Monday, January 05, 2009
Happy New Year (and let’s hope my daruma can see properly this year)
And Happy New Year to my daruma, who is sitting there on my shelf waiting to have his other eye painted in, as he has done for about two years now.
Why is he sitting there half-blind? Well, these little images of the Buddhist saint (known in Sanskrit as Bodhidharma) are sold in Japan as charms to ensure the success of a project. When purchased, both eyes are white, and one eye is painted in to show the beginning of the task, with the other eye being completed after the successful completion of the project.
So what am I and my daruma waiting for? The publication of my first novel, that’s what. I think it’s pretty good (and I am actually somewhat critical of my own writing), and most people who have read it (not all) think that it has a market, but trying to get a novel published from Japan that is not actually about Japan seems to be really difficult. Yes, I have tried quite a few agencies in London and New York with Beneath Gray Skies, and have had no luck even getting them to nibble (and you expect a very high rejection rate, of course—I am not so naive as to believe that every agent or editor will leap at my manuscript and offer me a 6-figure advance). I had a lot of help from an agency here in Tokyo, but since it mainly deals with non-fiction, the options there were a little limited.
It does seem that if you live in Japan, you are expected to write sensitive novels dealing with the subtle interplay between Eastern and Western cultures (which some SWET members have done very successfully with some very fine writing indeed) or thrillers, based on an extensive knowledge of esoteric (and often largely fictional) martial arts. It also helps you as an author if you are in the same country/city/street as the agent or publisher, so that you can bump into them at parties, sit on their doorstep and threaten to hold your breath and turn blue unless they at least read a few pages of your manuscript and give you a good reason for their rejection. Living in Japan, these options are not open to you. However, I do have a “Japan novel” (Sharpe Practice), centered around banking and computers, and everyday life in Tokyo. It is going the rounds in the UK at the moment (ever-decreasing circles, maybe?), thanks to a non-fiction editor in London who I’ve been working with, who’s interested in Japan and Japanese business and is already in the publishing world.
The other thing about the publishing business seems to be that it demands paper as the medium. Hard copy of the synopsis, the first thirty pages, etc. etc. No e-mail submissions, callers by appointment only… Yes, I suppose it sifts the wheat from the chaff - those people who “have a great idea for a book if I could only find time” and those who actually have taken the time and trouble to hammer out 100,000+ words, read them, rework them, re-read them, work them over again, etc. But for those who have taken the trouble, and who live so far away from the English-language publishing centers of the world, it’s a real pain.
So what is the answer here for my first (non-Japanese) novel, which I actually think is better than Sharpe Practice? If anyone knows an agent or publisher who might be willing to take a serious look at a popular fiction book (I don’t write literature, and have no claims to be doing such a thing, though my style is at least literate) dealing with an alternative history in which the principal protagonist is a conscript in the Army of the Confederacy, which survived until the 1920s, making alliances with European fascist movements, and with a giant airship as one of its centerpieces, please put them in contact with me. Gray Skies is finished, it’s been looked over by several professional readers, who have suggested improvements to the original that I have incorporated, and it’s just over 100,000 words.
My daruma is waiting for his other eye…