Rebecca Copeland's Blog, page 12

The Pond

October 11, 2012, Thursday

As my writer retreat wears on, I’ve developed a routine. I rise early and take a quick walk around the mountain ridge with my dog Wilson. And then return to the cabin to let the morning mists dissipate. (In the mists, all stumps look like bears, and I am nervous. Even Wilson is hard of seeing and makes similar mistakes, I think. He sticks close to my side.)

Back in the cabin, I have coffee and toast, read some of Tapply, The Elements of Mystery Fiction and then set to work.

William G. Tapply, The Elements of Mystery Fiction, 1995

For today’s lesson, Tapply tells me:

“Write a narrative sketch of this straightforward tale. Tell it chronologically. Populate it with husbands and wives, lovers and ex-spouses, business acquaintances and estranged friends. Compose the life story of your victim. Be sure he has plenty of potential enemies. Then do the same for your murderer.”

I haven’t met the murderer yet. I’m not even sure who the first victim is. There’s a woman lying alongside a cold, rushing river. She is naked and covered in tattoos. We are led to believe that she’s Satoko Tani, the older sister of the long-forgotten writer whose novel Ruth, our main character, is now translating. But who would want to kill her? Her husband? I imagine she has fought him over his poor management of the family kimono business. What about Tani, the author himself, would he kill his own sister? What on earth for? Their inheritance?

When I hit a snag, I take a walk.

At the northern point of the property the path dips down and turns westward toward the pond. I follow the curve, feeling my calf muscles tighten with the decline. I want to run. But, I’m still scared of the bear. Wouldn’t my running put me deeper in his territory? Maybe next week. Step by step I will outpace this bear. I will run the perimeter of the land. It will be a good workout. Next week.

“The pond” was a failure.

My father had the land surveyed before he bought the property and discovered a spring under the ridge. He hired a man with a bulldozer who came in and dug out a round bowl just above the spring. My father added drainpipes and waited. The pond began to fill. He planned to stock it with fish.

The water rose to a fourth of the bowl. And then it stopped filling. “The pond” was little more than a puddle. Apparently, the water was running out the other side of the ridge through some kind of underground network of caverns. No fish for this water hole.

I have a photograph of Dennis, my first husband, in his swim trunks (well, running shorts) standing in “the pond.” He had offered to wade through the murky water to check the drain pipe or pump or something. I’m not exactly sure what he was doing or supposed to do. But he was demonstrating great gumption and courage to have volunteered his services.

More gumption than I have, only allowing myself to walk during the brightest point of the day, afraid of invisible bears, as I try to imagine a story of murder and an-as-of-yet unnamed killer.

A pond that does not fill. Shouldn’t that be a metaphor for something? Perhaps for a writer whose pages fill only with random notes, musings, and quotations from best-selling experts?

I creep closer to the pond, surprised to see it is higher than I remembered. Perhaps it is still filling? Perhaps there are fish there now. I peer over the brambles that line the edge, but the water is murky and thick with leaves. I stare at the tangled bank and imagine finding a body there. Would it, too, be covered with tattoos? Would it be Earl, my neighbor and tormentor? Perhaps felled by his own bear!

Featured photo is “The Pond” from October 2012

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The Magic of Twilight, the Suspense of Dawn

Mid-morning.

I’ve been in my writing retreat now for a week, plotting my novel, dreaming my characters, imagining murders and mystery. Unexpectedly, I’ve become embroiled in a mystery of my own, terrified of the bear sightings my neighbor Earl has recounted to me. I know he is only trying to frighten me. I’ve tried to ignore him.

But I can’t. I’m afraid.

When I awoke this morning I could feel the chill air through the closed window by my head. It was foggy outside, mystical.

I wanted to walk out in the morning grey but my bear-fear stood before me. Do bears roam at dawn? Perhaps also at twilight? Isn’t that when deer stir as well and take to watering holes and marshlands for refreshment? I’ve decided to stay put during those transitional moments in the day.

A pity.

I like the magic of twilight, the suspense of dawn. It’s hard to see, to be certain of what is seen. Everything is suspended and secret. But those moments also allow my mind to spin out of control, to invent dangers.

Old logging road

I see bears wherever I go. Isn’t that one over there by the rhododendrons? No, it’s only a stump. Mid-morning, however, with the sun bright and climbing, there are no secrets. No shadows. No maybes. Everything is clear and certain.

And so I set out with Wilson to the northern point of the property. The land is circled by old timber roads.

The trucks and equipment crawled up one side of the mountain, passed along the upper ridge, and dropped down the other side. Here and there the roads jut onto landings where sawmills were set. When my father bought the land, those sawmill sites were thick with sawdust and piles of slag. They are gone now. Reclaimed by the creep of the forest. The roads, too, have narrowed as new growth press along the edges and promise to cover the roads eventually. Now the roads are more like grassy paths. Here and there they are blocked by fallen trees or crossed by networks of branches and vines. But for the most part, they allow comfortable passage for woman and dog.

I kick at the fallen leaves as I walk, eager to make a racket, to let the bear know I am coming. I feel a slight trepidation watching Wilson race ahead of me. But I am happy to see him happy. He has seemed depressed of late. I think he misses his house in St. Louis and its safe comfort. But he shows no signs of languor on our walk today. He sniffs and prances and when he pulls too far ahead he stops and waits for me to catch up.

Wilson in the Woods

Despite my racket, the mountainside is quiet. When I stop along the path, I can hear the leaves falling, crashing crisply through the higher branches to settle softly on the ground below—still damp with morning dew. The birds are particularly festive this morning—calling to one another and flitting from limb to limb. I see a pair of geese cross overhead, so close I can make out their feet tucked neatly under their bellies.

Winter is not far behind.

Featured Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

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The Secret of Fire Lighting

October 9, 2012, Tuesday

The ninth day of my writer’s retreat.

The cabin is growing more comfortable. I am almost used to the noises that the woods make.  Each leaf that falls creates a sound—some louder than others. As I type this I hear a strange, irregular drumming on a tree, unlike that of the woodpecker I heard last week. I can’t imagine what it is. My dog, Wilson, has not jumped, and he is very jumpy. If not a bird, perhaps a deer? Maybe a buck banging his antlers? Ah, now Wilson hears it. He pricks his ears up and looks lazily around. Whew, nothing to worry about. Wilson is my fear barometer. If his hackles go up, I need to be ready for trouble. I step out onto the deck to enjoy the late afternoon sun—a treat after two grey days.

Yesterday was particularly cold and lightly raining. Once awake I stumbled out into the mists to allow Wilson to take a pee. He won’t go outside without me. It’s rather creepy to be out in the shadowy morning mists with a dog that won’t leave your side. After all, there’s that bear Earl keeps telling me about.

Back in the cabin I tried to light a fire. I found old newspapers stacked beside the box of kindling. I layered the paper in the belly of the cast-iron stove and then shoved kindling and logs on top of the paper, thinking this was the way my father had done things. I struck a match and held it to the edge of one of the sheets of old yellowing newspapers, watching the blue flame curl into a black fist. Once the edge of the paper burnt, the flame died out. I struck another match and another. It was getting colder. Discouraged, I turned on the small electric space heater I brought with me from St. Louis and tried not to think about the cold. The heater warmed a few of my toes. I read and wrote a little. I texted my brother. Eventually Luke called back with the secret of fire lighting.

Ball up newspapers. Don’t leave them flat, they won’t burn.

Make a layer of balled up newspapers about six inches deep and the width and length of the stove.

Place small pieces of kindling on top.

Light.

When the small kindling catches, add larger kindling and let that catch.

Now you’re ready for a log—small at first, then larger.

I tried Luke’s method and got a nice blaze going.

Wood-burning stove

Later that afternoon Luke texted to remind me to adjust the damper, otherwise, the wood would burn too fast. I’m glad he told me. I had no idea I was supposed to do that, and the logs were just, well, going up in flames. Once I adjusted the damper, the flames settled down turning the logs into glowing embers. The cabin was so cozy I was able to take off one layer of fleece and then another.

Outside it was still grey and gloomy, and I was not inclined to take the usual walk with Wilson. Instead, we paraded back and forth in front of the cabin until he did his important deed. By then it was time for dinner.

Photo by Marc Renken on Unsplash

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Running into Plot

On social media some writers set store by whether someone is a “plotter” or a “pantser.” Do you try to outline your story first, charting the direction of the plot and planning the different characters? Or, do you just “fly by the seat of your pants,” letting the story develop as you write?

When I first began writing The Kimono Tattoo, I tried to be a plotter. I bought two books that I thought would help: William G Tapply’s The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunnit and Jake Adelstein, Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan. Tapply’s book helped me appreciate some of the steps needed to write a mystery, such as finding the setting and selecting a voice. Adelstein opened my eyes to aspect of Japan I had very little contact with: crime.

Books for plotting

I spent the first few days of my writer’s retreat reading these works, underlining passages, and trying out ideas. Tapply notes that “an idea is not a plot; and a plot isn’t a story. An idea is a spark that ignites the individual creative imagination” (11). I had an idea. 

An American translator in Japan would uncover a crime in the process of her translation.

That was it. That was the idea. And now where do I go!

As I described in an earlier post, I started to work on the characters’ backstories. Before long these characters stopped being fiction, and started following me around. I remember shortly after I’d arrived at the cabin I took a quick trip to Raleigh to visit my mother in her assisted living home. I excitedly told her about my story, my plans, my ideas. “Wait,” she interrupted me, “are these real people?” I realized I had been talking about them almost as if they were.

Living alone there in the mountains, the characters became my only companions—well, in addition to my dog, Wilson (and the phantom black bear Earl had scared me with!). In the mornings I would take Wilson on a walk. And in the evenings I would run. Ruth and the other characters in the novel often tagged along.

I think a lot of writers find inspiration as they run. Murakami Haruki has written a book about it, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Joyce Carol Oates is a running writer and so is Malcolm Gladwell.

Sara Paretsky’s fictional detective, V.I. Warshawski is a runner. And we all know about Forrest Gump.

Running and writing are inseparable for me. That’s where I find the next step in the story, that’s where I overhear my characters converse. But only when I run alone. When I run with friends, we talk and my mind does not have time to wander. When I run alone, I enter a zone where I stop thinking. Before I know it, a scene flashes across the empty screen of my mind. Characters enter. They talk. They carry me in new directions.

As soon as I get back from my run I rush to find a pen or pencil or open my laptop so I can jot down what I’ve just seen.

I’ve tried to be a plotter, but my plot ideas get away from me when I run. I’m not exactly a pantser, but I do enjoy the inspiration that comes “on the fly” as I lope slowly over mountain paths.

Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash

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Backing into a Story—an Encounter with “The Bleaks”

Never having written a mystery novel, or any novel, I didn’t know where to start. A man I had been dating—an architect and not a writer—told me to write the backstories to my characters. It was great advice! And so I spent the early days of my writer’s retreat creating my protagonist and trying to settle on a name for her. Ruth. Eventually, I decided on Ruth. A good, Biblical name, as would befit the daughter of missionaries. (As described in an earlier post, Ruth’s parents were likely missionaries. By now I had determined that they definitely were!)

I created Ruth’s childhood and the tragic disappearance of her little brother. Since she has a PhD in literature, I even crafted a description of her dissertation. This is from my notes:

She wrote her dissertation on an obscure group of 1960s poets. Not as famous as the Arechi or “Wasteland” poets who emerged in the aftermath of WWII, these 60s poets, known as the “Bleaks” [fictitious group as far as I know!] were similar to the American “Beats.” They despised the idea of “Japanese tradition,” or at least the way it was fetishized. They were suspicious of the postwar progress that was being touted by all and sundry—the progress that saw the rise of the automotive industry and that brought the Olympics to Japan for the first time in 1964. They wrote angry, ugly verses and often set their works in a dystopian future of bleak ferro-concrete landscapes.

The Bleaks also despised Western arts. They looked askance at other Japanese who hobnobbed with Westerners. Most Westerners at the time had little respect for Japan—a nation of losers—and so anyone who mingled with Westerners appeared to the Bleaks as sycophants. The Bleaks were interested in a middle ground, or a new path. They wanted to create a mode of expression that was unique, original to Japan’s defeated state. Not a defeated expression or an expression of defeat; but a poetic vision that rose phoenix-like from the flames of destruction and soared to a new, untouched region of reality. Theirs was an impossible dream. And in its impossibility they found only despair. Their poetry was failed, discordant, and full of anguish.

In truth, the group depressed Ruth. She barely managed to complete her dissertation. And once she finished, she really didn’t want to return to the “Bleaks.” She had begun translating the novel Kimono Killer by popular woman writer Daté Yuriko, and she found that translation appealed to her.

I even wrote one of the Bleak poems that Ruth translated:

Char- red black the night and the cries from the white carcass like cut glass in your Cutlass  pork cutlets like she bled

And that was one of their more sensible of the poems!

Writing Ruth’s backstory became so entertaining, I almost lost sight of my story!

Top photo by Holly Mandarich on Unsplash

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Equalizing Fear

Friday, October 5, 2012

The fifth day of my writer’s retreat.

 I’ve cleaned the cabin thoroughly now, disposing of the mice nests, the ruined clothes, my father’s hats, and my mother’s toiletries. I need to take one more run to the recycling center to get rid of the last remaining bags of trash.

The recycling center is six miles away. The drive there is beautiful, especially at midmorning with sunlight streaming golden over the barns and houses.  Yesterday when I made the trip I thrilled as my car raced up and over the hillocks and around the curves.  With each bend in the road a new vista stretched before me.  Beautiful green pastures rimmed by hardwood trees now in brilliant array.  This is why I came.  This is why I am here.  This is where I want to be forever.  I’ve got to get past this bear fear.  I can’t let the bear ruin my joy.  Low hanging clouds covered the mountaintops but the leaves below sparkled red and gold and purple.  I don’t think I’d seen the trees so resplendent.  In the past when I visited the cabin it was either too early or too late.  It’s now just right.

When I reach my car at the bottom of the mountain, a bag of garbage in each hand, I discover that I’m blocked in by a pickup truck with dual rear wheels.  I stash the bags in my car and honk lightly at first and then louder until Earl comes out of his house with another man trailing behind him.

“Am I in your way?” the other man shouts?

He seems affable.

Earl starts in immediately with his bear sightings and the man joins in.

“That’s right, I saw some bear scat up there on the ridge, right there by your cabin.”

“That must have been a while ago,” I offer. “There’s nothing there now.”

What I’m really wondering is, what were you doing up on the ridge by my cabin?  Apparently lots of people use this property to hunt and walk.  The walking is okay, but the hunting scares me.  

And I don’t like people walking around while I think I’m living in seclusion.  There are no curtains in the cabin. There aren’t even locks on the inside of the doors. The only locks are on the outside.  I guess Daddy always thought he was safe when he was here.  That must be some kind of mountain code.  You don’t mess with a house when the owner is there.  I guess the assumption is that the owner will have a gun.  But this owner doesn’t. One of the first trips I made, after I settled into the cabin, was to the hardware store in town.  I bought a lock for the inside. 

A lock for the inside.

Earl’s friend is smiling, but he’s serious.  He’d loan me a gun.

I thanked him but offered that I’d probably just “equalize” my foot right off.  That produced a hearty guffaw.  

He seems like a nice man.  He told me he’d been to St. Louis and had gone up in the Arch. He also visited Branson, which he thought was wonderful.  And then he said he stopped at “the library” too.  

“Truman?” I asked.  

“No, Clinton.”   

He liked the Clinton library?  That had to be a good sign.  But not one to trust.  I don’t much trust people here.  Not that I’m afraid of them. I just don’t want to risk saying anything that might be controversial.  I don’t want to talk about the election or the fact that I listened to the October 3 Presidential debate on my transistor radio in the cabin, whooping every time I thought Obama scored a hit. 

Wilson on guard duty

I really don’t trust Earl!  I don’t like the way he looks at me.  

“You alone up there?”  he asked when I first arrived.  

“I’ve got my dog.”  

I don’t think I sounded defensive.  And in truth, Wilson isn’t much of a defense!  I just don’t want people to know my business.  I should have told Earl’s friend I have my own “equalizer” up at the cabin, thank you very much!

I’m trying to develop my mystery novel, but it’s hard to write or to think about anything scary.  I’m scared.  All this talk about bears has me looking over my shoulder and glancing up each time a twig snaps!  A twig!  That’s just stupid.  Twigs snap all the time in the woods here.  And the tin roof pings and pongs as it heats in the sun, and again as it cools down at night.  A five-hundred-pound bear, or the one-ton creature Earl tries to threaten me with, would do more than snap twigs!

Photo by Maria Lysenko on Unsplash

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On Collecting Kimono

Earlier this summer John Moore, a member of the Communications Office at Washington University, interviewed me about The Kimono Tattoo. The editor wanted a photograph of me with “my kimono collection.” I recognize that I have A LOT of kimonos, but I had never thought of what I have as a “collection.” Each kimono was purchased or acquired almost unintentionally. Over the years, I have accumulated quite a number. How many? I’m not even sure.

I remember my first kimono, the one my mother bought for me in 1976, when I was twenty. I remember the first one I bought for myself in 2004. It was a beautiful purple tsumugi silk with a slight sheen and a very subtle stripe. I paired it with a black silk obi and thought it looked very Taisho chic, like a kimono my early idol Uno Chiyo might have worn. Tsumugi thread is spun from the silk floss gleaned from irregular or ill-formed cocoons or else from collected broken threads that are wound together, sometimes with the spit of the weaver. The tsumugi cloth features nubs and occasional bumps as a result. The purple tsumugi kimono I bought was beautiful, the fabric was crisp and I was told it would soften with use. I liked the crispness because it never looked wrinkled.

Tsumugi and Rickshaw, 2005

I was excited to wear my purple tsumugi kimono to my Nihon buyō dance class, anticipating my sensei would be impressed by my careful selection. She did compliment me, but then she explained that a tsumugi kimono would never be appropriate on the dance stage. I thought perhaps this was because the fabric was too stiff. Sensei explained that regardless of how expensive the kimono might be (and some tsumugi are quite expensive because they are so labor intensive to produce), they are always “informal.” The lack of formality comes from the fact that the threads are collected from “junk” cocoons, and the slubs in the fabric provide a pattern, even when the kimono is a solid color. “A tsumugi kimono is categorized as a komon (small pattern) kimono and can never be worn on stage.”

Although I had not intended to wear the kimono in a dance recital, I was strangely disappointed to know that it was “informal.”

That just meant, however, that I would have to buy more kimonos. And so I did. I bought a beautiful silk iromuji (or solid color) kimono (secondhand, of course) and several obi to pair with it, depending on occasion. The iromuji was a light gold color and could be formal or informal, depending on the obi. I also bought a lovely light green hōmongi—the most formal kimono that I own. It has a pattern along the hem and over one shoulder. A hōmongi translates as “visiting kimono” and it is appropriate for tea ceremonies, weddings, omiai meetings (for marriage prospects, and more. At various flea markets and antique fairs I picked up a number black-crested or ‘kuro-tomesode kimono. These have patterns at the hem but are solid black across the shoulder and sleeves, marked only by a white, circular family crest. Since they are old, they are a little small for me. Women in the past were much shorter than they are today, and the older the kimono, the more likely it will be short. The one I especially like has a cascade of dancing fans at the hem.

Once my Japanese friends learned that I like kimonos, they began to give me some that had been in their family. These kimonos are very precious to me. They have traveled across the ocean and reside in a special paulownia-wood chest, carefully folded and frequently admired. My favorite is the kimono Uno Chiyo’s secretary, Fujie Atsuko-san gave me after I paid a visit to Uno Sensei’s apartment wearing a lavender summer kimono.

Like all garments, kimonos retain memories. They tell stories.

Here are some stories that accompany The Kimono Tattoo.

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Finding the Mountain Witch

Last week saw the release of Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch, which I coedited with Linda C. Ehrlich..

This unique collection, published by Stone Bridge Press, has received stunning acclaim from scholars and artists alike.  For example, Kristen J. Sollée, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists, states: “this collection is as enchanting and compelling as the yamamba herself.”  And Zack Davisson, whose book Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan also considers cool and creepy characters in Japanese culture, notes Yamamba “bursts with life, being that rare balance of both a scholarly and poetic celebration of Japan’s woman of the woods.”

So, how did Linda and I come up with the idea for this volume? I wrote about the process in my earlier post, but here, I TALK about it.  And who doesn’t like talking about those things that interest them most?

This book talk, held on April 19, 2021, was organized by Dr. Laura Miller, the Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Anthropology and sponsored by UMSL Global (of the University of Missouri, St. Louis). Because the talk took the form of an interview, I was joined by my graduate student, Katie Stephens, who asked me some tough but thoughtful questions.

Take a listen!

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash Used by permission.

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Kismet, Witchy Women, and Feminist Friendships

BOOK RELEASE

I catch sight of her sometimes, the yamamba or mountain witch.  Now and then I’ll find her staring back at me from the corner of the mirror or racing ahead of me on the darkened street. She’s fearless and almost always laughing.  Not that big bellied “ha-ha” kind of laugh but the kind that winks from the corner of her eyes.  She was the one who instigated this book.  She has that kind of power.

Books don’t write themselves, of course. But sometimes they emerge so organically that it is almost as if they do. Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch was partly kismet and largely the happy confluence of friendships, feminist networks, and a little yamamba magic. 

After all, we’re all witches at heart.  More or less.  

It’s impossible to pinpoint a particular starting point.  For every beginning I select there is its beginning.  But, I have to start somewhere.  So, I will start in Laura Miller’s art studio. [Readers may remember meeting Laura through her guest post.]

Laura’s my friend from way back. We live in St. Louis and both work on Japan—she from an anthropological angle and me from a literary one.  Our friendship led to my first work on the Mountain Witch, a creative essay for Bad Girls of Japan, a book Laura co-edited with Jan Bardsley (another guest blogger).  How easily the yamamba fired my imagination.

Laura is also an accomplished artist.  She enjoys working on “shrine boxes,” her version of retablo.  Over the years on dreary winter afternoons, exhausted by grading papers and squeezing our brains for just one more academic article, we gather in her art studio to design shrine boxes.  Laura has an amazing collection of art supplies that she generously lets me use.

One afternoon I had finished the box I had planned to create—one celebrating my sister, Beth, and her poetry.  We still had time to spare and Laura suggested I make another box.

“But I haven’t prepared for one,” I hesitated. “I don’t know what to make.”

For the previous boxes I had imagined them in advance of my visit to her studio and had brought with me the trinkets and objects I planned to use.  For Beth’s box I had scoured eBay and purchased a miniature sewing machine and tea set and had gathered up a string of pearls and old family photographs. Now that I had used those, I had nothing left.

“It doesn’t matter,” Laura replied. “Use your imagination.  Here, I have all this!”

Pulling open a drawer brimming with bobbles and buttons, she rummaged through the colorful assortment, showing me the seemingly endless store of possibilities.  I saw another drawer packed with scraps of paper—pages from photo calendars, old postcards, wrapping papers.

A picture of a misty mountain caught my eye.  I spread it out on the table.

Yamamba.

The image of a yamamba rushing along the ridgeline bloomed in my heart.

In no time at all I was piecing scraps together, fashioning a kimono, cutting out a Hannya mask. Before I knew it, the box was done.  

What is it they say about the yamamba in the Noh play? She lightens the woodcutter’s load and speeds on the work of the weaver?

I took a photo of the box and posted in on my Facebook page.

Within hours, Linda Ehrlich, another Japan scholar and a friend on my page, commented.

“Send me a good quality image, and I’ll include your artwork in my chapbook.”

Linda was preparing to publish a poem on the yamamba, complete with artistic line drawings by a friend of hers.  I tried to get a decent photograph of the box, but my skills were not up to the task.

Yamamba box

That’s when I suggested we aim for a more ambitious project.  A book.

I am fascinated by the way the yamamba found her way into the imaginations of so many artists, whether in Japan or elsewhere.  Just as Linda was polishing her poem, Japanese dancer Yokoshi Yasuko was choreographing a yamamba-inspired piece with American sound artist Gelsey Bell in a residency at the University of Michigan.  

That Yamamba sure gets around. 

Linda and I joined forces.  Linda invited others she knew to contribute to the anthology we envisioned, and so did I.  Laura Miller was willing to design a shrine box, now featured in the anthology with an accompanying essay. In the end we have nine chapters engaging the yamamba’s hold on our poetry, dance, fiction, and art.  Stone Bridge Press agreed to sign us.  And so, here we are.  Kismet, friendship, and yamamba magic.

Released today!

See Yamamba on Amazon!

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Next Stop, Japan Station

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Tony Vega about The Kimono Tattoo.  Tony runs the podcast JapanKyo, which features news clips from Japanese media in addition to stories about Japan.  Tony hopes his podcast will provide a trusted conduit of information on Japan for those who want to learn more but do not have access to Japanese news sources.

Tony asked really interesting questions that made me think about the way I crafted The Kimono Tattoo.  Writing the novel took such a long time (I started in 2012), that it’s easy to lose sight of early inspirations and motivations.  

Tony also asked me about my experiences teaching in the Prison Education Project, a program that provides incarcerated people in Missouri and prison staff access to a liberal arts education.  It was my privilege to teach “Japanese Civilization” at a nearby medium-security prison, and I very much enjoyed talking about it.

Have a listen:

Photo by C M on Unsplash

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