David Joiner's Blog, page 5

Week 34

What happened to all the weeds I was forced to attack every week? I’m curious what it looks like now with a small vegetable plot planted here.

All my bluster last weekend about revising the first chapter of The Heron Catchers by the end of this week now strikes me as a...

Week 33

Week 33

Over the last week the skies have turned gray with smoke blown here from the California wildfires, and the temperatures having also dropped considerably; but even with this I found it hard to be as productive as I’d been earlier this year. I did get back to my novel The Heron Catchers, at least, and worked on the opening chapter, which was the only part of it that I felt confident making major changes to. A friend who had read it told me that I had made a poor choice st...

Week 32

After teasing temperatures for two days of only 90F (32C), we’ve had highs here of between 111F (44C) and 106F (41C) every day. It’s barely cool enough to take a walk in the evening before the sun sets, but somehow we’ve managed to do this every day. In the middle of next week we’ll drive to Wilcox, which sits at 600m, and pick apples, peaches, and pumpkins in 80F (27C) temperatures.

This week has been another unproductive one in terms of my writing. I suppose this is because I’m just not sure wh...

New Blog Started

For anyone interested, I've started what I hope will be a weekly blog on my author website: http://www.david-joiner.com/blog. All are welcome to read, comment, and otherwise engage with me there!

Week 31

Bougainvillea-shopping to help satisfy our recurring nostalgia for Vietnam…

“Week 31” is a somewhat random marker for the pandemic, I know. It has significance for me, though, because it marks when I first saw the need to stock up on toilet paper. That’s an event that ...

What to do when it's 108°F (42°C) and one's A/C hasn't worked for three days?

There are far worse places to escape to when it’s over 90°F (+32°C) in your A/C-less house.

My answer: Move to a nearby hotel and wait as patiently as possible – for five days – for a new air-conditioner to be installed…

While our hotel is nice, it’s not particularly co...

New Novel to Be Published

Last week, I checked my email and found that Stone Bridge Press (SBP) had offered to publish my second novel, KANAZAWA. Obviously, I was thrilled, as I’ve long been a huge fan of the books SBP has put out – mainly books that deal with Japan. In between the publication of my first novel, LOTUSLAND, and this one, already five years have gone by. During that time, I not only wrote KANAZAWA, but I also revised an older novel set in the Lower Mekong Basin of Cambodia and Vietnam, and wrote another novel that is also set in Japan. I have my work cut out to get the latter two novels published, but with KANAZAWA set to be released probably in 2022, I feel like I’m standing on a solid foundation to keep going. My novel, I hope, is told in the tradition of both the best expatriate fiction and Japanese fiction in translation.

So, what is KANAZAWA about? This is a short summary that I came up with:

In Kanazawa, Japan, Emmitt’s future plans collapse when his wife, Mirai, backs out of negotiations for a house in which they can live independently from her parents and start a family. After quitting an unsatisfying job at a local university, his search for a more meaningful existence steers him to help his mother-in-law translate Kanazawa’s most famous author, Izumi Kyoka, into English. While resisting Mirai’s efforts to move to Tokyo, he becomes drawn into the mysterious death thirty years ago of a mutual friend of his parents-in-law. It is only when he and his father-in-law climb the mountain where the man died that he learns the truth about the relationship the three of them had as sculptor, model, and painter, and finds a way to bring Mirai back into the fold of their dreamed-of life.

Alex Kerr, celebrated Japanologist and award-winning author of Lost Japan, calls excerpts of KANAZAWA that he read “an excellent introduction to Kyoka, my favorite Japanese writer of the 20th century.” Rosemary Ahern, a former publishing executive and editor at Simon Shuster, Penguin, and Other Press, describes KANAZAWA as a novel “as carefully plotted as a poem, of quiet charms and quiet transformations, all of which I find fresh and appealing. You have something special here.”

KANAZAWA is set in the city of Kanazawa where I used to live, with chapters taking place in Kaga Onsen, Shiramine, and on Mt. Haku (also known as Hakusan, Japan’s second-most sacred mountain). When published, it will be the first English-language literary novel set in Kanazawa.

When more information becomes available, I'll post it here!

Lotusland

FYI to any would-be readers out there:

My publisher, Guernica Editions, has agreed to reduce the retail price of Lotusland by 33-40%. As of today it's available on Amazon for $16.97 and on Guernica's website for $15, a big drop from its original $25 retail price. The Kindle price will likely remain unchanged.

https://www.amazon.com/Lotusland-Esse...

https://www.guernicaeditions.com/titl...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

If you happen to read it, please don't forget to rate and review it!

Thanks,
David

A new interview and review of Lotusland

Oi Vietnam, an English-language magazine published in Ho Chi Minh City, recently put out a "Written Word" issue highlighting literature from and about Vietnam. I was fortunate enough to have had my novel Lotusland featured in the issue, and the author of the piece included an interview with me to accompany it. For anyone interested, the interview can be read here:

http://oivietnam.com/2016/07/the-expa...

New book out!

For anyone interested in stories about animals, as well as overseas settings (Vietnam), I've decided to bite the bullet and self-publish a book. The work is titled Stray Cat City and has the following description:

"During an 18-month stay in Vietnam, author David Joiner and his girlfriend are sidetracked by an orphaned kitten suffering from a broken leg and living by a bridge where dog- and cat-thieves roam. After rescuing the kitten and arranging for it to be sheltered, however, they grow increasingly attached to it and take it into their home, only for its real battle for survival to begin. But this isn't the only cat in need of their help. In STRAY CAT CITY Joiner movingly and humorously chronicles their attempts to help various street cats before it's time for them to leave the country."

It's currently available on Amazon in e-book format, and will soon be available in other formats as well. As the author of this book, I appreciate your interest!