Author name: Sayling@@Away

I’d like to tell you about a book I just finished reading, called Escape from Camp 14.  It is written by Blaine Harden,  who is an author and journalist for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist.  I read about the book in a Wall Street Journal report and had to give it a read. The book recounts the story of Shin In Geun (now Shin Dong-hyuk ), who is the only person to have been born in a North Korean prison camp and escaped.  Shin is the child of a man and woman who were awarded a gift of having a night with each other, and he grew up chronically malnourished and unloved in a place of brutality, torture, paranoia and fear. When he was 13, he reported to camp authorities that his mother and brother were planning to escape. He was tortured just for knowing about it and then had to watch their executions.  He felt no remorse.  Surprisingly, Shin’s desire to escape from the camp was not based on a desire for freedom, but simply because he wanted food, in particular meat!  How he managed to get out required an inordinate amount of luck and incredible perseverance, and is fascinating in the telling, but the real story is his struggle to adjust to the modern world, first in South Korea and later in California.  This is a powerful memoir, written from interviews with Shin over the course of several years.  I recommend it not because of its sensationalism, but because it reveals the truth about North Korea’s prison camps and also explains why South Korea, and indeed the world, has shown little interest in reunification, the human rights violations of North Korean, and the abolition of the camps.  It is also a testament to the power of the human spirit in the face of unfathomable cruelty and deprivation. 0 0

Like Rhe, the main character in my book Sudden Death, I learned to sail at an early age, skimming around Plymouth Harbor in a Turnabout, now called a Class 10. She was small, maneuverable, and came about on a dime (hence its name).  Since that time, I’ve crewed on a Columbia 50 on the Great Lakes and sailed a Shields (a 30 foot “mini-twelve meter”) off Newport Beach, CA, but I’ve always wanted to get back to sailing a one-two person boat.  Kids and a career intervened, but finally this past winter I bought a used Tanzer 16 (she was a bargain) with a friend.  Saturday, we took her out for a shake-down sail, and it was everything I’d hoped for.  Wind and sails and the slap of waves on the hull and dancing over the lake.  We still haven’t named her, but plan to take her out on the sound side of the Outer Banks next month. Maybe the name will come to us then. So here’s to all small boat sailors and the exhilaration of being one with wind and water! 0 0

Dear Readers: This is my first time I’ve blogged, and right off the bat, I need to thank the writers in my critique groups for helping me to become a better writer and learn the practice of the art.  There’s still a way to go, but I think I’m getting better. Special thanks to Bob, Elizabeth, and Sandy, who slogged through every chapter of my book over the last eighteen months, offering great insight, reality checks, and practical advice.  Bob and Elizabeth have their own blogs, and I recommend them: birdwords.wordpress.com and scribblinginthestorageroom.wordpress.com. I’ve attached the first two chapters of Sudden Death to get feedback from a wide variety of interested readers, along with a couple of short stories.  Do not be put off by the title There’s a Penis in my Pocket.  It isn’t pornography, but rather an incident that happened to me during the years I was teaching gross anatomy laboratories and sort of funny, at least from an anatomist’s point of view. I plan to write more as my search for an agent and a publisher progresses this spring and will have some books to recommend that I’ve read this year or am in the process of reading. 0 0

A Night At The Royal Sudden Death -A Novel 0 0

My story was published in the 2012 January issue of Deep South Magazine! Please leave comments for “When I Became A North Carolinian” below. 1 0

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