Thanks, once again, to Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), to my readers, to my wife, and to my daughters, who inspired me to write these books in the first place!
Flying up to Portland with my daughter Julia for the @ibpalovesindies IBPA Book Awards — Murasaki (#SeasonsoftheSword 4, a series Julia partially inspired) is a finalist in the YA Fiction category.
Wish me luck! 😃
#bookawards #Risuko #bookstagram #yahistoricalfiction @risukokunoichi
Flying up to Portland with my daughter Julia for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Book Awards — Murasaki (Seasons of the Sword #4, a series Julia partially inspired) is a finalist in the YA Fiction category.
Wish me luck! 😃
You know how you finish a book or series and there’s a piece of backstory that won’t let you go? Like, it’s mentioned, it looms there, coloring what happens, but you never get the full story, and you just want to know WHAT HAPPENED?
Yeah.
Happens to writers too.
There were a couple of events that shaped how two of my favorite characters behaved toward each other throughout the Seasons of the Sword books.
Once the last book hit the shelves, I was looking at what to write next and…
And this one wouldn’t let me go.
So I wrote what turned out to be a novella: Old Wood: A #Kunoichi Tale. And I’m releasing it two chapters at a time through May!
Check it out for free at /old-wood/
#bookstagram #freebooks #samurai #seasonsofthesword
A #prequel #novella that looks at one of the most eventful, important mission in Mieko and Masugu's career!
Sixteenth-century #Sengoku #Japan.
A #spy who answers only to her duty.
A soldier carrying words he can't unsay.
One mission. One valley. One night.
Before #Risuko, there was Mieko.
Sign up now to read as it comes out throughout May:
risuko.net/old-wood/
#kunoichi #sengokujidai #seasonsofthesword #womenwithswords #historicalfiction #bookstagram #japanesehistory
Some personal news I didn't expect to be sharing: I'm in a play! 🎭
Tonight, Value Over Replacement has its first preview at @rossvalleyplayers — my first show as an Equity actor in 19 years. It's a sharp, funny new play about a former ballplayer forced to reckon with his choices, and I'm having a blast working with this cast and crew (including wonderful director and friend Ken Sonkin).
As it turns out, the work of inhabiting a character from the inside is a similar act of empathetic imagination to creating living, breathing characters in my writing. The page and the stage aren't so far apart.
Check us out!
#writer #actor #bayareatheater #actorwriter /value-over-replacement/
Here’s a thought:
If someone performs for you in a language other than your own, they’re not building a wall to keep you out, but rather opening a gate and inviting you in.
That’s inclusion. That’s American.
Telling them they can’t or shouldn’t do that—that’s exclusion, and it’s un-American.
I just posted this in reply to a friend—a statement of what he and I (and many others) are going through at the moment:
Rage is always born of impotence. I feel furious because, like you, like millions of others, I kept talking about this being where we were headed, this being the inevitable consequence of the federal government’s policies and actions, and yet here we are.
It’s time to stop talking and *do something*.
I just honestly don’t know what to do. Because what my hindbrain wants to do is burn everything to the ground.
I just finished writing a series of books in which the protagonist struggles with her father’s last words to her: Do no harm.
I was able in the books to get her to reconcile that impossible, noble goal with the reality of living in the world.
But I don’t know how to find that equanimity in myself.
Well, well, well.
Just typed “owari” on Murasaki, the fourth and final book in my YA historical adventure novel series, Seasons of the Sword.
I took the first notes for these books more than twenty years ago.
What a long, strange trip it’s been! (And of course it’s not done yet. 😒
