Giddens Ko
Ko Ching-teng, also known by his English name Giddens Ko, is a Taiwanese novelist and filmmaker. He has published more than 60 books, many of which have been adapted as films. He writes under the pseudonym of "Nine Knives".
Early life and education
Ko was born on 25 August 1978 in Changhua County, Taiwan. He was the second of three sons to parents who owned a pharmacy.Ko discovered his love of writing when he penned a story as part of his university application. He graduated from National Chiao Tung University with a Bachelor of Science in management science and earned a Master of Social Science from Tunghai University.
Career
Early period: establishing reputation as a novelist
He started writing fiction in 1999, and posted most of his first works on the Internet. Ko struggled through the first five years of his writing career, before branching out into multiple genres, namely horror, science fiction, and romance. He writes 5000 words daily, and at his peak writing pace published one book per month for 14 consecutive months. This set of work helped Ko's popularity rise in Taiwan. Ko has compared himself favorably to Louis Cha, Gu Long, and Ni Kuang.Pen name
"Jiubadao" was originally a song written by Ko as a senior high school student. The song's title stuck as a nickname when a tutor spotted students passing notes signed by Jiubadao and asked who he was. Classmates revealed Jiubadao to be Ko and he used the nickname as a pseudonym after graduating college.Directing films
In 2008, Ko directed the film, along with Vincent Fang, Chen Yi-xian and Mickey Huang. In 2010, Ko directed the film You Are the Apple of My Eye, based on his book . In 2011, Ko adapted his "Killer" series into the film The Killer Who Never Kills. He produced a documentary focusing on Taiwan's animal shelters in 2012, titled Twelve Nights. In 2014, another of Ko's books was adapted into the film Café. Waiting. Love. The film adaptation of another of Ko's books, Kung Fu, was originally set to be released in 2014, but its release date was pushed back to 2015. In September 2015, Ko announced another book–to–film adaption, The Tenants Downstairs, was to be released in 2016.In 2012, Ko notified Apple Inc. that some approved applications on the company's iOS platform were accessing pirated versions of his books. Apple initially refused to pull the apps, as the company was unsure about Ko's publisher having proper authorization to contact them. Ko traveled to Hong Kong to file a complaint in person before the matter was resolved with the removal of the apps. On 9 October 2012, Ko was chosen as one of "Ten Outstanding Young People of Taiwan" by the Junior Chamber International Taiwan.
In 2017, Ko directed the high school horror-comedy film Mon Mon Mon Monsters. Ko originally intended for the film to be a mockumentary shot entirely on iPhone. This idea, however, was eventually disregarded as the project evolved into a more personal work inspired in part by the negative publicity the director was receiving at the time for his affair with Chou.
Ko's film Miss Shampoo, adapted from his 2010 novel Precisely Out of Control, premiered at the 2023 Taipei Film Festival.