Alice in the Land of Time and Space

I’ve worked in the publishing industry more of the time than not since my twenties. There are a lot of different roles out there that call for writing skills but don’t result in your name being on the cover. I enjoy supporting other people in developing their work, and I’ve done that in various ways, including as an editor, and as a ghost writer.

This year I worked on a book written by a Japanese monster maker. The story is Kazumitsu Akamatsu’s creation and is illustrated with photos of the fantastic models he makes. It’s like nothing else. I came into this as a co-writer/technician to polish up the translation. It was a challenging, fascinating text to work on. At present I have 100 print copies – a very limited UK first edition, some of which are available through ko-fi. I am only posting these in the UK at present. https://ko-fi.com/s/a09d1f40ed

I’m delighted to have my name on the cover of this one. It is the kind of job where I would expect to be a ghost-writer, not named as a co-writer. Being recognised in this way is delightful, not least because it means the team putting this book together felt that having my name on the cover was an asset to them.

Moving text between Japanese and English Is quiet a process. If the two languages share a parent language, it must have been Neolithic or earlier. It is entirely possible that no such shared parent language existed. I’m not a Japanese speaker, but I know a fair amount about the language, which helped me a lot.

Through the book I tried to balance keeping the tone of the original, and bringing in language more consistent with the faux-Victorian setting. Alongside that I needed to make things sound more familiar to an English ear. How the two languages handle expressions of time are quite different, for example. How politeness is expressed doesn’t automatically translate. There was a lot to think about. I hope I’ve done this charming story justice, and that where I’ve brought my own voice and whimsy into the mix it’s been in a way that supports the original text.