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These are the worldbuilding and craft notes for a cyberpunk novel I was developing in Taipei in early 2001. I was 27, running Taldren (a game studio making Star Trek games), living in Taiwan with my girlfriend Kai-wen, and teaching myself fiction writing between 2am coding sessions. The novel was called Black9 — a near-future thriller about an industrial spy named Ronan caught between Korean megacorps, eco-terrorists, and a five-hundred-year-old secret society.
Reading back through these notes, what strikes me is the earnestness of a young game developer trying to crack the craft of fiction. My reading list at the time: Orson Scott Card's How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Ben Bova's The Craft of Writing Science Fiction, William Gibson's Neuromancer, The World Treasury of Science Fiction, plus books on cryptography and wealth. I was studying how the masters handled point-of-view transitions — analyzing Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Dune, The Dragonbone Chair, A Deepness in the Sky, and Tigana to figure out when and how to introduce a second character.
These notes are raw, lightly cleaned up but preserving my voice from that era. They mix character backstory, plot brainstorming, craft analysis, and personal journal entries about life in Taipei — exactly as I wrote them.
Ronan is a cool character name.
Real name is Justin Chee. Ronan is about 5'10, Korean male from Los Angeles' Korea Town. He is a tough guy, but needs to learn a lot more. Street smart, not technologically smart. He is a new breed of industrial spy working for the Korean multinational company — information gatherer. He is not a scientist nor programmer, but over his career he will learn large-scale finance, cell terrorism, many forms of street combat, several different languages — it will be cool.
He was a gang member (the police burned down his apartment block when he was younger and his mother died in the fire), rescued through an uncle from an aimless life of violence and crime, and is now doing mostly information gathering for the Korean multinational Hyundai Group.
Exposed to some powerful scenes of nature and natural destruction, he became an environmentalist in his late twenties. Combining his two new interests he has started doing jobs for EarthNOW! as well.
He is happily employed until his employer learns of his environmental interests. They will send him on a dangerous mission across the world where he learns too late that he has betrayed nature and is directly responsible for some environmental disaster. He was supposed to die at the end of the job. He doesn't die — he is physically and emotionally scarred — but he comes back to exact revenge on the corporate giant.
After causing mortal damage to the Korean multinational, he finds out it is only one arm of the ultra-right-wing Black Dragons, a five-hundred-year-old secret society bent on dominating the world, solar system, and beyond.
Ronan's further adventures will be his rise in EarthNOW!, his group's persecution, and his war against the multinationals. He will be betrayed several times by different women until settling down in his late 30s.
Later he will use a submarine as a mobile command center. It will be a lot of fun.
1/24/01 — Started 2:30am, took 15-minute break, 3.25 pages, read, stopped 5am.
Start: CH1 / End: CH1
1/31/2001 — Had a bad flu, and Kai-wen's Mom and sister Eve were here. Not enough time to write.
Start: CH2
2/7/2001 — Bad form. It appears that I am writing once a week. I have finished How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card and The Craft of Writing Science Fiction by Ben Bova. I am also re-reading William Gibson's Neuromancer, The World Treasury of Science Fiction. Next up is Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy. I am also in the middle of lots of other books, but what comes to mind is a couple of books on cryptography, and wealth. I finished The Rich and How They Got That Way.
At work I am working on how to get money into Taldren. Each day I must do 3 things that bring us closer to money.
The reason why I am doing this journal entry in the middle of the manuscript is partly because I want a journal and secondly, Ben Bova suggested that when you are stuck, write anything. So I thought keeping a journal intermixed with a manuscript would be interesting. I will decide later if I need to pull this italicized information out of here and put it in separate notes fields. I also need to accept that this time in front of the computer writing background notes is part of the time spent at the keyboard.
I also should learn to back up my stuff on a zip drive or something. I also need to get off of my ass and get K2 Kanji going. I must set aside a weekend day to address the memory bloat issue and getting the website done.
My friend Nate suggested going Pulp Fiction-style and having multiple characters doing different things around the world that all interact somehow. I was worried about the transition to another character. How do you start that? Do you just straight pick up another character with an abrupt transition? I went and looked it up:
Where are we in the story: We have two open questions. Who is the mainland interest in China and what do they want with Ronan? And two, how is Ronan going to get to Taipei?
The weakness so far in the story is that Ronan is too successful. I would like to draw out the fact that he is now a screwed fugitive, yet must still get his job done in Taipei. Second, I want to make him somewhat naïve — he loves his company and is not yet ready to believe he will be screwed by his company.
We need to show a weakness in Ronan. He needs to be unsure of himself. He needs to make this job work in Taipei no matter what. We need to make him worry about finances, his body, and his relationship. Put those as all background pressures for why he is in Taipei working for Hyundai Special Projects Division.
I think it will be good if the reader knows a little more than Ronan about what disaster he is committing in Taipei. That way the reader will be wanting to scream — no, don't do it — and will be on the edge for a long time wondering if he will do it.
Ooh cool. Starting today I will pay myself $1 a page, minimum $5 a day for writing. This is the money I can use for books, etc.
Taiwan has the death penalty for drug traffickers.
Taiwan has the quaint custom of dialing your fence and then getting admitted to your store.
Get medicine to heal the deep bruises — but more importantly the doc will turn him onto a soothing recipe to control the muscles. In return for the formula, the doc asks a favor...
The medicine man used to work high up in one of the organizations — which one? Maybe Midori Planet. He will mock the Korean corporation. This will be a hint. The reader will wonder if Ronan will change sides.
Aha! The theme is that you always work for someone, unless you work for freedom.
We will have Ronan do a good job for the corporation, then he will go off on his own to the South China Seas with Janine to do something to an oil rig. Then he will be sold out to the mainland group that represents the oil interests and will be freed by Janine and the EarthNOW! group.
Later the EarthNOW! group will have him attack civilians — women and children — and he will have a flashback to the childhood days of the police crashing into his house. Then he will break from the EarthNOW! group (after Janine dies) and get recruited directly to the Green party. A new woman will seduce him and work with him in the Greens — and by now he is fairly powerful. She betrays him in the cause of the Greens after he has a difference of opinion about where to go with the party. He then goes independent.
Tomorrow — what is the ending? When he deals a crippling blow back to Hyundai — then a dark hint, that the Black Dragons actually wanted him to do it?
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Published: February 7, 2001 6:00 PM
Last updated: March 9, 2026 7:07 AM
Post ID: 6677b191-de59-4b0b-95c4-16a9ac515c8c