Title: Portrait of a Beauty
Directed by Jeon Yoon-soo
Screenplay by Han Soon-ryeon

Alternative title : “Beauty Island”

Synopsis borrowed from HanCinema: Born to a family of established court painters, seven-year-old Yun-jeong is a young girl gifted at painting. However, the pressure is on her brother to carry on the proud family tradition, as women aren’t allowed to become professional painters. While her brother trains to take his place in the court, Yun-jeong helps him out by secretly painting for him. The little girl’s life is turned upside down when her brother kills himself. In order to preserve the family honor, she is forced to take her brother’s name and lives as a man. Yun-bok’s genius and talent captures the heart of another great master of the time, Kim Hong-do. But her daring depictions of women are condemned by the royal institute as obscene. Yun-bok meets Kang-mu and falls deeply in love. For the first time, she feels the strong desire to abandon everything she has built and simply be a woman in front of the man she loves. Kang-mu sacrifices all for his love as well. Kim Hong-do, who loved the genius of his best student, ends up loving everything about her, and Seol-hwa, a Gisaeng at the courtesan house, possesses a love for Hong-do that turns into fatal jealousy. The secret behind Shin Yun-bok’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Beauty, is finally revealed after 250 years of silence.

Let's Make Dumplings at Amazon
Heroes & Villains at Amazon

Okay, so sometimes my brother can be a dick. I laugh about it, but he’s always getting me with stupid stuff.

We were watching like Animal Planet or something and it was all stories about amazing animals and their feats. So during the commercial, The Girl blurts out “Penguins can fly!”

I scoffed like really loudly, “No they can’t. Whoever told you that is stupid because penguins can’t fly.” I probably sounded a little too irritated, but she’s always coming out with stupid shit to try and get as much attention as possible. She’s still trying to fit into our family because she only came to live with all of us during the summer, and now we’re staying at my Dad’s house. Three strong willed adults leaves a couple of kids that don’t really get away with a whole lot, especially the lies she likes to tell. (The most worrisome thing for me is that she actually seems to believe her lies, even the really crazy ones.)

Anyways, that whole penguins flying thing had me just snapping out as fast as possible to tell her that it wasn’t real. She kept insisting it was true, and we got into this whole deal, going rounds and rounds.

Then my brother goes, “Check this out” and turns his computer.

On the screen was like a National Geographic type show with penguins flying around. “The only penguins that are able to fly and who love to migrate to like the Bahamas.”

For a minute, my brain just stalled and I was like “It’s impossible, but it might be true.” And I was really kind of getting into the idea of it, when there was a snap and I was like “No way. I call Shenanigans! It’s like that spiders smoking weed video. FAKE!”

And my brother laughed and turned his computer to the spider video.

It was good to laugh like that, and thinking about it now, I’m still laughing.

That’s the kind of thing I get nostalgic for afterwards.

BTW, my brother just said that Hank Hill got raped by a dolphin. Seems legit.

Panoply at Amazon

I thought I would revisit my sci-fi epic. I work on these stories every once and awhile; hardcore space opera, baby, the only opera I enjoy.

They’re badly in need of editing and I need some smart sci-fi brain to go over them because I’m not sure what’s possible or not and my way of writing has changed since I started the series. Still, they’ve always been my favorites 🙂

Title: Sapphire
genre: sci-fi
series: Facet of Empire

Summary: Sapphire is brought to the prison planet Hades to find the notorious muderer William Hedell.

Excerpt of “Sapphire”