Cheon Seon-ran's vampire novel ‘The Midnight Shift' set for UK release by Bloomsbury
The English edition is being published by Bloomsbury, the British house best known for the Harry Potter series.
Originally published in Korea in 2021 under the title "The Savior Who Comes at Night," the novel follows Su-yeon, a detective numbed by loneliness, as she investigates a string of mysterious deaths at a hospital. At one crime scene, she runs into a mysterious woman, who claims to be a vampire hunter searching for her ex-lover and who is insistent that a vampire is behind the mysterious deaths.
Translation rights to the book have been sold to Italy, Brazil and several other countries.
Cheon is one of Korea's most popular science fiction and fantasy writers. Her breakout novel "A Thousand Blues" won the Grand Prize at the Korea Science Fiction Awards in 2020 and is headed for the big screen in the US, adapted for film by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Korea Herald
2 hours ago
- Korea Herald
S. Korea to distribute 2.1M cultural discount vouchers
South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is distributing 2.1 million discount vouchers for performances and exhibitions starting Friday, to boost cultural spending and support the local arts sector. The initiative, funded by a 10 billion won ($7.3 million) supplementary budget, includes 500,000 vouchers for performances and 1.6 million for exhibitions. Applications will be accepted online through five ticketing platforms — Nol Interpark, Melon Ticket, Time Ticket, TicketLink and Yes24 — beginning at 10 a.m. Friday. Each user may claim up to two vouchers per platform on a first-come, first-served basis. Performance vouchers offer a 10,000 won discount per ticket, while exhibition vouchers provide 3,000 won off. To prevent no-shows, a minimum purchase amount applies: 15,000 won for performances and 5,000 won for exhibitions. Vouchers can be used until Sep. 19 for events scheduled through Nov. 30. Eligible performances include theater, musicals, classical music, Korean traditional music and dance. Pop concerts and commercial dance events are excluded. Exhibition discounts apply to visual arts events held at public and private art museums, art fairs and biennales, excluding industrial expos. An additional two vouchers will be available via Time Ticket for performances and exhibitions held outside the Seoul metropolitan area to encourage regional participation.
Korea Herald
4 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Smilegate to publish new sci-fi game from ‘GTA' creator Dan Houser
Korean gaming giant Smilegate said Thursday it had signed a global publishing agreement with Absurd Ventures, the entertainment company founded by Dan Houser, the former creative director and lead writer of the "Grand Theft Auto" series. Under the deal, Smilegate will publish Absurd Ventures' upcoming AAA open-world sci-fi game, set in the studio's original 'A Better Paradise' universe. The action-adventure game is currently in early development and led by Houser alongside longtime collaborators Lazlow and Michael Unsworth. Greg Borrud, a veteran director with past experience at Niantic and Pandemic Studios, will oversee development. The "A Better Paradise" universe, known for its rich narrative and ambitious storytelling, already includes the audio fiction series 'A Better Paradise Volume One: An Aftermath,' which topped Apple's fiction charts and won a 2024 Signal Award. A novel based on the series is set to be released in October. The development team includes talent from Bungie, Treyarch, Respawn, Insomniac and Riot — veterans behind titles such as Call of Duty, Destiny 2, Spider-Man 2 and Valorant. In addition to publishing, Smilegate said it plans a full-scale investment in the game, including development funding, following its equity investment in Absurd Ventures last year. 'We're excited to support Absurd's ambitious vision and bring this new IP to global players,' said Smilegate CEO Sung Joon-ho. 'This partnership represents a major step in Smilegate's evolution as a global game publisher.' Houser added, 'We're thrilled to be working with Smilegate, who truly understand our vision for storytelling and player experience.' Smilegate aims to leverage the partnership to expand beyond Asia and establish itself as a major player in the global market for AAA games, a term for polished, high-budget titles put out by major publishing houses.
Korea Herald
4 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Yoona becomes the devil she fakes
K-pop icon trades pristine image for cartoonish evil in upcoming rom-com "I think I have both sides in me — that's why I was drawn to these characters," Lim Yoona says at a Samcheong-dong cafe on Thursday. She's talking about her dual role in "Pretty Crazy," where she plays a picture-perfect bakery owner who transforms into a demon every night with no memory of it come morning. For nearly two decades, Yoona has been Korea's sweetheart. She's been the face of dozens of brands and the star of TV dramas everyone's mother watches, all while perpetually glowing with a celebrity aura. This time around, she's trading that impeccable image for something wildly off-brand: a girl whose nocturnal possession turns her into a maniac in frizzy hair and clashing patterns, wreaking havoc until dawn. "Pretty Crazy" reunites Yoona with director Lee Sang-geun, who gave her a career-defining lead in 2019's disaster comedy "Exit." Now this one's an exercise in pure comic-book silliness, where an unemployed man (Ahn Bo-hyun) takes a part-time job watching his demon-possessed neighbor through her nightly episodes. Other than being largely forgettable, the breathtakingly mediocre film has one undeniable virtue of giving viewers a front-row seat to Yoona torching her image with gleeful abandon. Her daytime Seon-ji is predictable — sweet, elegant, the girl you'd bring home to mom. After dark, she becomes something like Jim Carrey on a bender with her voice rocketing between growls and squeaks, and her body contorting through scenes where she's scarfing down grass, sprinting through streets like a feral cat and, best of all, taking a cannonball dive into the Han River. "I thought at first it might be embarrassing on set with all the staff watching," she admits. "But once we started rolling, I just fell into it completely. Sometimes I wondered — isn't this too much? But the exaggeration was the whole point." The character is much more than a woman possessed, she explains. She's someone young and desperately insecure, trying to act scary, overcompensating with big gestures and wild expressions. "The demon has to seem like she's faking it, because she is." Even finding the right laugh took weeks. She and director Lee tested different tones, volumes and rhythms until they landed on something appropriately unhinged. "That laugh became the baseline for everything else. Once I had that, I knew exactly how big to go with everything." "Not that I laugh like that in real life," she adds quickly. At 35, Yoona still occupies that rarefied air in Korean entertainment. She centered Girls' Generation through their 18-year reign as Asia's biggest girl group. Her acting success came immediately when her 2008 drama "You Are My Destiny" hit 41.5 percent viewership ratings, numbers that aren't seen anymore. Her stature has only grown over the past decade: "Exit" became 2019's surprise box office smash and "King the Land" dominated Netflix globally in 2023. Her career has been one long victory lap in an industry where most flame out within years. "People see this smooth trajectory, but I'm constantly questioning myself," she says. "Every project starts as a question mark. Can I do this? How should I approach it? I overthink everything, then work until that question becomes an exclamation point." The self-doubt seems at odds with someone who's been winning since seventeen, but even superstars like Yoona can't escape doubts about what comes next. She debuted at 17 as the fresh-faced center of a girl group. Eighteen years later, she's a seasoned veteran figuring out which challenges she still wants to take on. "In my 20s, I thought I could solve everything through experience. Now I realize real choices require knowing yourself. What does Lim Yoon-ah actually like, separate from Yoona of Girls' Generation or Yoona the actress?" She pauses, as if to consider the weight of that question. "Maybe that's what maturing means? Finally asking those questions?"
