International giveaway to celebrate the new edition of Afterlight
To celebrate the new edition of Afterlight, my urban fantasy/crime/mystery/ghost story set in Melbourne, Australia, I'm giving away a signed copy of the first edition to two readers anywhere in the world who are the first to DM me via Goodreads.
Afterlight, like The Astrologer's Daughter, is linked to the Mercy universe and features a first glimpse of Daughtry from Wraith.
Giveaway closes on 15 August 2019.
Happy reading and creating x
* Comp closed - books are on their way, thanks for your messages *
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Jim wrote: "Too late for the comp. But then I have just found your name - and writing! Very impressive. But how to write to you - a mystery - till I found this site...Below the letter I had written with a PS..."
Hi Jim
Apologies for this late reply - have not been lurking online as much as usual due to the work/life balance being decidedly tilted towards "work" . Thank you for the recommendations - I will hastily go seek out copies of the anthologies you edited as well as the work of Catherine Lim.
Your life is an amazingly rich web of connections and experiences, thank you for sharing them with me. "Afterlight" and "The Astrologer's Daughter" may not be your cup of tea, but I'd be happy to send you along a copy of each if you have room for them in your TBR pile.
Thank you again for reaching out, what an honour.
Kind regards and best wishes always, Rebecca
Dear Rebecca:Your letter arrived as I was travelling from Azerbaijan to Georgia - the early part of a trip with my wife which finally included Armenia, too. I am sorry for not getting back to you till now. Thank you for writing back - and hey! Sure, I would love those books you offer - if that offer still applies?
Professor Isaac Namioka (Seattle) - by the way - passed away just a week after my letter to you. My story is now recording a passing history - as no doubt sooner rather than later my own demise draws nearer.
Cheers, Jim Kable
36 Tasman Court
CAVES BEACH
NSW 2281
shoin@me.com
Hi Jim - again, apologies for the late reply, it’s a manic time of year which only seems to be getting more manic in the lead up to the 25th. Please do not speak of demises, put such thoughts out of your mind (!), which appears sharper than ever. Just letting you know that I have put some reading in the post for you, don’t feel you need to read them, they are really just sent in gratitude for you reaching out and sharing your rich journey. Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and New Year - I’ll aim to get copies of the books you’ve mentioned. All best wishes to you, Rebecca
Checking the front door in just a moment...will get back to you when I receive/read. Now re-reading Bruce Pascoe's essay/story collection Salt and finishing Tariq ALI's co-edited In Defence of Julian Assange! All good! Merry festivities to you, too... Jim
Jim - if you haven’t already read “Good Muslim Boy” and “This House of Grief” they are both incredible non fiction books. Have a lovely festive season. Books should arrive next week.
Osamah's Good Muslim Boy - brilliant - I loved it. I taught Muslim boys at Homebush Boys HS - all of the terrific kids - as was my Muslim colleague fellow teacher. I've just refreshed myself with This, Then That - Andrew Knight at The Wheeler Centre four years ago interviewing Osamah - just totally heart-warming - and one of the things which struck me was Andrew Knight - as if with my own heart/voice stating that he is a traveller - and that in no part of the world has he met anybody let alone a broader category of ethnic group for whom he has felt any antipathy (or words to that effect) and I feel exactly the same. That if (in that sense) we could rid the world of politicians and the psychopaths among that group - there'd be no need for "them" and "us" - so both Andrew and Osamah and those of us who see only "us" - here in Australia and out-and-about around the world - how great could it all be - no wars - no suspicion - no secrets - not scapegoating/stereotyping or bigotry! Right? Helen GARNER's book - I have not read but I have heard her speak about it - and others of her books including her latest - so much wisdom and insight - concern for all the perspectives which leads to tragedy. Jim
All of them - terrific kids/young people - still in touch with one. My Muslim students were out of Indonesia/Malaysia - Lebanon and Turkey - and Turkish Cyprus and included adults in the AMES community programs - what a privilege for me! I am writing to let you know that the books have arrived safely! I shall examine them later - I am working on a response to Tim Watts' book about his family - Anglo-invader (settlers??) of the 19th century - and via his Hong Kong wife - Chinese - now the shared ancestry of his children - I've just listened to Nov 20's Conversation with Richard Fidler interview of Tim Watts - truly heartwarming - of the kind version of Australia as I see it, too. Best, Jim
Dec 22/23Dear Rebecca
Maybe senior high/Young Adult fiction - with the romance angle is not necessarily my focus but hey! What a terrific writer you are!
Fast-paced - Cath Crowley was spot on for afterlight: compulsively readable but I would add cinematic, too - and indeed for The Astrologer’s Daughter - which I read secondly - as well. I presume your agent/editor is putting your books to film-makers even as I write to you now. They cry out for film adaptation. (Or a TV series!)
It is so good to read books - not only from strong central female characters - but also the variety and normality of the range of culturally/ethnically diverse characters and contexts - within the Australian setting - though I note the language you use at times occasionally takes on a North American flavour (a sensible matter in terms of “market” placement I guess).
And b ing inside the heads of those key characters - that was/is so good. And real thoughts, emotions …I think there was only one occasion (in The Astrologer’s Daughter when I thought - Hmm? (And now I can’t recall exactly where that was!) Nevertheless - page 132 - speaking of Kircher’s visit - desire to learn his fate… And Avicenna’s reluctance - the self-fulfilling nature of knowing what has been forecast.
I told you I lived many years in Japan - and had many and varied experiences - many great friendships during my 16+ years. Over my final five years - one of a handful of extraordinary Japanese mates was a Shintō priest - two or three years my junior - lovely wife - excellent parish and “officers”/committee who assisted in the running of the Shrine and with all the festivals.
We became friends when I took some photos I had taken to him of a festival procession - a Foxes Wedding recreation/resuscitation from the Heian Era (a real wedding - but in a style of 900~1,000 years earlier). I wasn’t sure that I would be able to explain myself well enough - but it went fine - invited into his parish/.Shrine office - older office-bearers with him - and I did my best to introduce myself - mentioning my hero - a pedagogical hero YOSHIDA Shōin 1830-1859) in connection with whom I had earlier in that year 2004 begun a kind of movement - the Yoshida Shōin International Pedagogical Fellowship 「吉田松陰国際教育協会」[yoshida shouin kokusai kyouiku kyoukai]. Instant friendship. At an autumn festival I was invited to attend (and the dinner afterwards - maybe 60 people in attendance - he seated me beside a woman he had trained to priestly level - her English was as if born to an Oxbridge life - in fact she had studied at UCL I think and had worked in publishing/editing in London. She told me that our mutual friend was clairvoyant. Inwardly I smiled. (My world is far more prosaic - having abandoned/escaped from my narrow fundamentalist sect aged a very late 19 - I had had no need for belief in other “higher beings” - except as metaphors - as shared hooks of culture - you might say. But I watched. He was certainly visited by people from up and down the country to his little shrine -n Nakatsuse Jinja (jinja=(Shintō)Shrine) - in the centre of the city (of Ube - sister-city to Newcastle NSW). If I called in and they were present - or they arrived during my visit I would be introduced. (Shintō Shin=Gods/Tō=Dao in Chinese=Way/Road in English i.e. The Way of the Gods)
At one festival occasion - he invited me to become an honorary member of his parish! An honour - I thought at once - and accepted. No other foreigner in Japan would be such a member - he told me. The honour deepened. Not so long afterwards - my wife (back-and-forth between me and her increasingly frail mother in Swansea NSW) called to say that our bridesmaid’s 2nd daughter - just at WSU in western Sydney (PE teaching course) had suffered a fall - was in the Royal North Shore Hospital (where I was born in an earlier incarnation in 1949!!) in an induced coma - was her spine damaged in some severe/incapacitating way? Bridesmaid and husband down from Coffs Harbour at her bedside. Terrible news - pass on prayers (???) that all goes well, I said. The very next morning I had to go through the city and by the Shrine. Hmm - I thought - my mate - he really is a priest - prayers are his domain and I called in to ask him to do so. He invited me into the genkan/entrance - into his office, poured me a tea - and asked me to tell him the name of the young woman: I said it and wrote it:「ケート」Kate [keeto]. He rolled it around into his mouth reading my katakana written form which in Japanese comes out as something closer to Aussie “Caretop” (delete the final “p”!) And he immediately began asking me questions. Is there a very tall tree by the family house? (Yes!). She likes, horses, Kate? (A most unusual question in Japan - not even a clever guess might throw this question up.) I don’t know. Her mother is crying. (Not a question - a statement.) Hmm I thought - not our bridesmaid - but hey - her daughter in this context - maybe, quite possibly. And she’s shaped like this - he indicated a kind of heavy-hipped female figure - and well, yes - though not obesely so. Don’t worry, he said, she’ll be fine. I thanked him - and off to my teaching day at the university where I held a position. That night - speaking to my wife I relayed what had happened. It was clearly reference to their Port Macquarie - from which they had just moved (schools and homes) further north to Coffs Harbour. And a huge silky oak tree by that home (though at the Coffs Harbour home a very tall Norfolk Island Pine in the front garden. It was the question re the horses which confirmed Port Macquarie because there was a field between where they lived and nearby shops/mini-mart in which there were horses - she take an apple - and apparently climb on at least the back of one for a soft trot around the field. I had had no idea of this. And our bridesmaid - hadn’t stopped weeping, she had explained to Christine on the ‘phone. I told her the priest had said that Kate would be fine - and asked her to relay the message. Over the next three days Kate - in a body brace - was taken out of her coma - and sent back by Air-Ambulance to the Coffs Harbour hospital - where she would remain a month but close to her parents. Except she was there only two days before being sent home! Long story short - a half-year’s leave from her studies led to her during the time off to travel to the UK -n her big sister - and our god-daughter - then working up in Scotland - a kind of late “gap-year” - and attending the festival at Glastonbury. A half-year or so after the incident with my priest friend - we were walking down the street together when he suddenly said (in Japanese - his conversational English was not good) “She’s putting on weight.” What on earth is he babbling about I thought … Oh? Realisation dawned. Do you mean Kate? Yes, he said. I called her Mum that night - Oh, yes, she laughed - she’s not been engaged in much sport of late - taking it easy (just in case) - she’s put on five kgs! (On a whippet thin frame!)
Later attending one or two gatherings in the community rooms at the Shrine I saw him in action - a group of a dozen women - his words to each person bringing comfort or resolution - always positive messages - from whatever power of insight or clairvoyance that he possessed. He told me it had begun for him when he was 10 years old - playing the Japanese equivalence of cops-and-robbers with his primary school mates - a hand reached out of the earth and held him fast - though his mates could see nothing. At home he told his mother who told him to stop imagining things. He wanted to become a Buddhist priest - but after a year or two of such studies he felt the calling to become a Shintō priest and studied at the Shintō University near to Ise (Grand Shrine) south from Nagoya. An extraordinary man - and extraordinary ability. However - I decided (even with the power of Kate’s story fresh with me) that I would never ask him about my own trajectory of life. It would play out without any prediction towards which I might unwittingly, subconsciously move/make come to pass! I was so impressed that you put this phenomenon into your storyline. There are indeed more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio...
As a teacher one of the powerful things I took from my foundation/trial Dip Ed program at Sydney University in 1970 was that I had to be very aware of my power in positively predicting or prophesying the future for my students. When you get to university….When you take that apprenticeship I know you are thinking about…One day, when you get the opportunity to travel - think about going to… (Never: Oh, you lot - you will NEVER amount to anything…blah! Blah! Blah! - no negativities…)
Anyway - one other thing…at the back of The Astrologer’s Daughter you acknowledge quite a number of names - one was Ray Factor (passed away). I am a friend of June Factor (Far Out, Brussel Sprout, etc)…and I was wondering if he/she were related.
Sincere congratulations on your writing/seasonal greetings…thank-you for the books and for your warm inscriptions!
Cheers, Jim KABLE
Below the letter I had written with a PS to start it - and to finish it:
PS I meant to add a writer friend in Seattle - Lensey NAMIOKA - she had a website - no longer writing - but similar to you [in writing stories setting US Asian characters in that setting] - married to a Japanese (now Emeritus Prof of Mathematics at UoWashington) she is one of the the Chinese-born daughters of Yuen-Ren CHAO (famous linguist - huge Wikipedia entry - an interpreter for Bertrand Russell on tour in China in 1920 for instance - and her mother Buwei YANG (Chao) a doctor - who wrote the first Chinese cookbook published in English (1946) with a foreword by friend Pearl S Buck - editorial/English assistance from Buwei's husband and another daughter - coining the term “stir-fry”!
On 21 Oct 2019, at 11:05 am, Jim KABLE wrote:
Dear Rebecca:
It was your name which first grabbed my attention. Many years ago in a former life I was visiting Singapore - (a week in Hong Kong, a week in Singapore - side-trip to Malacca) and I visited a local bookshop and bought lots of local writers/literature. In those days my field (in Sydney) was contemporary literature reflecting our nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity. I had had a period as an Education Officer and been able to develop my thinking with some action research and seminar work. Apart from seeking and using Australian literature in my teaching - secondary and then adult in the field of TESOL as it was then known - nowadays EAL.
Anyway having purchased my 15 or so volumes - short stories and so forth - I found one of the writers, a Catherine LIM - was a senior education bureaucrat - and I went along and was able to meet with her. One of her stories made a deep impact on me and became something I returned to - over and over - as a kind of justification for my own developing philosophical stance - and much refined during many years teaching at middle school, senior high and at university level in Japan. Titled: “The Teacher” I think it is in her collection of 1978 - Little Ironies - Stories of Singapore.
I understand LIM is a reasonably common name in Singapore so I am not suggesting you may be related - just that the name struck me.
I spoke at national English Teaching conferences and at at other forums during the 1980s and by 1990 I had edited two companion anthologies of Australian writing for OUP (Melbourne): One was a mixed text short pieces of writing/reflective exercises - designed for senior school level Made in Australia - and the other a straight anthology An Arc of Australian Voices. Made in Australia had a more-or-less equal representation of male and female writers and a more than representative level of pieces by and-or-of Indigenous writers/writing. Arranged around various themes. So when I read of your desire to offer young people of difference - the chance to find themselves in stories - my heart leapt!
I was born in 1949 - so for me - thank goodness - a primary school teacher (3rd AND 5th class) Mr Shanahan who loved “Australian” writing/declaiming ballad poetry in the classroom with gusto - and there was also the NSW School Magazine - filled with things Australian. (I grew up in Tamworth in northern NSW.) Otherwise the challenge was to find books in the library which were set in Australia!! Not much. All Biggles or Enid Blyton at an earlier primary school level… The Jindyworabak Movement from the 1930s onwards was in part a movement trying to set literature and themes within a kind of Indigenous/nativist Australia (Rex Ingamells et al) - even Les MURRAY (a distant cousin) felt, he wrote somewhere, that it was important to put in eucalyptus trees and other aspects of this land so that we might see ourselves in this landscape - possibly he was the last of the Jindyworabaks! Anyway - in that sense you want to place in your stories all the kinds of faces we see in our everyday lives - in our cities and towns. Us. Not as “them” and “us” - merely our mosaic of beauty and reality. In these darkening times of Border Protection and demonisation of the “other”.
I remember as a boy - about 11 or 12 - around 1960/1961 I found a novel set in Australia - a kind of boyzone - WWII - Nazi spies - The Hume Dam - an attempt to blow it up - destroy downstream Albury Wodonga I guess the aim. How thrilling to imagine such a setting. I can’t find the book/title - but it is clear in my mind. And in those days - most unusual.
I just wanted to say Rebecca - brava! I so admire your aims.
With respect,
Jim Kable
36 Tasman Court
CAVES BEACH
NSW 2281
PS My mother was widowed in 1951 - just 21 - two small lads - me and a little brother. We moved from Sydney to Tamworth - our first landlords a Chinese family - the elderly mother with bound feet had come with her husband to New South Wales in 1900 from Canton (Guandong) and/or Hong Kong. Very kind to my mother and her two little ones - a kindness never forgotten. One of my best mates in Japan was a young PhD student - later an Associate Professor of English at a couple of universities - firstly in Hiroshima-ken - then finally and permanently in Matsue-City in Shimane-ken - from Hefei in Anhui Province. I have a number of kinship relatives out of China - an aunt of ethnic Chinese background 5th generation born on Bangka Island - later in Jakarta - still later in The Netherlands and Germany - before marrying an uncle and now in Canberra - I have travelled in China (many times Hong Kong and Macau, too) and visited places associated with some of my English relatives - Lunghwa Civilian Internment Camp in Shanghai (1943-1945) and the campus of Beijing University which in an earlier incarnation was the campus of Yenching University (an amalgamation in the 1920s of a number of Protestant Missionary Colleges). And so on...