't supposed to know things the characters don't), so it all sort of built up in my head until I accidentally fell in love with a stupid man in real life, partly because flattery but largely, I realised later, because he had a few tiny similarities with Taehwan.
And he really was a stupid man and I got blarghed and had a bit of a breakdown and ran away from work to go camp in my parents' house. And then there was Covid. So everything was a bit of a mess.
So I decided to cheer myself up by finding random clips from various movies/ music videos and make a mini Bluebird movie. Sod metagaming, I love Bluebird, needed a distraction and needed to let it all out. And it was THE best tonic. Basically as soon as I opened the video software, BAM bye bye thoughts about real man. He was just useful to ask things about cocaine every now and then hahaha.
I was super proud of my movie, and Gwen (youngest sister) got really into it so I could blab about it with her and I didn't want to stop so I finally decided to write it as a book. It was sunny and I had a cool notebook and coffee and kept getting sunburnt cos I was sitting outside writing all day, and I went on the trampoline a lot while figuring out how best to arrange all the fifty million scenes I had in my head into an actual book that made sense. I didn't even know if I'd ever finish or publish it, I just wanted to write it. It was beautiful times <3
And I read it with Gwen (out loud, in different voices, it was awesome) and she appreciates bae and frequently brings up random things about characters like an actual fan and it's great. Much love. Much much love. I still cry a lot. In Covid lockdown, with no job and no connection to the outside world, I became Bluebird. All the happy and all the sad, it is me now. And I'm going to shove it in the face of the world because all these tragic people need love and that will make me happy. They all mean a lot, a lot, a lot to me and I love them.
Except Brian Hole. I hate Brian Hole. And Mr Park. Douchebags. I suppose I love to hate Soju. But I just hate Brian Hole.
Anyway, that is why Bluebird exists. My next post will be more sensible.
-
Seriously though, there is so much stuff I couldn't actually fit in - cos, y'know, beginnings, middles and ends and all sorts of metaphors and meanings - and bits I had to smush together or it would take an age to get one point across. I suddenly know how it must feel to write a biography. Bluebird isn't really a story to me, it is more like a biography. These things happened and I'm just documenting them. Yeah, I'm aware I'm a headcase.