What books should we publish next?

November 13, 2024 – Posted in: Uncategorized

Now that we’ve finished our two-year Last King of Shang project, we’re taking a short break for the holidays. But I’m thinking about what we should do next. Right now we are not looking to take on another huge project (sorry, no Romance of the Three Kingdoms!). But I am interested in publishing a series of short graded readers geared towards the lower end of reading ability, say around 500 to 800 word vocabulary. Ideally…

2 new coffee-table books: The Journey to the West and The Last King of Shang

November 9, 2024 – Posted in: Investiture of the Gods, Journey to the West, Last King of Shang

We’ve just released two oversized hardcover books that will make perfect gifts. They are the complete versions of our two best-selling Chinese novels, “Journey to the West” and “The Last King of Shang” (based on Investiture of the Gods). For both novels, we’ve converted the entire story – in Simplified Chinese, pinyin and English – into a single very large book. Each book is 8.5″ wide, 11″ high, and weighs over 5 pounds. Because the…

Audiobook for “Last King of Shang” now on Audible.com

– Posted in: Audiobooks, Investiture of the Gods, Last King of Shang

I’m delighted to announce that the complete audiobook of The Last King of Shang is now available on Audible.com. This is a high-quality recording, almost 22 hours long, with my introduction in English read by Geraldo Cortes, and all 100 chapters read in Chinese by our terrific audio artist Junyou Chen. If you’re an Audible.com member, you can get this for 1 credit. If you’re not, you can still buy it for $20.96. Check it…

Lots of “Last King of Shang” books now available

October 20, 2024 – Posted in: Investiture of the Gods

So, you’ve been wanting to read our epic Last King of Shang series (based on the Chinese classic Investiture of the Gods), but you’ve been frightened away by the prospect of having to buy and read all six books in the series? We’ve heard you! Now that the series is completed, our final task has been to create a set of comprehensive, single-volume books that cover the entire series, all 100 chapters. Here they are.…

Re-issue of the complete Journey to the West in English

September 16, 2024 – Posted in: Journey to the West

There’s been a lot of buzz about the new video game Wukong: Black Myth. Released in August 2024, it is one of the fastest selling video games of all time, with 18 million units sold in the first two weeks. It’s also an incredibly beautiful game, with computer graphics that appear completely lifelike. Check out the 5-minute trailer on YouTube here. So we thought it would be fun to re-issue our English language version of…

What We’re Working On

September 7, 2024 – Posted in: Journey to the West

In the last couple of months we’ve taken on three brand new book projects. They’re in various stages of development, but I want to share some general info on what’s coming. First on the list is Chinese Myths and Legends, an easy-to-read collection of nine short stories. These stories will be familiar to every Chinese person, as well as anyone else learning the language. They are Pangu Opens Heaven and Earth, Nüwa Creates Mankind, Nüwa…

English version of Investiture of the Gods finished!

August 24, 2024 – Posted in: Investiture of the Gods

We’ve been hard at work finishing up the final book in the Last King of Shang series. This, in case you haven’t been keeping track, is our retelling of the classic Chinese novel Investiture of the Gods, using simpler language to make it more accessible to modern readers. It’s a long, long book, which we’ve split into 6 volumes. Five of the volumes are already published. We’ve finished the sixth and final one, in English,…

5th book in Last King of Shang published!

June 20, 2024 – Posted in: Investiture of the Gods, Last King of Shang

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, apologies to those who read this 🙂 Last week we published the fifth book in the Last King of Shang series, covering chapters 68 through 84 of the original 100-chapter epic shenmo novel Investiture of the Gods. Here’s the back cover blurb: Jiang Ziya unites the Zhou rebels and leads them in a series of epic battles as they struggle to overthrow the corrupt Shang dynasty.…

Audiobook for Last King of Shang, Book 3

December 30, 2023 – Posted in: Audiobooks, Last King of Shang

It’s done, all 4 hours of it, and uploaded to YouTube! Link is https://youtu.be/Ni3OCLmRHBE. Thanks to Junyou Chen for his terrific audio recording, as always.

Poems added to Last King of Shang, Book 1

December 16, 2023 – Posted in: Last King of Shang

If you’re reading our Last King of Shang series, you’ve probably noticed that Book 1 does not have poems at the beginning of each chapter, but Books 2 and 3 do. That’s our fault. When we wrote the first book, we just focused on retelling the story. But as we got deeper into the project, we decided that the poems were an important part of the story, so we included them in Books 2 and…