by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The first big story I wanted to tell was what happened to me and Annie Shapiro with ROKon Magazine in Seoul. I struggled with telling the literal story a number of different ways but ultimately have settled for drawing upon my experiences at that point in my life as the basis for a six novel project set in the United States.
But it has occured to me that there is a way to tell the story of ROKon Magazine in fictional form. As much as I hate to admit it, the only way I can think of to tell the story would be with a framing device. I say that because I’ve always wanted to tell the story with a straight a-b-c chronology because I lived it and felt I could tell the story without the use of such a device.
And, yet, it has occured to me that if I ever had the means to tell the story here is how I would do it.
I would have a magazine reporter decide to investigate what happened all those years ago. As part of their research, they would track down different people who were involved with the magazine and then you would have extensive flashbacks of what they were doing in 2006-2008 as the magazine’s drama developed.
That way there is some sort of mystery that would keep people reading even though we would go into things knowing that the magazine ultimately failed pretty quickly because of, well, me. Or, at least, fictional me.
Anyway, the older I get, the more I realize I have romanticized what happened with the magazine so much that it’s something of a delusion. A lot of why I continue to think about the experience so much is it’s all kind of fused with my regrets about my dissipated youth.
In the end, I am telling the story of ROKon Magazine, just is a very defused, jumbled up way set in a small town in America over the course of 25 years.
