August 13, 2025 • 60 mins
In this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Charles Li, author of the brilliant new historical fiction novel, Lord Guan.
We chat all about Professor Li's expertise in languages and linguistics, and I pick his brain for worldbuilding tips and advice to help you craft your own languages for your fantasy stories.
We also dive into Chinese history and culture, looking specifically at the life story of Lord Guan and the legend surrounding him, before diving into the writing and researching of the book.
And at 90 years old, Professor Li shares lots of brilliant pieces of wisdom we can all benefit and learn from.
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https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lord-Guan/Charles-N-Li/9781682452325
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/authors/Charles-N-Li/185995596
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Welcome to another episode of our Fantasy Writers Tour shirt.
I'm your host, Richie Billing, and today I'm delighted to be
joined by a very special guest, Professor Charles Lee.
Professor Lee, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Pleasure to be on the show.
Oh, honored to have you here. You've been busy working on a
(00:33):
new book called Log One, which I'm reading at the moment and
enjoying very much historical fiction.
I'm a big historical fiction fan.
I've never read much of Chinese historical fiction.
I've been reading a bit of Indian historical fiction at the
moment, which is like a retelling of the Ramayana by our
(00:54):
Mr. Fatty. So this is really, really
refreshing to to pick up something like I've never read
anything like before. So today we're going to talk all
about it and, and how you wrote it and how what it was like
bringing such a, an incredible historical figure to life.
(01:16):
I'm sure there's a lot of pressure because.
Yeah, well, Guang was such a such a vivid character as Foes,
is he? Yeah, no, it wasn't a stressful
undertaking. And I'm, I wrote 2 sort of
(01:36):
memoirs and it was a very different undertaking and, and
it was interesting. And I don't, the only reason I
got into it is through the urging of, of Judas Regan, who
has been a in the publishing world for a long time.
(01:59):
But then I thought that, but I've always been interested in
writing, I ever since I was a teenager.
But of course, at that time I was writing mostly in Chinese.
And it, it, it was a way for me to earn a little money.
(02:20):
I mean, I mean it, I don't want to give the impression that I
was making any money, but I was earning, you know, couple
dollars for a short essay for a lyrical piece or whatever in,
in, in student magazines and publications.
And, but that was, that was veryrefreshing and that was
(02:44):
important. And I enjoy the process of
writing. And then I met Judas Reagan and,
and we became friends and I talked a lot.
And so I was always telling stories.
So she said that you're great storytellers and you have great
stories, so, so you should writeit up.
But in the Chinese culture, it where I grew up, I'm, I didn't
(03:10):
come to the United States until I was 21 years old.
So we think that writing a memoir of yourself is kind of
peddling yourself, not not something very that inspired
respect. And so I, I was very reluctant
(03:31):
to do that. But in the end, when I retired
from my teaching career, so I was overseas for a year and I
didn't want to keep on doing academic research.
So I said, oh, why not? I like writing.
I like sitting there, you know, cogitating and thinking about
(03:53):
plots and and telling stories. So I wrote it and that's how I
began. And after that, I sort of get
somewhat addicted to writing andreading and so on.
And, and I want to do something more than just writing memoirs.
(04:14):
So I thought I took on a, a historical novel because I, I
like that particular genre and lots of, lots of material for
historical novels in Chinese history, of course.
So anyway, and so that's how it happened.
(04:36):
Oh, amazing. Yeah, It's a fantastic story and
you've got a really credible life story as well.
So you mentioned there that you left China at the age of 21.
What was that like? Did that have much of an
influence on on your writing? Did that mean it sounds like
you've you've had a bit of a gapfrom when you started writing as
(04:57):
a teenager and then you come sort of full circle to
historical fiction. And So what was it like for your
sort of transitioning and and all the change in your life?
Yeah, well, I came here by accident and because in 1961 I
(05:17):
was there was AI think it was called International Refugee
Year. And United States government
offered 6 fellowships for peoplefrom East Asia, for young, young
people who anyone who had who had a high school degree, a high
(05:40):
school graduation, who was a high school graduation was
eligible to apply. And I was living in Hong Kong
then. So my friend heard about it and
and he wanted to take part in the, in the application and urge
me to, to do so. And I said Nah.
And but anyway, I was trying to he caught a living in Hong Kong
(06:02):
and life was hard and he was a good friend.
And so in the end, I relented and agree with him to just to
keep him come company and and they were, you know, I don't
know, hundreds and maybe thousands of applicants.
And everyone wanted to get the hell out of Hong Kong.
You know, in those days it was, it was that British colony, a
(06:26):
full old fashioned British colony where, where, where the
Brits treat the Chinese as dogs and with signs, you know, even
in the public in certain area where the Brits live and they
would put out signs. I know that you're you're
British, but this is. I don't identify as British.
I'm Irish. I I it's like it's, it's, it's
(06:51):
not something that gets spoken about over here.
And I would love to tell more about it because like Irish
people, for example, I mean, they're heavily sort of
persecuted by the British history and signs used to these
to put off in London saying, what is it?
No, no blacks, no Irish, no dogs.
(07:13):
Yeah. What was it like?
I mean, it must have been really, really hot, horrific.
Like, did you, did you grow up in Hong Kong as well?
No, no, I spent my no, I grew upin in China proper and lived in
different cities in the 40s in the 1940s I and 50s in 1951 is
(07:37):
when I went to Hong Kong. I sort of had a broken family.
So it, life was not very easy for me, particularly in a, in an
underdeveloped countries in those days, but in a colony is
particularly repressive and unforgiving, let's say.
(07:59):
OK. And so anyway, so I was very
fortunate to be chosen and for ascholarship to come to this
country to experience, to have the experience of, of, of a
college education for one year only.
(08:19):
And I was put into a particular college.
There were six of us. Each was put into a different
college and mostly liberal art, liberal arts college, not too
big. And so, but anyway, so I came
and it was a traumatic experience because it was at
(08:43):
that time in the United States, 1961 was basically 1950
atmosphere. People were very were not aware
of racism. They were beginning.
There was a beginning. It was the beginning of some
feeling about blacks and so on in this country at that time
(09:04):
among the among the more enlightened or educated people.
But generally it was a pretty racist place anyway.
And I was on the East Coast in New England and, and it was, it
was not very nice. And I thought, Gee, contrary to
(09:27):
my imagination, which was that United States was sort of a
paradise, It was like hell. And I wanted to get the hell out
of there as soon as I get a degree.
So I worked very hard and got a degree in two years.
Of course, I was in mathematics and in those days, in my days
when I grew up in China and, andin Hong Kong, any young person
(09:51):
who has, who had any pride, who,who want to be known as not
stupid and not retarded and would, would major in, in
science and technology or, or, you know, So anyway, I was
reasonably good at mathematics. And so I majored in math and
(10:13):
graduated in two years. And then I went to a PhD program
in mathematics at Stanford. And that's where I began to
really sort of, sort of learn about Western civilizations in
terms of culture, history, literature.
(10:34):
And it was, it was very exciting, but it was also very
traumatic without my being awareof it.
I just knew that I was very tense.
And I had a good group, group ofinternational friends from all
different places. Some were graduate students,
(10:55):
some were beginning faculty members.
And, and they sort of gave me a different kind of education.
And I was always trying to read and learn to keep up with them
because they talked about thingsI knew not nothing about.
And so, but my since because that sort of that period of, of
(11:20):
time sort of really broadened myhorizon and I was no longer sort
of preoccupied or obsessed with survival, with physical
survival. And that was the, you know,
prior to that, my life was physical survival.
How do you you know how my my next meal?
(11:43):
What am I going? To do like, he just becomes
instinctive to feel like that. Yeah.
And but they had sort of my friends meaning had sort of and
knowingly without any conscientious effort, conscious
effort sort of guided me into a,into a different mental
(12:07):
framework. And so I quit my PhD program in
math and went into into linguistics.
I remember running into some of my old high school classmates,
most of them were in the United came to the United States,
classmates from Hong Kong. And they found out that I had
(12:29):
left mathematics and went into linguistics.
And, and the first thing they asked me is that what went wrong
with you? Are you OK?
I can relate to that. I I was a lawyer and I quit that
to be a writer. Right, I learned about that now.
People were asking me, is everything all right?
(12:51):
What's wrong with you? Like, but if you don't love
something, I don't know if you felt like this as well, like you
would, you would sort of. You could see the life before.
Yeah, yeah. When you were doing your PhD and
you just weren't happy and you could see no happiness.
Right, right. And I was just, you know, really
(13:12):
interested in different culturesand I mean quote, UN quote
exotic cultures. So I worked on American Indian
languages, I worked on Papua languages in Papua New Guinea
and and did few work in inner Asia and and so on.
And so those were, that's how I so I, you know, I had sort of.
(13:36):
That sounds really amazing. I mean, have you just out of
interest, have you got a favorite language that you've
come across or a favorite way of?
Oh, I I would say, I would say it is English.
Yeah. Yeah, it's an exceptionally rich
language because it sort of incorporates elements from all
(14:01):
sort of languages. I mean, I mean, you, it's hard
less hardly anything, any familyof language from which English
has not borrowed concepts or words, you know, and, and it
has, it has all these different ways of expressing things.
I mean, not that you cannot say that one language is more
(14:25):
expressive than another. I mean, all languages are
equally facilitative in terms of, of, of expressing your
experience, emotions and so on. But the enormous way of saying
things and enormous vocabulary, incorporating concepts from all
(14:46):
different cultures from Malayo, Polynesian to, you know, to
Indian to, to Africa, to everything you can imagine.
And and I think English is just a fantastic language.
Yeah, that's the reason. I mean, we got a lot of
questions because a lot of the listeners, fantasy, fantasy
(15:08):
fans. So a big part of that is having
to create your own worlds. And if you're a fan of Lord of
the Rings, obviously you may be familiar token created rich
language. And so I mean, if someone
listening wanted to create theirown sort of language, what would
you sort of advice would you give them in terms of like
(15:30):
creating like the foundations and the sort of the key aspects
of it? Yeah, you you cannot really.
A language is really inseparablefrom culture.
So you you can create a language.
I mean the been different languages created in the last 50
years, including one of my my fellow classmate who who made a
(15:54):
good living by creating the language in that movie.
What's that movie? There was a movie about an
exotic people living. That's it.
That's Avatar. That's right.
That's. Interesting that he created that
language. Amazing.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.He he's.
(16:15):
Let's see, Chair. His specialty was California
Indian languages, most of which have died off.
I worked on one last ones that were survived only in one person
and so I became known as the thethe other speaker of this
particular California Indian language called Wapo.
(16:37):
Anyway, so California Indian languages are very diverse.
There are there were more languages, distinct languages,
mutually unintelligible languages in California than in
the whole United States in the old days when, when, when the
American Indian languages had not gone kaput.
(16:58):
You know, I mean, almost all California Indian languages are
dead now. I can't think of anyone that's
anything. I mean, the largest language,
the largest group was Chumash. Chumash is in the, in the area
where I am in the Santa Barbara area.
So words like Malibu, for example, is a Chumash word,
(17:19):
which means a beach. And you know, so Malibu is a, is
a very fancy, a community on the, on the coast, on the beach
South of north of LA, between LAand Santa Barbara.
And but anyway, so he, he was anAmerican.
He was a California Indian language person.
And yeah. And so it wasn't, it really
(17:43):
wasn't very hard. Wasn't, I don't think it's very
difficult to make to make up a language if you just know enough
the distinct, very, very unrelated languages in the
world. But I think he did a good job.
Yeah, that's right. Amazing.
(18:06):
Yeah. So you came to write Lord Guan
and it's it's not a story I'm familiar with, and he's not a
figure I'm familiar with. But the is a good chance that
we've seen pictures of them probably.
(18:27):
And I understand that you see pictures of them in like
restaurants and businesses and stuff.
Like that, right? Right.
But he's probably like one of in, in like you, I think you
mentioned before, like the West has probably not really heard of
him. And it sounds like he's it's
such a significant figure in Chinese culture that it's a bit
(18:50):
of a crime that we don't know. I know, I know.
Yeah. So do you want to tell us a bit
about the the history and then the story?
Yeah, well, it's mostly he became known in China and became
important and became an icon andA and a God and a a a an object
(19:11):
of worship, a religious figure, religious figure in the sense of
a religion revolving around him after he died.
OK, so when he was alive, he wasa warrior and he was not a not a
(19:32):
prominent man, but but he's he'ssworn brother and and close
associate were trying to vie fordominance in China in the in the
3rd century after the Han dynasty, which was sort of the
(19:53):
founding foundation of dynasty of, of Chinese history began to
disintegrate. But after he died, he became
Evermore, and he, he, he. His reputation started growing
and expanding. And he was.
(20:16):
Deified by public acclaim, he was deified by a different
emperors, a different time, and invoked by different leaders at
time of need because they wantedto show the people that Lord
Juan was on he on, on their side.
(20:36):
And so it became a religion really.
And almost every communities would have shrines and small
temples devoted to him. Buddhism was incorporated,
incorporated him into their pension of of gods.
(20:57):
And Taoism also included him as a very important God in their
religious framework. So he he, he sort of was
everywhere in China and everyoneknew about him, unlike
Confucius, who was more of a figure to be revered, more of a
(21:21):
a man who set down the philosophical foundations of the
Chinese culture. Whereas he was a popular hero,
was a popular man who was known for his courage, for his
integrity, for his abiding loyalty.
And so people started praying tohim and, and become supplicants
(21:47):
to, to to him for anything like please help me to have a son,
you know, a common in the old days, a common wish for many
women. Or please, please help me to
pass the next stage of the examination so that I can
advance in my career, whatever, you know, and everywhere.
(22:11):
So they were so Lord Guan was inthe in the in the heart and in
the mind and in the life of all people, much more so than
Confucius was. Confucius set the philosophical
foundations for the country, setthe moral Centers for the
country. But he was kind of a remote
figure. I mean, no one felt really
(22:32):
connected to him in any way. He was revered.
But of course, Lord Guan was someone that that you feel, you
felt close to, that you that youwant to, you want to be on your
side, that you want to him to beto, to, to, to fulfil your
(22:55):
wishes and so on. So he was really important in
Chinese culture. Yeah.
What? What is it about him?
Do you think that people found so appealing them?
Because I've been the first few chapters that I've read, he he
comes across as he's like a normal figure.
Is his family quite normal? They're just farmers and and
(23:18):
it's just think it's that relatability factor that he's
just a normal person. Well, these are in the first few
chapters is all made-up by by. It's all my imagination though.
It's not much, OK, not much known about him until he he
became a incredibly successful warrior, the great fighter, OK,
(23:47):
and not became sort of and he didn't become a a a universal
cultural hero and icon until after he died.
So as much as the Chinese love to keep written records about
everything, you can't keep written records of every single
person you know. So not so not much.
(24:10):
It's known about him. So that's one of the reasons I
wanted to pick on him to write this historical novel, because
then I can also let my imagination fly, you know, and
make up stories. And I mean, we knew he came from
a humble origin. That's all we know in, in terms
of historical record, the the only real historical record that
(24:32):
we have was from a celebrated Chinese historical novel called
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which he was, he
played a prominent role because of his capability as a great
dominant, dominating warrior. And so, yeah, so all that story
(24:58):
is about him growing up in a village and killing someone by
hand. And it's all my imagination.
I suppose like, you could base it on like the average life of
people from humble beginnings inChina.
And it's really interesting. I mean, it's so tough.
It's like really like, like you might describe before in Hong
(25:18):
Kong, like a fight for survival.Like it's the same, wasn't it?
Like if the for farmers back then, if, if one thing went
wrong, it was it was pretty, pretty tough for them, wasn't
it? Yeah, well, in the, in the
1940s, I, I sort of experienced and, and saw quite a bit of that
(25:39):
kind of life, you know, and in rural China and the poverty, the
oppression and the suffering of the, of the, of the, of the, of
the peasants. And so, so I witnessed some of
that in the 1940s. Well, particularly during the
(26:00):
civil war when the communists was fighting against the
nationalists, before the communists came into power.
And of course, when once the communists came into power, Lord
Guan began to recede from the public life because, because the
communists were against any, anyreligion in 1949.
So he was the the So the 10s of thousands of temples and shrines
(26:21):
all over across the country weredemolished by the by the
communists, but surprisingly. Did you, did you agree with that
or did you sort of was that quite opposite?
Well, it was just just a just a fact of life.
I mean, you know, you that was, that was mouse edict and that
(26:44):
was an edict that's supported byby mouse cohorts and that's, you
know, there was life in in China.
I mean, all religions suffered, right?
I mean, we, we nowadays we hear about things like the, the
(27:06):
persecution of the Uyghurs. We heard, we hear about the
persecution of the Tibetans and it you know, that's partly
racism because they were not HanChinese.
Han Chinese, meaning the dominant ethnic group in China,
dominant and overwhelmingly dominant in terms of numbers.
(27:28):
And all of that out of out of the one billion, 1.3 billion
Chinese I would say is somethinglike 1.2 billion are well, let
me see now I know that that number pretty well because I
worked on Chinese minorities forlong time languages and all of
(27:49):
that. I would say yeah, somewhere
between 1.1 out of 1.3 billion Chinese population, I would say
around 1.1 billionaire Han ethnic people.
And there's a lot of racism against the minorities.
(28:12):
I mean, the minorities that we, we hear that in the West you
hear about are, you know, now the Turkey people, the Uyghur,
which belong to the Turkey group, the Tibetans, which
belong to the Tibetan Burma group.
And but there were hundreds of other, I mean, Mongols, you hear
Mongols, you know, and of courseMongols have have ruled China,
(28:36):
but so that most other minorities have ruled China.
In fact, over the dynastic, the dynastic era, there were more
dynasties that were established by non Han Chinese than they
were dynasties established by Han Chinese.
(28:57):
But the, the reason people always ask me when I say that,
it says why, why is that so? Wouldn't, wouldn't you know, the
dominant population, wouldn't they always sort of sort of take
over the power and, and, and, and, and, and if they
discriminate against the minorities and they would be the
boss. Well, The thing is that in the
(29:21):
old days, in order to establish a dynasty, first of all you have
to have a period of anarchy. In other words, an existing
dynasty is in the decline, falling apart, and law and order
disappears and bandage everywhere.
Now, in order to become dominantand powerful, you have to have a
(29:44):
group that are great fighters, right?
But most of those minorities were tremendous fighters because
they grew up on different diet. The Chinese were a second
sedentary, sedentary, sedentary agricultural people for eons of
(30:07):
time, you know, for more than 10,000 years now, OK, A-789000
years in the, in the, in, in theplains of, of Great Plains of
East Asia. But the other minorities are
mostly nomads. They are pastoralist.
Well, what the nomads eat when they grow up, they eat, they
drink, they drink milk and they eat meat.
(30:29):
What do the child eat in the olddays?
They eat the little, little kids, whether they eat all the
adults, they eat bread or they eat rice.
So you're not, you're not going to grow up to be a powerful
figure if you grow up eating rice or or wheat most of the
time, I mean without. Whereas if you grow up on the
(30:50):
diet of rich protein, then you are more likely to fulfill your
genetic potentials for size and strength.
So that's why the founders of dynasties were typically either
non Han Chinese or at least halfnon Han Chinese.
(31:14):
For example, you take a dynasty like the Tang dynasty you might
have heard of, that's consideredsort of the IT went from the the
beginning of the 7th century until the 10th century lasted
300 some years. It was considered the golden
age, like the 17th century in Holland.
You know, it's the golden age ofHolland.
(31:34):
That's the the Tang dynasty was considered the golden age of the
of the Chinese dynastic era. The founder was he was half
nomads. They were his father was a
military person living stationedin the borderline in the
(31:56):
borderland of western China. And he married a different
minority woman who were nomads. And that's how the son grew up
and mostly under the influence of his mother, who happened to
be a very powerful woman. And and then when he started a
(32:19):
revolution against the existing dynasty, he mostly drew help at
the very beginning from all his mother's tribes in the, in the
Takramakan desert in Central Asia and all of that.
So that's why why the founding the founders of dynasty were
(32:40):
often not not Han Chinese. But it makes.
Sense though, doesn't it? Because if you, if you've got
minorities living there and you've got someone who's who's
half hand, half minority, then it's a unifying figure.
It's someone who can bring everybody in.
Right, exactly. But The thing is that.
It's a surprise and it's a golden age.
Yeah. But The thing is that once what
(33:02):
the people who wrote history of China see, for example, there's
a long practice that every dynasty, once it's been founded,
once it's has has been become established, then its first
priority, it is the duty of thatdynasty, of that emperor and his
court to write a history of the dynasty that preceded it.
(33:28):
But who was the writers? Of course, they were the
Chinese, they were the Han Chinese.
So how did they so when the Han Chinese writer writer write the
history of the previous dynasty?So they were trying to sinify
the founders and the and the other emperors as much as
possible. So do you think this is what
happened with Lord Guan? Well, who was Lord Guan?
(33:53):
Now, of course, everyone thinks of Lord Guan as Han Chinese, but
but on the other hand, physically he was enormous.
He was incredibly strong and powerful and coming from a poor
background. So that would be very unusual.
And secondly, he was known to have to be very hairy.
(34:13):
And he's, you know, he has a huge beard.
When a Han Chinese have a beard,it's typically very thin and
sort of whiskers, you know what I mean?
Yeah. And Ho Chi Minh beard, that's a
typical like Chinese, not Lord Wan.
He had a whole face full of hair.
(34:34):
And he, his nickname, as I said in the book, was the magnificent
beard. And he was, of course,
physically incredibly strong andpowerful and he had dark skin.
So who knows? Who knows?
Who knows what his original, original ethnicity?
(34:56):
Nobody knows. But of course, the Chinese.
All of the Chinese who wrote about him would say that he was
Han Chinese. Yeah.
Yeah, that's typical. You know, in the even in the
last dynasty, which is the Menchu dynasty that that got
toppled in 1911 by by Sun Yasin,they were, you know, they were
(35:18):
Menchos. They were in their court, in the
court, in the imperial court, until the very end.
In the imperial court, when military affairs were discussed,
it was discussed only in Manchu,not in Chinese.
Yeah. Yeah, so you know, but of
course, if you if you look at Chinese history, you read about
(35:40):
Chinese history, that's a Chinese dynasty, the last
dynasty of the dynastic era. And yes, the founders were
Manchus, but they all become cynicized.
But, well, you know, that's really not true.
Yeah. So what what was it about Logan?
And I mean like, what did he do in his life that really made him
(36:04):
this eternal figure? Yeah, So the the historical
information about him were mostly from a book called The
Romance of the Three Kingdom. That was, that was the first
historical novel published, written in China in the 14th
century. No 14th.
(36:24):
Yeah, more like 15th century. And so he was, he was celebrated
for his physical prowess, for his warrior capability.
And he weirded A scabbard and and he was sort of fearless and
(36:48):
he was a game changer when they come to a battlefields, once he
come into the battle and all of his soldiers will get all
excited and and and charged up and that the enemies were just
scared just seeing him was this this big huge man wearing a huge
(37:09):
scabbard and dark face was was an enormous beard.
And so he was a game changer andhe dedicated.
Sounds a bit like a Viking, doesn't he?
Oh, that's right. The northern Yeah, the the
Vikings who who came into, into,into, into into, into Europe at
(37:33):
different periods of time. And, you know, the Vikings, in
fact, the Normans were actually in even in Sicily, you know, was
partly conquered by the Norman, by the by, by the Viking people
of Viking origin. Exactly.
It's like an. The Vikings, they were in sort
of and roll, wasn't it? That's that's like the Ukraine,
Kiev, like that's where they were as well.
(37:55):
I mean, it's not too far away from China.
Could there have been sort of nomads that have come down?
And is that is that like a possible link?
Because literally from the way describe, I'm just imagining
imagining running into battle and it sounds like a Viking.
Yeah, it's the of course there'sno, there would be no record of
(38:17):
that. But but they, they, the recorded
link, of course, was the empire of the Golden Horde in, in
Ukraine long before Russia existed in the 15th century,
14th century, one of one of Genghis Khan's grandson Batu
(38:40):
went there and established the Empire of the Golden Horde.
So that's, that was officially recorded.
And we know all about that long before Moscow existed.
So he, in fact, he was chosen byhis clan to become the Great
Khan, one of the become a successor of Genghis Khan.
(39:03):
And he refused. He did turn it down because he
was so he was in such paradise in the in the plains of Ukraine
and and such a rich country. He didn't want to go back to
Mongolia to become the Great Khan.
Yeah. I'd say it's a tough job.
Right, so. So Luke 1 and very sort of
(39:26):
famous on the on the battlefield.
And was there anything else thathe was well known for that
you've? It was famous for his loyalty
and for his courage, for his honesty.
So, so he, that's, those are thequalities that that he and he
(39:48):
sort of personified in the Chinese mind, honesty, courage,
loyalty and and I guess physicaldominance.
He he was deified for those reasons.
(40:11):
And but in later on, you know, in the in the dynastic era when
he became so sort of. Omnipresent in the Chinese
culture. So he got deified into
everything you can imagine, including he was the God of
(40:32):
wealth. That's why you in the Western
world, the only place where you often see his image and his
little little shrine was in in Chinese shops in Chinatown,
because because the the last deification by popular acclaim
was the God of wealth. Yeah.
(40:57):
So, but most, as I wrote in the introduction, most Westerners
who went to Chinese restaurants in Chinatown in the Western
countries and see the shrine, little shrine next to the cash
register or the cashiers mistookthem, just assumed that that was
has something to do with ancestor worship.
(41:19):
But actually it's not. It's actually Lord Kwan.
Oh, amazing. Yeah, everyone's got to keep an
eye out now. Next time you go for Chinese.
Right, you will see that there'sthe you take a careful look at
at those little the, the picture, all the the little
shrine. You will see that the man has
incredibly long huge beard. Yeah.
(41:41):
And a red, a red, dark red face,which was not typical East Asia,
you know. Yeah, yeah.
He was, but he was also very important in the culture, in
Korea, in Japan, in Vietnam and,you know, so all over East Asia.
(42:04):
Yeah. So what was it like writing that
that character then and bringinghim to life?
Was it a tough challenge or did you enjoy it?
What what was it a long process?Can you tell us a bit about Oh?
It wasn't long at all. I, I, it took me about a year
and a half, less than two years to write it.
And it was fun. I really enjoyed it
tremendously, much more so than I did when I wrote those two
(42:29):
memoirs of mine. It it, it was I only the
research came into relevance only after, only when I sort of
toward the end of the book, whenI started describing the
different battles that he was involved in.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like, for example, the second-half of the book began
(42:50):
with with his future wife, you know, and that was all my
imagination. Nobody knew anything about his
wife. But we don't know anything about
his wife. There's no record of it, but in
the Chinese culture, you know, wife is not important.
Yeah, I see that. Right, right.
So that was just all my imagination and and I made him,
(43:13):
made her to be, to be a concubine who, who of the
imperial concubine who was forced to become a concubine and
who hated it and, and, and escaped the palace, the imperial
palace and, and you know, so, soit was fun.
It was fun because because I could indulge in in, in
(43:38):
fantasies, on my arm, on my own,of my own.
Yeah, definitely. So that's all, all of it.
And that you're on the fantasy Races too shirts because
historical fiction there is a lot.
Like you say, you've got a framework, but there's a lot of
that you have to fill in yourself.
Exactly. And there's a real skill to do
(43:58):
in that. And yeah, and the chapters that
I've read so far, I really, really enjoy it.
And there's some very interesting characters,
definitely. Yeah.
Oh, thank you. I'm glad you did.
And yeah, so it's, I do recommend that we'll go and
check it out. Click the link in the
description to to go in there, find out.
One last question I've got for you, Professor Lee, is did you
(44:22):
find any challenges or did you run into any challenges when
you're writing it? And how did you overcome it?
Did I find it challenging? No, I didn't find.
Any like particular aspect of the writing that you found
difficult? No, not really.
(44:46):
No, I just, I just everyday I just sit on my computer and
write a couple hours. But you know, as you, as you
know, since you yourself is sucha successful writer, a lot of
the writing, most of the writingis revision and rewriting and
all of that. And I would think that that the
(45:07):
challenge there is really a challenge on, on, on, on
patients, you know, like, I mean, at some point I, I just
say, no, I don't want to look atwhat, you know, I don't want to
read what I just wrote last month's.
I mean, do I, I have to read it again.
(45:31):
I mean, The thing is that you can always improve, you know
what I mean? The thing is that there's this
revision process is endless. You can always improve many,
many things. The storyline, the narrative,
the vocabulary, the expressions that even the, even the
construction of a particular sentence and the description of
(45:51):
a particular figure. There's always, always room to
improve. So, so that's, that's the, it
takes discipline to be, to be, not to give up, to be, not to,
not to give up. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Otherwise, it's not otherwise I
(46:12):
just sort of sit on the computerand start typing it out and,
and, but the I just I'm that's probably because I'm basically a
very impatient person. So, so it's a trial.
It's very trying in terms of of patience.
I just, I knew that this is far from, from ideal, what I wrote,
(46:35):
what I written. Let's say, suppose I wrote 2-3
pages last yesterday and then, then so, and this morning I
opened up the computer and I sawthe three pages.
I can see, Oh my God, did I do that?
And so I start changing it, revising it.
And the next day I will ask myself, and then I will write
few more pages. And the next day I'll ask
(46:57):
myself, well, should I look, go back and look at the, you know,
10 pages back, or should I just only look at the last few pages
I wrote and the desire is to saythe hell was the pages that I
wrote earlier and just move on and revise the part that I wrote
yesterday. But that's the I To me, that's
(47:19):
the the most the the most difficult thing.
Yeah, it's it's definitely a patient man's game, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when I learned about
the, for example, Virginia Woolfthat she just sit there and she
had, she spent very little time writing now and then.
And then when she wrote, she just wrote them out.
(47:40):
And that's just the way it was. And that's perfect.
That's just amazing, you know? It is, yeah.
It's a real skill. But you say you've got to,
you've got to sit there, you've got to type.
Got a crack on, but I'm like youlike I always get caught into
the trap of going back. So now I'm not allowed to go
(48:00):
back, but I can only go forwardsuntil I'm until I had it.
So that's. The rule?
You don't go back. I see you don't go back.
Until I finish the draft. Oh, really?
OK. I can go back and make notes.
I'm not allowed to go back and change unless it's something
(48:21):
horrendously wrong. Yeah, yeah, right.
I think, I think in the end, therevision that you engage in
after you finish the draft of the book is more important than
the revision that you do every day.
(48:42):
But, but yeah, but The thing is that even there, when you revise
the whole manuscript, there is aneed to keep on going.
And as I said, it's an endless process.
And so, so it's, it's the the the difficulty that I feel is in
(49:06):
fighting my own impatience to say, oh, the hell was it, That's
it. I'm not going to go back
anymore. But, but I really have to go
back because there's all these inadequacies and, and mistakes
and, and, and poor writing and so on.
So and, and finally in the end, you know, you just kind of stop.
(49:28):
But it's a It's a endless process.
Yeah, it is continuous learning,right?
Are you, are you going to write a second book?
Then have you got a second book on the pipeline?
Well, I have. I don't know.
I have I'm ambivalent about that.
On the one hand, I have lots of material.
(49:50):
I want to write a book about this woman in in this in the let
me see what the 10 was second century.
She, she was a concubine in the Imperial Polish, but she was
(50:13):
very unusual for many reasons. 1is that while she was a
concubine to the Emperor, a favorite concubine yet, and she
started carrying on with with the Crown Prince an affair so
(50:35):
well, I mean it did you have to remember the Emperor at that
time was already old, you know what I mean?
So like a. Standard.
Right, So the fact that I mean, the fact that she just even that
alone is sort of like incrediblydaring because if you're caught,
you know, that'll be gruesome deaths, you'll be guarded and
(50:59):
who knows whatever, you know, punishment that.
People on. One story you.
Know be a best selling novel with that one.
Right. But anyway, then she then the
then her husband, the emperor died and so the Crown Prince,
her lover ascended the throne and the Crown Prince wanted to
(51:22):
marry her and make her to be theemperors.
So the, the entire court, all the Mandarin officials went up
in arms because, because by, by official generational etiquette,
this woman was his mother. You see what I mean?
(51:47):
So that's, that's like, I mean, it's not that she's not his
biological mother, but she was, she was a woman that belonged to
her father, to his father, you know, you know what I mean.
So he couldn't possibly marry a woman that belong to his father.
And that's that's completely turning upside down the
(52:08):
Confucian ethical principle. So, so this woman, so the
concubine responded to the court, to the mandarins
officials. It is very simple.
I see your point. OK, so I am, he said go.
She said, I am now going into a monastery and I'm going to
(52:29):
become a nun in the monastery and three months later I will be
reincarnated into a different person.
Then I come up, then I will marry, you know, the current
emperor. So, so, so that sort of
dispelled the, the whole problemof violating the fundamental
(52:51):
principle of ethics in the Confucian philosophy, right.
So anyway, so they and the court, the mandarins officials
had no object. I cannot think of way to object
to her proposal. So she went to a nunnery and she
became a, a, a Buddhist nun for three months and she came out
(53:14):
anyway. So she married the Crown Prince
and then after some years, a fewyears, I think it was less than
10 years, and she had two sons, was the emperor was who was
madly in love with her. OK.
(53:35):
And one of the sons, the oldest son, of course, became the Crown
Prince. And she, her fascination was the
emperor began to sort of vanish.She was getting older.
She was more into other things, power and control, and so she
(54:02):
this is not officially established, but there is strong
suspicion and strong circumstantial reasons to
believe that she poisoned her husband, the Emperor.
Yeah. OK, and which at which point
they, her first son would ascendthe throne to become the the
(54:27):
next emperor, right. So she conveniently,
conveniently have her exile. She she got her private private
accolades to to take the sun into exile into the Takramakan
desert in an an Oasis in a little Kingdom.
(54:50):
And so she was in charge of and then she was the Empress Dowager
in charge of the whole government and the whole court.
And she turned out to be a very wise ruler and very powerful
person. And she expanded the territories
(55:10):
of China. She made the country to be
prosperous. She was, you know, she used very
intelligent people to work for, for her.
And so she was a, a sagacious ruler for something like 10-15
years and, and, and the country really prospered and, and
(55:35):
people's life improved in many different ways and the territory
of China expanded westward and all of that.
And of course, the Chinese historian, who are all Confucian
mandarins, never forgave her. And in fact, at some point
(55:56):
during the 15 years when she wasreigning, she said the hell was
all of this, this Confucian thing.
So I'm going now. I'm in charge.
I am going to be the emperor, even though I'm a woman and I'm
going to have a different dynasty.
So she even did that, you know, And so anyway, so.
(56:22):
What was she called? I didn't catch your name.
Called Woo. Woo.
Empress Woo, Yeah. Empress Woo.
Nice. I think you need to write that
story. It was it was AI mean she was
she was. In fact, she killed her second
son. Oh, she's.
Because. Yeah, very determined, let's say
(56:45):
that. Because when because she she
arranged to have her her first son, the the, the, the Crown
Prince Egg put into exile without public knowledge.
So nobody knew where the the, the, the, the, the, the first
son was when when her husband died.
(57:06):
And so the popular demand was that the younger son should now
to send the throne, throne, which she didn't expect.
You know what I mean? She wasn't that wasn't in her in
her plot. And so when that demand came in
to become stronger and stronger,she just had her seconds and
(57:27):
killed. Yeah.
Yeah, so it was, it was really an exceptional woman in many,
many ways, particularly given the time and the contacts.
Right. She sounds like amazingly
significant in Chinese history, like like what she what she
(57:49):
achieved and the length she wentto to achieve them.
Exactly. It's.
Incredible. Like, amazing.
Yeah. Keep us posted.
You have to come back on and tell us about the story when
you've written. It OK.
Yeah, Professor, thank you very much.
It's been wonderful talking withyou and learning so much about
Chinese history and, and your writing process as well, which
(58:12):
is amazing. And we learned an awful lot
about linguistics and creating languages and that was extremely
interesting as well. So thank you very much.
It's been fantastic. Yeah, I'm looking forward to
reading some of your short stories.
Amazing. Thank you.
I'll share some with you after this.
All right, if we want to learn more about you and your writing,
(58:33):
where is the best place to go? My publisher is really after me.
I'm, I'm, I have no websites I don't belong to.
I don't subscribe to any of the whatever you call social media
thing. Social media.
Yeah, yeah. And I, yeah, that's what bothers
that in fact, is tied in all of the, the, the writing more,
(58:54):
publishing more. I I feel bad for the publisher
because they're not making moneyoff of me.
Too well, I'm sure. Yeah, because if I'm not doing
all of those things, these things, then it's not very
helpful. I, you know, I'm just very bad
at it. I don't have, I don't have
anyway, so, but now I have acceded to the publishers
(59:17):
pleading and I am sort of tryingto hire some person to manage
social media presence. And I will have a social media
presence, I hope in a short time.
And so we will, we can, we can sort of get in touch in that
way. Yeah, amazing.
(59:38):
And of course there'll be links to buy the books on in the
description and you can follow on Amazon as well.
I understand and, and on Goodreads as well.
So more books on the horizon. You'll be able to get
notifications about them and follow news posts like new
social media accounts and stuff.So yeah, follow the link in the
(59:58):
description. And yeah, Professor Lee, thank
you very much again. OK, it was nice talking to you.
Thank you for listening to the Fantasy Writers Tool Shed.
If you'd like to join our writing community on Discord and
get access to fantasy writing classes and books on Patreon,
check the links in the description.
And if you don't want to miss any future episodes, be sure to
(01:00:20):
follow or subscribe. And to support the show, leave a
quick rating on Spotify or iTunes and share this episode on
social media or with anyone who you think may be interested.
Thank you very much for listening.
Enjoy the show.
Welcome to another episode of our Fantasy Writers Tour shirt.
I'm your host, Richie Billing, and today I'm delighted to be
joined by a very special guest, Professor Charles Lee.
Professor Lee, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Pleasure to be on the show.
Oh, honored to have you here. You've been busy working on a
(00:33):
new book called Log One, which I'm reading at the moment and
enjoying very much historical fiction.
I'm a big historical fiction fan.
I've never read much of Chinese historical fiction.
I've been reading a bit of Indian historical fiction at the
moment, which is like a retelling of the Ramayana by our
(00:54):
Mr. Fatty. So this is really, really
refreshing to to pick up something like I've never read
anything like before. So today we're going to talk all
about it and, and how you wrote it and how what it was like
bringing such a, an incredible historical figure to life.
(01:16):
I'm sure there's a lot of pressure because.
Yeah, well, Guang was such a such a vivid character as Foes,
is he? Yeah, no, it wasn't a stressful
undertaking. And I'm, I wrote 2 sort of
(01:36):
memoirs and it was a very different undertaking and, and
it was interesting. And I don't, the only reason I
got into it is through the urging of, of Judas Regan, who
has been a in the publishing world for a long time.
(01:59):
But then I thought that, but I've always been interested in
writing, I ever since I was a teenager.
But of course, at that time I was writing mostly in Chinese.
And it, it, it was a way for me to earn a little money.
(02:20):
I mean, I mean it, I don't want to give the impression that I
was making any money, but I was earning, you know, couple
dollars for a short essay for a lyrical piece or whatever in,
in, in student magazines and publications.
And, but that was, that was veryrefreshing and that was
(02:44):
important. And I enjoy the process of
writing. And then I met Judas Reagan and,
and we became friends and I talked a lot.
And so I was always telling stories.
So she said that you're great storytellers and you have great
stories, so, so you should writeit up.
But in the Chinese culture, it where I grew up, I'm, I didn't
(03:10):
come to the United States until I was 21 years old.
So we think that writing a memoir of yourself is kind of
peddling yourself, not not something very that inspired
respect. And so I, I was very reluctant
(03:31):
to do that. But in the end, when I retired
from my teaching career, so I was overseas for a year and I
didn't want to keep on doing academic research.
So I said, oh, why not? I like writing.
I like sitting there, you know, cogitating and thinking about
(03:53):
plots and and telling stories. So I wrote it and that's how I
began. And after that, I sort of get
somewhat addicted to writing andreading and so on.
And, and I want to do something more than just writing memoirs.
(04:14):
So I thought I took on a, a historical novel because I, I
like that particular genre and lots of, lots of material for
historical novels in Chinese history, of course.
So anyway, and so that's how it happened.
(04:36):
Oh, amazing. Yeah, It's a fantastic story and
you've got a really credible life story as well.
So you mentioned there that you left China at the age of 21.
What was that like? Did that have much of an
influence on on your writing? Did that mean it sounds like
you've you've had a bit of a gapfrom when you started writing as
(04:57):
a teenager and then you come sort of full circle to
historical fiction. And So what was it like for your
sort of transitioning and and all the change in your life?
Yeah, well, I came here by accident and because in 1961 I
(05:17):
was there was AI think it was called International Refugee
Year. And United States government
offered 6 fellowships for peoplefrom East Asia, for young, young
people who anyone who had who had a high school degree, a high
(05:40):
school graduation, who was a high school graduation was
eligible to apply. And I was living in Hong Kong
then. So my friend heard about it and
and he wanted to take part in the, in the application and urge
me to, to do so. And I said Nah.
And but anyway, I was trying to he caught a living in Hong Kong
(06:02):
and life was hard and he was a good friend.
And so in the end, I relented and agree with him to just to
keep him come company and and they were, you know, I don't
know, hundreds and maybe thousands of applicants.
And everyone wanted to get the hell out of Hong Kong.
You know, in those days it was, it was that British colony, a
(06:26):
full old fashioned British colony where, where, where the
Brits treat the Chinese as dogs and with signs, you know, even
in the public in certain area where the Brits live and they
would put out signs. I know that you're you're
British, but this is. I don't identify as British.
I'm Irish. I I it's like it's, it's, it's
(06:51):
not something that gets spoken about over here.
And I would love to tell more about it because like Irish
people, for example, I mean, they're heavily sort of
persecuted by the British history and signs used to these
to put off in London saying, what is it?
No, no blacks, no Irish, no dogs.
(07:13):
Yeah. What was it like?
I mean, it must have been really, really hot, horrific.
Like, did you, did you grow up in Hong Kong as well?
No, no, I spent my no, I grew upin in China proper and lived in
different cities in the 40s in the 1940s I and 50s in 1951 is
(07:37):
when I went to Hong Kong. I sort of had a broken family.
So it, life was not very easy for me, particularly in a, in an
underdeveloped countries in those days, but in a colony is
particularly repressive and unforgiving, let's say.
(07:59):
OK. And so anyway, so I was very
fortunate to be chosen and for ascholarship to come to this
country to experience, to have the experience of, of, of a
college education for one year only.
(08:19):
And I was put into a particular college.
There were six of us. Each was put into a different
college and mostly liberal art, liberal arts college, not too
big. And so, but anyway, so I came
and it was a traumatic experience because it was at
(08:43):
that time in the United States, 1961 was basically 1950
atmosphere. People were very were not aware
of racism. They were beginning.
There was a beginning. It was the beginning of some
feeling about blacks and so on in this country at that time
(09:04):
among the among the more enlightened or educated people.
But generally it was a pretty racist place anyway.
And I was on the East Coast in New England and, and it was, it
was not very nice. And I thought, Gee, contrary to
(09:27):
my imagination, which was that United States was sort of a
paradise, It was like hell. And I wanted to get the hell out
of there as soon as I get a degree.
So I worked very hard and got a degree in two years.
Of course, I was in mathematics and in those days, in my days
when I grew up in China and, andin Hong Kong, any young person
(09:51):
who has, who had any pride, who,who want to be known as not
stupid and not retarded and would, would major in, in
science and technology or, or, you know, So anyway, I was
reasonably good at mathematics. And so I majored in math and
(10:13):
graduated in two years. And then I went to a PhD program
in mathematics at Stanford. And that's where I began to
really sort of, sort of learn about Western civilizations in
terms of culture, history, literature.
(10:34):
And it was, it was very exciting, but it was also very
traumatic without my being awareof it.
I just knew that I was very tense.
And I had a good group, group ofinternational friends from all
different places. Some were graduate students,
(10:55):
some were beginning faculty members.
And, and they sort of gave me a different kind of education.
And I was always trying to read and learn to keep up with them
because they talked about thingsI knew not nothing about.
And so, but my since because that sort of that period of, of
(11:20):
time sort of really broadened myhorizon and I was no longer sort
of preoccupied or obsessed with survival, with physical
survival. And that was the, you know,
prior to that, my life was physical survival.
How do you you know how my my next meal?
(11:43):
What am I going? To do like, he just becomes
instinctive to feel like that. Yeah.
And but they had sort of my friends meaning had sort of and
knowingly without any conscientious effort, conscious
effort sort of guided me into a,into a different mental
(12:07):
framework. And so I quit my PhD program in
math and went into into linguistics.
I remember running into some of my old high school classmates,
most of them were in the United came to the United States,
classmates from Hong Kong. And they found out that I had
(12:29):
left mathematics and went into linguistics.
And, and the first thing they asked me is that what went wrong
with you? Are you OK?
I can relate to that. I I was a lawyer and I quit that
to be a writer. Right, I learned about that now.
People were asking me, is everything all right?
(12:51):
What's wrong with you? Like, but if you don't love
something, I don't know if you felt like this as well, like you
would, you would sort of. You could see the life before.
Yeah, yeah. When you were doing your PhD and
you just weren't happy and you could see no happiness.
Right, right. And I was just, you know, really
(13:12):
interested in different culturesand I mean quote, UN quote
exotic cultures. So I worked on American Indian
languages, I worked on Papua languages in Papua New Guinea
and and did few work in inner Asia and and so on.
And so those were, that's how I so I, you know, I had sort of.
(13:36):
That sounds really amazing. I mean, have you just out of
interest, have you got a favorite language that you've
come across or a favorite way of?
Oh, I I would say, I would say it is English.
Yeah. Yeah, it's an exceptionally rich
language because it sort of incorporates elements from all
(14:01):
sort of languages. I mean, I mean, you, it's hard
less hardly anything, any familyof language from which English
has not borrowed concepts or words, you know, and, and it
has, it has all these different ways of expressing things.
I mean, not that you cannot say that one language is more
(14:25):
expressive than another. I mean, all languages are
equally facilitative in terms of, of, of expressing your
experience, emotions and so on. But the enormous way of saying
things and enormous vocabulary, incorporating concepts from all
(14:46):
different cultures from Malayo, Polynesian to, you know, to
Indian to, to Africa, to everything you can imagine.
And and I think English is just a fantastic language.
Yeah, that's the reason. I mean, we got a lot of
questions because a lot of the listeners, fantasy, fantasy
(15:08):
fans. So a big part of that is having
to create your own worlds. And if you're a fan of Lord of
the Rings, obviously you may be familiar token created rich
language. And so I mean, if someone
listening wanted to create theirown sort of language, what would
you sort of advice would you give them in terms of like
(15:30):
creating like the foundations and the sort of the key aspects
of it? Yeah, you you cannot really.
A language is really inseparablefrom culture.
So you you can create a language.
I mean the been different languages created in the last 50
years, including one of my my fellow classmate who who made a
(15:54):
good living by creating the language in that movie.
What's that movie? There was a movie about an
exotic people living. That's it.
That's Avatar. That's right.
That's. Interesting that he created that
language. Amazing.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.He he's.
(16:15):
Let's see, Chair. His specialty was California
Indian languages, most of which have died off.
I worked on one last ones that were survived only in one person
and so I became known as the thethe other speaker of this
particular California Indian language called Wapo.
(16:37):
Anyway, so California Indian languages are very diverse.
There are there were more languages, distinct languages,
mutually unintelligible languages in California than in
the whole United States in the old days when, when, when the
American Indian languages had not gone kaput.
(16:58):
You know, I mean, almost all California Indian languages are
dead now. I can't think of anyone that's
anything. I mean, the largest language,
the largest group was Chumash. Chumash is in the, in the area
where I am in the Santa Barbara area.
So words like Malibu, for example, is a Chumash word,
(17:19):
which means a beach. And you know, so Malibu is a, is
a very fancy, a community on the, on the coast, on the beach
South of north of LA, between LAand Santa Barbara.
And but anyway, so he, he was anAmerican.
He was a California Indian language person.
And yeah. And so it wasn't, it really
(17:43):
wasn't very hard. Wasn't, I don't think it's very
difficult to make to make up a language if you just know enough
the distinct, very, very unrelated languages in the
world. But I think he did a good job.
Yeah, that's right. Amazing.
(18:06):
Yeah. So you came to write Lord Guan
and it's it's not a story I'm familiar with, and he's not a
figure I'm familiar with. But the is a good chance that
we've seen pictures of them probably.
(18:27):
And I understand that you see pictures of them in like
restaurants and businesses and stuff.
Like that, right? Right.
But he's probably like one of in, in like you, I think you
mentioned before, like the West has probably not really heard of
him. And it sounds like he's it's
such a significant figure in Chinese culture that it's a bit
(18:50):
of a crime that we don't know. I know, I know.
Yeah. So do you want to tell us a bit
about the the history and then the story?
Yeah, well, it's mostly he became known in China and became
important and became an icon andA and a God and a a a an object
(19:11):
of worship, a religious figure, religious figure in the sense of
a religion revolving around him after he died.
OK, so when he was alive, he wasa warrior and he was not a not a
(19:32):
prominent man, but but he's he'ssworn brother and and close
associate were trying to vie fordominance in China in the in the
3rd century after the Han dynasty, which was sort of the
(19:53):
founding foundation of dynasty of, of Chinese history began to
disintegrate. But after he died, he became
Evermore, and he, he, he. His reputation started growing
and expanding. And he was.
(20:16):
Deified by public acclaim, he was deified by a different
emperors, a different time, and invoked by different leaders at
time of need because they wantedto show the people that Lord
Juan was on he on, on their side.
(20:36):
And so it became a religion really.
And almost every communities would have shrines and small
temples devoted to him. Buddhism was incorporated,
incorporated him into their pension of of gods.
(20:57):
And Taoism also included him as a very important God in their
religious framework. So he he, he sort of was
everywhere in China and everyoneknew about him, unlike
Confucius, who was more of a figure to be revered, more of a
(21:21):
a man who set down the philosophical foundations of the
Chinese culture. Whereas he was a popular hero,
was a popular man who was known for his courage, for his
integrity, for his abiding loyalty.
And so people started praying tohim and, and become supplicants
(21:47):
to, to to him for anything like please help me to have a son,
you know, a common in the old days, a common wish for many
women. Or please, please help me to
pass the next stage of the examination so that I can
advance in my career, whatever, you know, and everywhere.
(22:11):
So they were so Lord Guan was inthe in the in the heart and in
the mind and in the life of all people, much more so than
Confucius was. Confucius set the philosophical
foundations for the country, setthe moral Centers for the
country. But he was kind of a remote
figure. I mean, no one felt really
(22:32):
connected to him in any way. He was revered.
But of course, Lord Guan was someone that that you feel, you
felt close to, that you that youwant to, you want to be on your
side, that you want to him to beto, to, to, to fulfil your
(22:55):
wishes and so on. So he was really important in
Chinese culture. Yeah.
What? What is it about him?
Do you think that people found so appealing them?
Because I've been the first few chapters that I've read, he he
comes across as he's like a normal figure.
Is his family quite normal? They're just farmers and and
(23:18):
it's just think it's that relatability factor that he's
just a normal person. Well, these are in the first few
chapters is all made-up by by. It's all my imagination though.
It's not much, OK, not much known about him until he he
became a incredibly successful warrior, the great fighter, OK,
(23:47):
and not became sort of and he didn't become a a a universal
cultural hero and icon until after he died.
So as much as the Chinese love to keep written records about
everything, you can't keep written records of every single
person you know. So not so not much.
(24:10):
It's known about him. So that's one of the reasons I
wanted to pick on him to write this historical novel, because
then I can also let my imagination fly, you know, and
make up stories. And I mean, we knew he came from
a humble origin. That's all we know in, in terms
of historical record, the the only real historical record that
(24:32):
we have was from a celebrated Chinese historical novel called
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which he was, he
played a prominent role because of his capability as a great
dominant, dominating warrior. And so, yeah, so all that story
(24:58):
is about him growing up in a village and killing someone by
hand. And it's all my imagination.
I suppose like, you could base it on like the average life of
people from humble beginnings inChina.
And it's really interesting. I mean, it's so tough.
It's like really like, like you might describe before in Hong
(25:18):
Kong, like a fight for survival.Like it's the same, wasn't it?
Like if the for farmers back then, if, if one thing went
wrong, it was it was pretty, pretty tough for them, wasn't
it? Yeah, well, in the, in the
1940s, I, I sort of experienced and, and saw quite a bit of that
(25:39):
kind of life, you know, and in rural China and the poverty, the
oppression and the suffering of the, of the, of the, of the, of
the peasants. And so, so I witnessed some of
that in the 1940s. Well, particularly during the
(26:00):
civil war when the communists was fighting against the
nationalists, before the communists came into power.
And of course, when once the communists came into power, Lord
Guan began to recede from the public life because, because the
communists were against any, anyreligion in 1949.
So he was the the So the 10s of thousands of temples and shrines
(26:21):
all over across the country weredemolished by the by the
communists, but surprisingly. Did you, did you agree with that
or did you sort of was that quite opposite?
Well, it was just just a just a fact of life.
I mean, you know, you that was, that was mouse edict and that
(26:44):
was an edict that's supported byby mouse cohorts and that's, you
know, there was life in in China.
I mean, all religions suffered, right?
I mean, we, we nowadays we hear about things like the, the
(27:06):
persecution of the Uyghurs. We heard, we hear about the
persecution of the Tibetans and it you know, that's partly
racism because they were not HanChinese.
Han Chinese, meaning the dominant ethnic group in China,
dominant and overwhelmingly dominant in terms of numbers.
(27:28):
And all of that out of out of the one billion, 1.3 billion
Chinese I would say is somethinglike 1.2 billion are well, let
me see now I know that that number pretty well because I
worked on Chinese minorities forlong time languages and all of
(27:49):
that. I would say yeah, somewhere
between 1.1 out of 1.3 billion Chinese population, I would say
around 1.1 billionaire Han ethnic people.
And there's a lot of racism against the minorities.
(28:12):
I mean, the minorities that we, we hear that in the West you
hear about are, you know, now the Turkey people, the Uyghur,
which belong to the Turkey group, the Tibetans, which
belong to the Tibetan Burma group.
And but there were hundreds of other, I mean, Mongols, you hear
Mongols, you know, and of courseMongols have have ruled China,
(28:36):
but so that most other minorities have ruled China.
In fact, over the dynastic, the dynastic era, there were more
dynasties that were established by non Han Chinese than they
were dynasties established by Han Chinese.
(28:57):
But the, the reason people always ask me when I say that,
it says why, why is that so? Wouldn't, wouldn't you know, the
dominant population, wouldn't they always sort of sort of take
over the power and, and, and, and, and, and if they
discriminate against the minorities and they would be the
boss. Well, The thing is that in the
(29:21):
old days, in order to establish a dynasty, first of all you have
to have a period of anarchy. In other words, an existing
dynasty is in the decline, falling apart, and law and order
disappears and bandage everywhere.
Now, in order to become dominantand powerful, you have to have a
(29:44):
group that are great fighters, right?
But most of those minorities were tremendous fighters because
they grew up on different diet. The Chinese were a second
sedentary, sedentary, sedentary agricultural people for eons of
(30:07):
time, you know, for more than 10,000 years now, OK, A-789000
years in the, in the, in, in theplains of, of Great Plains of
East Asia. But the other minorities are
mostly nomads. They are pastoralist.
Well, what the nomads eat when they grow up, they eat, they
drink, they drink milk and they eat meat.
(30:29):
What do the child eat in the olddays?
They eat the little, little kids, whether they eat all the
adults, they eat bread or they eat rice.
So you're not, you're not going to grow up to be a powerful
figure if you grow up eating rice or or wheat most of the
time, I mean without. Whereas if you grow up on the
(30:50):
diet of rich protein, then you are more likely to fulfill your
genetic potentials for size and strength.
So that's why the founders of dynasties were typically either
non Han Chinese or at least halfnon Han Chinese.
(31:14):
For example, you take a dynasty like the Tang dynasty you might
have heard of, that's consideredsort of the IT went from the the
beginning of the 7th century until the 10th century lasted
300 some years. It was considered the golden
age, like the 17th century in Holland.
You know, it's the golden age ofHolland.
(31:34):
That's the the Tang dynasty was considered the golden age of the
of the Chinese dynastic era. The founder was he was half
nomads. They were his father was a
military person living stationedin the borderline in the
(31:56):
borderland of western China. And he married a different
minority woman who were nomads. And that's how the son grew up
and mostly under the influence of his mother, who happened to
be a very powerful woman. And and then when he started a
(32:19):
revolution against the existing dynasty, he mostly drew help at
the very beginning from all his mother's tribes in the, in the
Takramakan desert in Central Asia and all of that.
So that's why why the founding the founders of dynasty were
(32:40):
often not not Han Chinese. But it makes.
Sense though, doesn't it? Because if you, if you've got
minorities living there and you've got someone who's who's
half hand, half minority, then it's a unifying figure.
It's someone who can bring everybody in.
Right, exactly. But The thing is that.
It's a surprise and it's a golden age.
Yeah. But The thing is that once what
(33:02):
the people who wrote history of China see, for example, there's
a long practice that every dynasty, once it's been founded,
once it's has has been become established, then its first
priority, it is the duty of thatdynasty, of that emperor and his
court to write a history of the dynasty that preceded it.
(33:28):
But who was the writers? Of course, they were the
Chinese, they were the Han Chinese.
So how did they so when the Han Chinese writer writer write the
history of the previous dynasty?So they were trying to sinify
the founders and the and the other emperors as much as
possible. So do you think this is what
happened with Lord Guan? Well, who was Lord Guan?
(33:53):
Now, of course, everyone thinks of Lord Guan as Han Chinese, but
but on the other hand, physically he was enormous.
He was incredibly strong and powerful and coming from a poor
background. So that would be very unusual.
And secondly, he was known to have to be very hairy.
(34:13):
And he's, you know, he has a huge beard.
When a Han Chinese have a beard,it's typically very thin and
sort of whiskers, you know what I mean?
Yeah. And Ho Chi Minh beard, that's a
typical like Chinese, not Lord Wan.
He had a whole face full of hair.
(34:34):
And he, his nickname, as I said in the book, was the magnificent
beard. And he was, of course,
physically incredibly strong andpowerful and he had dark skin.
So who knows? Who knows?
Who knows what his original, original ethnicity?
(34:56):
Nobody knows. But of course, the Chinese.
All of the Chinese who wrote about him would say that he was
Han Chinese. Yeah.
Yeah, that's typical. You know, in the even in the
last dynasty, which is the Menchu dynasty that that got
toppled in 1911 by by Sun Yasin,they were, you know, they were
(35:18):
Menchos. They were in their court, in the
court, in the imperial court, until the very end.
In the imperial court, when military affairs were discussed,
it was discussed only in Manchu,not in Chinese.
Yeah. Yeah, so you know, but of
course, if you if you look at Chinese history, you read about
(35:40):
Chinese history, that's a Chinese dynasty, the last
dynasty of the dynastic era. And yes, the founders were
Manchus, but they all become cynicized.
But, well, you know, that's really not true.
Yeah. So what what was it about Logan?
And I mean like, what did he do in his life that really made him
(36:04):
this eternal figure? Yeah, So the the historical
information about him were mostly from a book called The
Romance of the Three Kingdom. That was, that was the first
historical novel published, written in China in the 14th
century. No 14th.
(36:24):
Yeah, more like 15th century. And so he was, he was celebrated
for his physical prowess, for his warrior capability.
And he weirded A scabbard and and he was sort of fearless and
(36:48):
he was a game changer when they come to a battlefields, once he
come into the battle and all of his soldiers will get all
excited and and and charged up and that the enemies were just
scared just seeing him was this this big huge man wearing a huge
(37:09):
scabbard and dark face was was an enormous beard.
And so he was a game changer andhe dedicated.
Sounds a bit like a Viking, doesn't he?
Oh, that's right. The northern Yeah, the the
Vikings who who came into, into,into, into into, into Europe at
(37:33):
different periods of time. And, you know, the Vikings, in
fact, the Normans were actually in even in Sicily, you know, was
partly conquered by the Norman, by the by, by the Viking people
of Viking origin. Exactly.
It's like an. The Vikings, they were in sort
of and roll, wasn't it? That's that's like the Ukraine,
Kiev, like that's where they were as well.
(37:55):
I mean, it's not too far away from China.
Could there have been sort of nomads that have come down?
And is that is that like a possible link?
Because literally from the way describe, I'm just imagining
imagining running into battle and it sounds like a Viking.
Yeah, it's the of course there'sno, there would be no record of
(38:17):
that. But but they, they, the recorded
link, of course, was the empire of the Golden Horde in, in
Ukraine long before Russia existed in the 15th century,
14th century, one of one of Genghis Khan's grandson Batu
(38:40):
went there and established the Empire of the Golden Horde.
So that's, that was officially recorded.
And we know all about that long before Moscow existed.
So he, in fact, he was chosen byhis clan to become the Great
Khan, one of the become a successor of Genghis Khan.
(39:03):
And he refused. He did turn it down because he
was so he was in such paradise in the in the plains of Ukraine
and and such a rich country. He didn't want to go back to
Mongolia to become the Great Khan.
Yeah. I'd say it's a tough job.
Right, so. So Luke 1 and very sort of
(39:26):
famous on the on the battlefield.
And was there anything else thathe was well known for that
you've? It was famous for his loyalty
and for his courage, for his honesty.
So, so he, that's, those are thequalities that that he and he
(39:48):
sort of personified in the Chinese mind, honesty, courage,
loyalty and and I guess physicaldominance.
He he was deified for those reasons.
(40:11):
And but in later on, you know, in the in the dynastic era when
he became so sort of. Omnipresent in the Chinese
culture. So he got deified into
everything you can imagine, including he was the God of
(40:32):
wealth. That's why you in the Western
world, the only place where you often see his image and his
little little shrine was in in Chinese shops in Chinatown,
because because the the last deification by popular acclaim
was the God of wealth. Yeah.
(40:57):
So, but most, as I wrote in the introduction, most Westerners
who went to Chinese restaurants in Chinatown in the Western
countries and see the shrine, little shrine next to the cash
register or the cashiers mistookthem, just assumed that that was
has something to do with ancestor worship.
(41:19):
But actually it's not. It's actually Lord Kwan.
Oh, amazing. Yeah, everyone's got to keep an
eye out now. Next time you go for Chinese.
Right, you will see that there'sthe you take a careful look at
at those little the, the picture, all the the little
shrine. You will see that the man has
incredibly long huge beard. Yeah.
(41:41):
And a red, a red, dark red face,which was not typical East Asia,
you know. Yeah, yeah.
He was, but he was also very important in the culture, in
Korea, in Japan, in Vietnam and,you know, so all over East Asia.
(42:04):
Yeah. So what was it like writing that
that character then and bringinghim to life?
Was it a tough challenge or did you enjoy it?
What what was it a long process?Can you tell us a bit about Oh?
It wasn't long at all. I, I, it took me about a year
and a half, less than two years to write it.
And it was fun. I really enjoyed it
tremendously, much more so than I did when I wrote those two
(42:29):
memoirs of mine. It it, it was I only the
research came into relevance only after, only when I sort of
toward the end of the book, whenI started describing the
different battles that he was involved in.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like, for example, the second-half of the book began
(42:50):
with with his future wife, you know, and that was all my
imagination. Nobody knew anything about his
wife. But we don't know anything about
his wife. There's no record of it, but in
the Chinese culture, you know, wife is not important.
Yeah, I see that. Right, right.
So that was just all my imagination and and I made him,
(43:13):
made her to be, to be a concubine who, who of the
imperial concubine who was forced to become a concubine and
who hated it and, and, and escaped the palace, the imperial
palace and, and you know, so, soit was fun.
It was fun because because I could indulge in in, in
(43:38):
fantasies, on my arm, on my own,of my own.
Yeah, definitely. So that's all, all of it.
And that you're on the fantasy Races too shirts because
historical fiction there is a lot.
Like you say, you've got a framework, but there's a lot of
that you have to fill in yourself.
Exactly. And there's a real skill to do
(43:58):
in that. And yeah, and the chapters that
I've read so far, I really, really enjoy it.
And there's some very interesting characters,
definitely. Yeah.
Oh, thank you. I'm glad you did.
And yeah, so it's, I do recommend that we'll go and
check it out. Click the link in the
description to to go in there, find out.
One last question I've got for you, Professor Lee, is did you
(44:22):
find any challenges or did you run into any challenges when
you're writing it? And how did you overcome it?
Did I find it challenging? No, I didn't find.
Any like particular aspect of the writing that you found
difficult? No, not really.
(44:46):
No, I just, I just everyday I just sit on my computer and
write a couple hours. But you know, as you, as you
know, since you yourself is sucha successful writer, a lot of
the writing, most of the writingis revision and rewriting and
all of that. And I would think that that the
(45:07):
challenge there is really a challenge on, on, on, on
patients, you know, like, I mean, at some point I, I just
say, no, I don't want to look atwhat, you know, I don't want to
read what I just wrote last month's.
I mean, do I, I have to read it again.
(45:31):
I mean, The thing is that you can always improve, you know
what I mean? The thing is that there's this
revision process is endless. You can always improve many,
many things. The storyline, the narrative,
the vocabulary, the expressions that even the, even the
construction of a particular sentence and the description of
(45:51):
a particular figure. There's always, always room to
improve. So, so that's, that's the, it
takes discipline to be, to be, not to give up, to be, not to,
not to give up. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Otherwise, it's not otherwise I
(46:12):
just sort of sit on the computerand start typing it out and,
and, but the I just I'm that's probably because I'm basically a
very impatient person. So, so it's a trial.
It's very trying in terms of of patience.
I just, I knew that this is far from, from ideal, what I wrote,
(46:35):
what I written. Let's say, suppose I wrote 2-3
pages last yesterday and then, then so, and this morning I
opened up the computer and I sawthe three pages.
I can see, Oh my God, did I do that?
And so I start changing it, revising it.
And the next day I will ask myself, and then I will write
few more pages. And the next day I'll ask
(46:57):
myself, well, should I look, go back and look at the, you know,
10 pages back, or should I just only look at the last few pages
I wrote and the desire is to saythe hell was the pages that I
wrote earlier and just move on and revise the part that I wrote
yesterday. But that's the I To me, that's
(47:19):
the the most the the most difficult thing.
Yeah, it's it's definitely a patient man's game, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when I learned about
the, for example, Virginia Woolfthat she just sit there and she
had, she spent very little time writing now and then.
And then when she wrote, she just wrote them out.
(47:40):
And that's just the way it was. And that's perfect.
That's just amazing, you know? It is, yeah.
It's a real skill. But you say you've got to,
you've got to sit there, you've got to type.
Got a crack on, but I'm like youlike I always get caught into
the trap of going back. So now I'm not allowed to go
(48:00):
back, but I can only go forwardsuntil I'm until I had it.
So that's. The rule?
You don't go back. I see you don't go back.
Until I finish the draft. Oh, really?
OK. I can go back and make notes.
I'm not allowed to go back and change unless it's something
(48:21):
horrendously wrong. Yeah, yeah, right.
I think, I think in the end, therevision that you engage in
after you finish the draft of the book is more important than
the revision that you do every day.
(48:42):
But, but yeah, but The thing is that even there, when you revise
the whole manuscript, there is aneed to keep on going.
And as I said, it's an endless process.
And so, so it's, it's the the the difficulty that I feel is in
(49:06):
fighting my own impatience to say, oh, the hell was it, That's
it. I'm not going to go back
anymore. But, but I really have to go
back because there's all these inadequacies and, and mistakes
and, and, and poor writing and so on.
So and, and finally in the end, you know, you just kind of stop.
(49:28):
But it's a It's a endless process.
Yeah, it is continuous learning,right?
Are you, are you going to write a second book?
Then have you got a second book on the pipeline?
Well, I have. I don't know.
I have I'm ambivalent about that.
On the one hand, I have lots of material.
(49:50):
I want to write a book about this woman in in this in the let
me see what the 10 was second century.
She, she was a concubine in the Imperial Polish, but she was
(50:13):
very unusual for many reasons. 1is that while she was a
concubine to the Emperor, a favorite concubine yet, and she
started carrying on with with the Crown Prince an affair so
(50:35):
well, I mean it did you have to remember the Emperor at that
time was already old, you know what I mean?
So like a. Standard.
Right, So the fact that I mean, the fact that she just even that
alone is sort of like incrediblydaring because if you're caught,
you know, that'll be gruesome deaths, you'll be guarded and
(50:59):
who knows whatever, you know, punishment that.
People on. One story you.
Know be a best selling novel with that one.
Right. But anyway, then she then the
then her husband, the emperor died and so the Crown Prince,
her lover ascended the throne and the Crown Prince wanted to
(51:22):
marry her and make her to be theemperors.
So the, the entire court, all the Mandarin officials went up
in arms because, because by, by official generational etiquette,
this woman was his mother. You see what I mean?
(51:47):
So that's, that's like, I mean, it's not that she's not his
biological mother, but she was, she was a woman that belonged to
her father, to his father, you know, you know what I mean.
So he couldn't possibly marry a woman that belong to his father.
And that's that's completely turning upside down the
(52:08):
Confucian ethical principle. So, so this woman, so the
concubine responded to the court, to the mandarins
officials. It is very simple.
I see your point. OK, so I am, he said go.
She said, I am now going into a monastery and I'm going to
(52:29):
become a nun in the monastery and three months later I will be
reincarnated into a different person.
Then I come up, then I will marry, you know, the current
emperor. So, so, so that sort of
dispelled the, the whole problemof violating the fundamental
(52:51):
principle of ethics in the Confucian philosophy, right.
So anyway, so they and the court, the mandarins officials
had no object. I cannot think of way to object
to her proposal. So she went to a nunnery and she
became a, a, a Buddhist nun for three months and she came out
(53:14):
anyway. So she married the Crown Prince
and then after some years, a fewyears, I think it was less than
10 years, and she had two sons, was the emperor was who was
madly in love with her. OK.
(53:35):
And one of the sons, the oldest son, of course, became the Crown
Prince. And she, her fascination was the
emperor began to sort of vanish.She was getting older.
She was more into other things, power and control, and so she
(54:02):
this is not officially established, but there is strong
suspicion and strong circumstantial reasons to
believe that she poisoned her husband, the Emperor.
Yeah. OK, and which at which point
they, her first son would ascendthe throne to become the the
(54:27):
next emperor, right. So she conveniently,
conveniently have her exile. She she got her private private
accolades to to take the sun into exile into the Takramakan
desert in an an Oasis in a little Kingdom.
(54:50):
And so she was in charge of and then she was the Empress Dowager
in charge of the whole government and the whole court.
And she turned out to be a very wise ruler and very powerful
person. And she expanded the territories
(55:10):
of China. She made the country to be
prosperous. She was, you know, she used very
intelligent people to work for, for her.
And so she was a, a sagacious ruler for something like 10-15
years and, and, and the country really prospered and, and
(55:35):
people's life improved in many different ways and the territory
of China expanded westward and all of that.
And of course, the Chinese historian, who are all Confucian
mandarins, never forgave her. And in fact, at some point
(55:56):
during the 15 years when she wasreigning, she said the hell was
all of this, this Confucian thing.
So I'm going now. I'm in charge.
I am going to be the emperor, even though I'm a woman and I'm
going to have a different dynasty.
So she even did that, you know, And so anyway, so.
(56:22):
What was she called? I didn't catch your name.
Called Woo. Woo.
Empress Woo, Yeah. Empress Woo.
Nice. I think you need to write that
story. It was it was AI mean she was
she was. In fact, she killed her second
son. Oh, she's.
Because. Yeah, very determined, let's say
(56:45):
that. Because when because she she
arranged to have her her first son, the the, the, the Crown
Prince Egg put into exile without public knowledge.
So nobody knew where the the, the, the, the, the, the first
son was when when her husband died.
(57:06):
And so the popular demand was that the younger son should now
to send the throne, throne, which she didn't expect.
You know what I mean? She wasn't that wasn't in her in
her plot. And so when that demand came in
to become stronger and stronger,she just had her seconds and
(57:27):
killed. Yeah.
Yeah, so it was, it was really an exceptional woman in many,
many ways, particularly given the time and the contacts.
Right. She sounds like amazingly
significant in Chinese history, like like what she what she
(57:49):
achieved and the length she wentto to achieve them.
Exactly. It's.
Incredible. Like, amazing.
Yeah. Keep us posted.
You have to come back on and tell us about the story when
you've written. It OK.
Yeah, Professor, thank you very much.
It's been wonderful talking withyou and learning so much about
Chinese history and, and your writing process as well, which
(58:12):
is amazing. And we learned an awful lot
about linguistics and creating languages and that was extremely
interesting as well. So thank you very much.
It's been fantastic. Yeah, I'm looking forward to
reading some of your short stories.
Amazing. Thank you.
I'll share some with you after this.
All right, if we want to learn more about you and your writing,
(58:33):
where is the best place to go? My publisher is really after me.
I'm, I'm, I have no websites I don't belong to.
I don't subscribe to any of the whatever you call social media
thing. Social media.
Yeah, yeah. And I, yeah, that's what bothers
that in fact, is tied in all of the, the, the writing more,
(58:54):
publishing more. I I feel bad for the publisher
because they're not making moneyoff of me.
Too well, I'm sure. Yeah, because if I'm not doing
all of those things, these things, then it's not very
helpful. I, you know, I'm just very bad
at it. I don't have, I don't have
anyway, so, but now I have acceded to the publishers
(59:17):
pleading and I am sort of tryingto hire some person to manage
social media presence. And I will have a social media
presence, I hope in a short time.
And so we will, we can, we can sort of get in touch in that
way. Yeah, amazing.
(59:38):
And of course there'll be links to buy the books on in the
description and you can follow on Amazon as well.
I understand and, and on Goodreads as well.
So more books on the horizon. You'll be able to get
notifications about them and follow news posts like new
social media accounts and stuff.So yeah, follow the link in the
(59:58):
description. And yeah, Professor Lee, thank
you very much again. OK, it was nice talking to you.
Thank you for listening to the Fantasy Writers Tool Shed.
If you'd like to join our writing community on Discord and
get access to fantasy writing classes and books on Patreon,
check the links in the description.
And if you don't want to miss any future episodes, be sure to
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follow or subscribe. And to support the show, leave a
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Thank you very much for listening.
Enjoy the show.
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