The Story Behind The Stories

There are many reasons I began to put a few ideas on paper—more than just a few, in truth. Passionate about fantasy and sci‑fi, it was only a step before I started imagining entire worlds. I had tried writing before, but time and circumstance pushed those attempts aside, into second place, third place, or even into the realm of “without number.” And so the years passed.

From time to time, before sleep, I would remember a subject I wanted to write about, and I would imagine its continuation. Perhaps I would be happiest if I could capture those moments when imagination runs wild. Maybe something like in Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within

Meanwhile, my youngest daughter opened the door for me into the Korean artistic world—k‑pop and k‑drama. Maybe I was caught at a moment when I needed romance, being alone and far from family, and so I slowly became a fan even stronger than my little teenager. I was drawn to the sensitivity of those films (even if sometimes I found myself shouting, “Just kiss her already!”) and to the stories they tell, so different from the linearity of American ones. Fantasy, too, is at a completely different level. European cinema still manages to preserve some integrity, bringing to screens—large and small—stories that are unusual or simply human. American cinema, however, has fallen prey to consumerism, and I doubt it will recover, having trained its largest audiences to expect a certain flavor, dismissing anything else. Serious films and series are harder to accept—perhaps because they are subtitled? I am being harsh now, am I not?

My greatest challenge is that before I write, I visualize each scene with every detail. I realized that such imagination has its gaps: often I lack the “filling,” the part where the author introduces atmosphere and builds the scene in the reader’s mind. So I thought perhaps it would be better to write directly as a film script or even a series. But who has time to promote it? That is how I arrived at this form, which is probably neither one nor the other. And if you are reading these stories, it means I have managed to publish them in some form.