Unplugged

   The two of you who follow this blog might be wondering why I haven’t been posting recently. You might even suspect that I may have been stricken with, alas, writer’s block. There are a number of reasons why I haven’t been posting, but none of them, fortunately, have to do with being creatively clogged up.

   The first is the impending arrival of my second son. (Another boy!) This pregnancy has been much harder on my wife than the first. While she believes it is due to her age (she’s not that old[1]), I think it is more related to the fact that, unlike the first time around when she filled her days by taking long naps and leisurely walks, she now spends most of her days frantically chasing after a tyrannical two-ear-old. Eight months pregnant and she’s only gained two kilos (4.4lbs). The nurses at her clinic praised her ability to keep her weight down during the pregnancy, but the two of us well know willpower has had nothing to do with it.

   In order to help reduce the burden of housework and childcare, I have had to take on a number of responsibilities such as bathing my son and putting him to sleep (which usually means that I nod off, too), attending to him throughout the night, taking care of him in the morning, and so on. I don’t mind doing this—I wish I had more time to spend with the boy. But, it has meant that the things I should be doing first—namely writing—are done much later and often not at all.

   When I have had the time to write, much of it has been spent hammering out a new query and synopsis for Rokuban – No.6. Pure drudgery it is!

   I’m the type of person who can normally write and write and write if interested in or enjoying what I am writing, but can get thoroughly stopped up when it comes to writing something I have to write. (That’s one reason I’m so bad at replying to e-mail.[2]) I started working on the query/synopsis at the end of September and only just “finished” it a few days ago, in time, as I had promised, for my wife’s birthday. I still need to give it a good going-over, but for the time being it’s good enough.

   Whenever I didn’t feel like working on the synopsis—which was most of the time—I edited and revised Rokuban – No.6. Rokuban[3], by the way, is a pretty good novel, if I don’t mind saying so myself. I can see where my first novel A Woman’s Nails might lose some readers midway through[4], but Rokuban is a winner. I’m counting on it being the work that gets my foot in the door of the publishing world. The latest edition of the novel will be complete in a week or so, just in time for the long awaited launch of Amazon Japan’s Kindle.

   Once I’ve got that out of the way, I will once again be blogging happily. Stay tuned! 

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[1] I wish I were thirty-four!

[2] And why a career in journalism has never appealed to me.

[3] No.6 (Fast Times, Hard Time . . . yada, yada, yada) was never meant to be more than a working title. Rokuban is only moderately better. I need to find a subtitle that captures the essence of what is really a fine book. (I’m all ears!) Read it!

[4] A Woman’s Nails has a pretty damn good ending, though. Don’t trust me? Then trust a stranger.