Goodreads asked R.J.K. Lee:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

R.J.K. Lee I got the idea for Stone Shaper Tanukis Estranged published in Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging - Volume Blue by combining real life disaster with observations made of Japanese mythological creatures. It's a combination of my real life experience with parent-child estrangement during a child custody battle in the broken Japanese system and my time traveling through Japan. While working at various kindergartens and other schools, I found various shrines with statues of tanuki or foxes, some of which were located beside the schools themselves or some just found alongside bars or parks on the way to the train stations. These inspired me to look into the mythos deeper and see how I could combine them into my stories. This developed into a much larger near future fictional world that you'll see more of in a loose sequel to be published later in 2022/2023, and in other stories currently in the works. These may all combine to create a novel further down the line.

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