Sandstone Press

Profile of Ron McMillan, author of Yin Yang Tattoo, from Korean magazine Groove Korea

Posted by RLD on 13th August 2010

This appreciative review by Adam Walsh appears as a three page spread with colour photographs by Tim Pelling in the current issue of Groove Korea magazine. Visit http://www.seoulstyle.com/groove.php

RON McMILLAN, AUTHOR OF YIN YANG TATTOO

In a Skype interview from his home in Thailand, Ron McMillan’s Scottish brogue sounds an awful lot like how you would imagine “Yin Yang Tattoo’s” main character Alec Brodie sounds. Commenting on his writing process and similarities people point out between the two, McMillan said, “I follow the ‘write what you know’ cliché. I know a hell of a lot about being a photographer in the Far East. I have nothing to do with Alec Brodie whatsoever.”

A statement which sets people straight who are sometimes too intent to delve into trying to piece together and link any kind of autobiographical material they can with the authors of the books they read. With the exception of the geographical and cultural parts of his hard boiled novel, “Yin Yang Tattoo” is complete fiction. Main character included. “I wanted to make a main character who was hard to like,” says McMillan about the hard drinking, women loving Brodie. “I strived to make him three dimensional. I hope I managed.” Manage he did. Alec Brodie is anything but your typical good guy who has been wrongly accused of a crime. In this case the murder of a prostitute.

“Yin Yang Tattoo” is McMillan’s third novel but the first to be published. The other two novels were “part of the writing process,” said McMillan who started writing fiction 15 years ago. He readily points out that the novel is a bookshop rarity being a crime thriller mainly set in present day South Korea. “I started writing this book 10 years ago. There was near interest, then hopes were dashed” but then interest picked up again and the book got published, said McMillan of “Yin Yang Tattoo,” the first in what he plans to be a series.

Though he lived here starting in the early 80s, McMillan hasn’t been back to Korea for over 10 years now. His first experience of Korea was as a part time teacher of English and full time student of Tae Kwon-do in Seoul in the mid-1980s. So, in order to ensure that his book had the most up-to-date information, McMillan relied on some friends who are still here for research and he got his hands on anything and everything having to do with South Korea. It also helped that his wife is Korean. Having lived in Asia for so long, McMillan is pondering where to base most of his next novel out of. He lived in Hong Kong for 10 years and has been to China 49 times. “I know because it’s stamped into one passport.”

McMillan realizes that a whole series set in South Korea could be aiming too much at a niche market but he doesn’t want to say too much because he is still in the planning stages. What he will say though is that the next book will involve unexpected links with North Korean refugees. The link with the North comes from the fact that he’s been to the Hermit Kingdom on five separate occasions. Something that he discusses in detail on his blog: http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/ronmcmillan.

“Each time I arrived as a ‘tourist,’ albeit carrying thousands of pounds’ worth of cameras and over a hundred rolls of professional slide film. I was on assignment for magazines in South Korea, Europe and North America – including TIME, Newsweek and L’Express,” said McMillan.

He calls his trips to the North truly odd and how on one visit he watched “a professional wrestling tournament. Yep, we all went there to watch tattooed steroid abusers from Japan and America pretend to bitch-slap each other.” While on another trip he got within 15 feet of Kim Il-sung on his 80th birthday. The trips made a name for McMillan in the journalism world. One of the few things he actually shares with Alec Brodie.

Also on his list of accomplishments is photographing and writing about the 1988 Seoul Summer Games. When he isn’t writing fiction, McMillan does travel writing. He wrote “Between Weathers – Travels in 21st Century Shetland” that was published in 2008 by Sandstone Press, and nominated for the 2008 Saltire Society Literary Awards.

McMillan says he would love to write a travel book on Korea that intersperses a present-day travel story with history from what he calls “Korea’s most astonishing decade of change”, the 1980s. A decade, much of which, he witnessed of first hand. In the meantime, for part of the year, Ron McMillan can be found in Thailand where he says a vibrant live music scene allows him to indulge his passion for playing blues harmonica rather badly.

Ron McMillan’s Yin Yang Tattoo is a must read that you won’t be able to put down. A hardboiled crime novel about a hard drinking Scott who finds himself in a world of trouble when he returns to his old Seoul stomping grounds for what he thinks is a photo assignment, McMillan’s unapologetic prose sweeps you through an exhilarating ride. The tale begins with the protagonist, Alec Brodie, up to his ears in debt with creditors in his face trying to collect on his many payment promises. Next thing you know, he gets a too-good-to-be-true assignment from the conglomerate K-N in South Korea – where he spent years making a name as a photo journalist. His triumphant return is anything but as he gets involved in fraud, a dead hooker turns up and then Brodie is the one being fingered for her gruesome murder. Add a little police brutality and some great taekwondo exchanges, and you’ve got an amazing action packed murder mystery.

Perhaps the best part of the novel is McMillan’s ability to paint Seoul in such a vivid way that he makes everything tangible. The sights, the smells and the tastes are all laid out for the reader so that they seem completely real. Then add McMillan’s great appreciation for both the good and shadier aspects of Korean culture. The book’s ingredients create a delicious literary dish that is not for those who are overly PC and want a main character that is holier than thou because Brodie is morally flawed. But it’s his flaws which make him real and more human.