Just a little random review.

I watch Asian dramas from time to time. I'll even go so far as to say that I like them more than American ones, because they have a set story line and a set number of episodes, and then they end. The actors are free to move on to other projects, and new shows get moved into the time slots, and everyone goes home happy, including the viewer, who doesn't have to invest years of her life into a series just to watch its narrative slide down the crapper in a misguided attempt to rejuvenate the story and/or audience appeal.

(I'm talking to you, series where a prominent character suddenly learned he had a ten-year-old child that he never knew about, and to you, series where the two main characters randomly discovered that they shared a half-brother. Why couldn't you just resolve the conflicts you already had going and call it quits instead of venturing that far down the road of Pointless & Ridiculous Plot Twists?)

With this short preface, I bring to you my latest distraction in the world of Asian dramas: My Princess, starring Kim Tae Hee and Song Seung Hun. The show is available for subtitled viewing at, of all places, Hulu.com (who knew?), and it is adorable.

(This coming from the girl who currently believes that the Disney Princesses are Satan's pawns shoved into a sparkly, homogenized packaging. Put down the tomatoes, people. Deep down in your hearts you know I'm right.)

My Princess follows the life of Lee Seol, an affable, penny-pinching college student whose main concerns are her lack of money and her one-sided crush on her history professor. Through a series of happenstances, she encounters Park Hae Young, a diplomat and the grandson of a wealthy businessman, only to learn that she is the great-granddaughter of the last Korean Emperor, and that Hae Young's grandfather is determined to restore the Korean dynasty, with her as its only living scion.

It's a standard rags-to-riches setup, the forgotten princess discovered among commoners, but My Princess introduces a number of lovely little twists to the story. Seol's father, Lee Han, didn't want any part of a restoration and died twenty years before in a car accident while trying to evade Hae Young's obsessive grandfather. Hae Young, who's been put in charge of training the fledgling princess, stands to lose his inheritance if the dynasty is actually reinstated. His fiancee, Oh Yoon Joo, projects an aura of grace and efficiency while she moves around behind the scenes to undermine, well, basically everyone. Seol, innocent and a little naive, has to navigate her way among people that want to use her and those who want to destroy her, all to claim a position that goes against her very nature.

And she does it all in such an adorable manner that I'm left giggling to myself like a fool every time I watch an episode. If that's not entertainment, I don't know what is.

Each episode is about 1 hour, 5 minutes long without commercials. The Hulu experience gives you probably another 5-7 minutes of ads, but they're in short spurts. I've only watched the first 7 episodes so far, and Hulu only has the first 13, but since the series is currently running in Korea, I trust that they will upload more of them in good time.

And just to save you a couple seconds of point-and-click, here is the link to the first episode:

My Princess, Episode 1

Tuck it away someplace safe for the next time you need to get away from the "My brother is really my aunt?!" plot twists of American dramas.

You're welcome.

And that is a problem.

Every so often someone asks me when the sequel to A Boy Called Hawk is going to be available, and I answer (quite tactfully, I think) that it's in the editing phase. If I'm lucky, that's the end of the inquiry, and the subject is dropped for something more interesting. If I'm not lucky, the curious individual will follow up with, "And what does that mean, the editing phase?"

This is not a question I like to answer, mostly because "it's in the editing phase" is my personal code for "it's sitting in a binder under my bed." It means the manuscript is written, but that it's not ready to be formatted into a book file because I still need to scour it over for typos, malapropisms, and plot holes, as well as any little spots I feel need more or less development to make them more readable. The "editing phase" represents a mountain of detail work, and it's usually not something that I'm eager to tackle right after I've just spent several weeks conquering the mountain of detail work involved in the writing phase.

The difficulty of this phase is heightened by another little phenomenon I long ago discovered about my writing: it puts me to sleep. (I am here tempted to insert the quip about how very boring my writing must be, but if you're reading this, you already know that.) Whenever I read something I wrote, not only do I already know what's going to happen, but I already know the exact wording that's going to be used to describe it. My brain's response is something along the lines of, "Oh. You don't need me for this." And then it shuts off.

On the one hand, I never have to fear insomnia again. On the other, it makes for a very slow-going editing process (though I will admit the uncharacteristic lack of sleep deprivation is a plus). It also makes me reluctant even to drag the manuscript out from under the bed. Afternoon naps are nice when it's a lazy Sunday and you have the time to relax. They're annoying when you're trying to be productive and can't for the life of you force your eyes to focus already.

That said, A Tale of Real Irish Tea is no longer sitting idle. I figure if I slog through three chapters a day, I can have it edited in the next two weeks. Then, I can happily move on to the next phase of the project: Vacation.

I might as well count my upcoming jaunt as part of the process, right? And if everything goes according to plan, at least I'll be well-rested when I get on that plane.

(Haha. As if.)