Skip to main content

I don't know what these sales figures mean, but soon after the release of my first novel, The Opium Addict, on Amazon Kindle, it was ranked #1 in historical Japanese fiction new releases and #3 for Asian fiction. It is outperforming a novel released by Simon and Schuster, The African Samurai.


Many of the novels I see about Japan are cliche/convention. Look at the covers. Mt. Fuji, a geisha, cherry blossoms, a samurai and a sword. The novels appear to me to have been written by people who either have chosen to pander to an audience and know Japan, or either they don't know Japan except for what they have read. I've never had much interest in samurais and geishas, with the exception of those in Kurosawa movies. 

I'm in the process of revising a novella, Love is Thicker than Forget, the title taken from an e e cummings poem. I will self-publish it. Free download on Amazon and other platforms, my plan.

Blurb: With war between the U.S. and Imperial Japan looming in the fall of 1941, Colton Hancock, who grew up in Tokyo, returns to the U.S., leaving his Japanese lover, Akimi, an independent, free-thinker, behind. Soon after Japan's surrender in 1945, he flies into Tokyo as an army Lieutenant, hoping to pick up where he has left off with Akimi. The course of their love, however, does not proceed as smoothly as he had imagined.






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Return to Zimbabwe

It's been a long time since I made an entry. A lot has happened. My wife and I returned to Zimbabwe, where we are going to stay for a while before going to the U.S. I like Zimbabwe. In spite of what is reported about the country, the inflation, failing infrastructure, and poverty, the country is a wonderful place and the news media doesn't get it right about Zimbabwe. It's easy to report the negative but not the positive, which are the beauty of the country, the climate (neither heat nor AC is necessary, because of the elevation and proximity to the equator), the people (very friendly (English is the national language), and lack of violent crime, the use of the U.S. dollar, the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, the general peacefulness. Across the street from where we are staying there is a very posh restaurant,  Victoria Twenty-Two , which is maybe better than the St. Regis in Amman. Glad we're not in Amman, considering what is going on in Gaza. Down t...
 I saw where my novel, The Opium Addict , had sunk to around the 1.5 million ranking on Amazon, only to see a few hours later that it shot up to 180,000 or so. I contacted my publisher, Hear Our Voice, and Stacy told me that she ran a campaign on TikTok and had sponsored ads. I would guess that that had something to do with it. I was happy to see that it was just under James Clavell's Tai-Pan and remains high in the new release categories of Historical Japanese, Chinese, and Mystery Suspense. The ratings jump around a lot. The ranking has fallen since the good news, so keeping a novel high in the rankings is something I haven't quite figured out. But I have noticed that some that are ranked highly have been in the Amazon cauldron for years. So patience is in order, I guess. I also self-published a short novel--not sure I like the word novella, sounds like someone's name--which was up in the top five free Kindles, but then the free giveaway ran out . . . It's a more lite...

New Contrast's 200th Edition. Story: "Don't Cause Trouble."

New Contrast's 200 th   edition , which has a story of mine, "Don't Cause Trouble," about a retired Navy/airline pilot who goes on safari in Zimbabwe and finds a new, more meaningful life there is now out. Digital edition only 50 rand. As Alfred E. Newmans says in  Mad Magazine --"Cheap!" About $2.75. New Contrast is South Africa's oldest literary magazine and has published Nobel laureates, which is pretty good company to be in, I suppose. Also, I recommend that those who are fed up with the political orthodoxy of modern publishing subscribe to  The Heresy Press , which is a reaction to the madness in publishing in the U.S. today, things like only Native Americans can write about topics that are Native American; no people of a race different from the writer's; nothing that might offend a group, racial or religious. (I think there are readers, and viewers, who can make up their own minds about what they like. "Breaking Bad," A Clockwo...