Inspired by a real-life story that seemed too improbable to be true, The Long Con is a tender, witty, and quietly devastating love story told through letters, longing, and literary references… with a strong side of sarcasm.

When Minjee, a Korean-American adoptee and UCLA college student, signs up for a prison pen pal project, she's not even sure the US Postal Service actually works. But her letter finds James, a Korean man serving time in a federal facility, with a past he doesn't talk about and a mind that's dangerously good at systems.

What begins in skepticism turns into teasing banter, then deepens into something riskier: connection. Confession. Intimacy. Through handwritten letters and carefully measured honesty, two people begin to rewrite the doubts they've carried, the stories they've lived, and the desires they never thought they'd write down in cursive.

Set between Westwood and Lompoc, the US and South Korea, the past and whatever comes next, The Long Con is a slow-burn epistolary romance about intimacy at a distance, identity in tension, and the long, improbable path toward something real.

For fans of slow-burn romance, sharp banter, so much sexual tension, literary Easter eggs, and love stories that last across time, distance, and the American legal system.

"I want it. Bad." - actual quote from a reader waiting for Part Two (now included in this book!)

About the Author

Ji Y. Son is a cognitive scientist and tenured professor at Cal State LA who inexplicably wrote a romance novel. It is, to date, her only work of fiction-self-published, slow-burn, and surprisingly tender given her background in statistics and data science education.She normally writes things like multi-million dollar grant proposals and textbooks on data science, which have many reluctant mandatory readers. Those don't usually make people cry. Well, not because they're emotionally moved.She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sarcastic teens, and a tortoise who will outlive them all. Her favorite social network is LinkedIn. Seriously.

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