Consider this next post would be a belated author’s note, and it can be summed up in three words: Deh vs. Neh.
Three letters, but ooooooh how I struggled with them. Namely, how to spell the word. One of the challenges in writing Hart & Seoul was getting the spelling of Korean correctly, made especially tricky since Korean is obviously written out in a completely different alphabet called hangul, and there are often several variations of how to translate those words into an English spelling. To those who know the Korean language, the word is typically romanized as ‘neh‘. However, to many native English speakers, the word actually sounds like ‘deh‘. I have revision after revision with first ‘neh‘, then ‘deh‘, literally going back and forth between the two. But ultimately, I kept coming back to the phonetic spelling, for the simple reason that we are seeing everything through Merri’s point of view. Because the book is in first person, we are limited to Merri’s knowledge, and she has no clue about the Korean language. And since we are in her head, we see what she sees and hear what she hears. So ‘deh‘ it remained.
Now, in hindsight, I had an #oops moment when I realized that in my eagerness to get information about mental health issues in the author’s note, I completely forgot to explain the language choices (the same argument can be made for ‘Bo‘ vs ‘Mo‘, as the ‘m’ sounds like a ‘b’ to many English speakers). Talk about newbie author flubs! So, consider this the special edition author’s note! And rest assured, the second book will have one as well.
Yes, that’s right, there’s going to be a second book. There is a lot more to Lee and Merri’s story, and I can’t wait for you to share in their zany adventures! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I better get back to writing said sequel. *cue epic K-pop music*
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