OUT OF THE RISING SUN

Yesterday I did an interview for a Japanese rock magazine called Quest, which took up most of my afternoon and then I spend more hours reading the corrected m/s of my new novel Kindling (for a full description, and a shot of the cover I would refer you to http://www.thanatosoft.freeserve.co.uk/deviancefiles/kindling.htm)

I’m now two weeks late with the bloody m/s which is not my style at all, but a combination of overwork, poverty, flu, and an intense depression at the way Tor Books is currently treating me like mid-list scum, left me too depressed to look at for a number of days.

A combination of all things Japanese and the fact that Kindling is set in a whole imaginary alternate world prompts me to post the following from Yukiko in Tokyo, who rocks very politely, and quotes Mishima, who, I suspect, we in the West do not properly understand. The good news is that fact that Doc40 now appears to be rocking too has cheered me up no end. Also Yukiko’s remark about “Peeping Tomism” is highly apt in that it’s totally how I feel on my prowls of the blogosphere that have taken me to the domains of everyone from distraught teenagers to the journal of a witty and erudite brit call girl who blogs under the name Belle de Jour and defines her days of the week in French. http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/

Yukiko writes...

I enjoy your weblog. Long time ago, when the word "internet" was known to only a handful of tech people, someone told me that the development of the internet would entirely depend on a single thing: Peeping Tomism. He was proved right. What a pleasure to know what has inspired someone whose creative works you admire - today. As you pointed out, some posts are too local to make much sense over here, but I don't mind since Japan is usually too unique in nearly every level of human activity. But what you write there is mostly applicable to us, too. Also, the fact that Farren-sensei has started weblogging reminded me of Mishima's diary which he published as "Holidays of a Novelist". One day Mishima impressively wrote about the period 1945-47/48 (when he was around 26 years old) as follows (again, please put up with my lame translation):

“Around that time, although I could do nothing practical in real life, I had sympathy and anticipation for vice whirling around in my mind. While doing nothing significant, I was certainly ‘sleeping with’ the epoch. However counter-epoch pose I might have taken, I was, anyway, sleeping with her. Compared with this, the current time -- the year 1955 or 1954 -- is not enough to make me sleep with it. Ever since I reached so-called the ‘reactionary" period’, I have never slept with an era. Should a novelist always sleep with his/her contemporary era like a whore? Of course, a novel should inevitably have some features of the current time. However, aren't the solitude and abstinence of an author in a reactionary period more prolific to create great stories?
Yet, a novelist must have, at least once, the experience of sharing a bed with an era and, apparently, he/she needs to be energized by the memory of it.”

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THIS BLOG HAS NEW POSTS ALMOST DAILY, SO COME BACK SOON, WORD UP?

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A COMMERCIAL

I have a new book out. Or at least the paperback edition of the last hardback. UNDERLAND is now in the stores, although the publishers, Tor/St. Martins are doing their level best to make it a well kept secret. So buy a book, strike a blow, support the scribe. Go you local store, or look on Amazon. UNDERLAND, the last for the moment of the Victor Renquist counter-culture vampire stories, is loads of fun being choc fill o’ not only vampires, but the Hollow Earth, Nazis, flying saucers, the NSA, serpent gods, snow, government corruption, alternative history, plus all the usual lurid sex, drugs and violence. (Someone should really make a movie.)

I would also recommend THE DNA COWBOYS TRILOGY and JIM MORRISON’S ADVENTURES IN THE AFTERLIFE.

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