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Wendy Tokunaga’s Love in Translation

1 December, 2009 | No Comments »
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Yup, it looks like there’s another new book to add to your wish-list – or your Santa-list, if you’re a believer. Wendy Tokunaga’s latest novel Love in Translation has just hit the shelves and just like her wonderful debut Midori by Moonlight the new book explores Japan and Japanese culture and being a stranger in a strange land. What’s particularly fabulous about Love in Translation is that it comes with a theme song – sung by Wendy herself. Check it out here.

Now for the full lowdown on the book:

For anyone who’s ever dreamt of finding love and family in an unexpected place…

After receiving a puzzling phone call and a box full of mysterious family heirlooms, 33-year-old fledgling singer Celeste Duncan is off to Japan to search for a long, lost relative who could hold the key to the identity of the father she never knew. Once there she stumbles head first into a weird, wonderful world where nothing is quite as it seems—a land with an inexplicable fascination with foreigners, karaoke boxes, and unbearably perky TV stars..

With little knowledge of Japanese, Celeste finds a friend in her English-speaking homestay brother, Takuya, and comes to depend on him for all variety of translation, travel and investigatory needs. As they cross the country following a trail after Celeste’s relatives, she discovers she’s developing “more-than-sisterly” feelings for him, although his mother seems to have other plans for her son. But it is when Celeste learns a Japanese song called “The Wishing Star” that things begin to change for her in ways she never expected, leading her to ask, what is the true meaning of family? And what does it mean to discover your own voice?

As well as her two novels, Wendy has written two non-fiction books for children. She holds an MFA in Writing and has had short stories published in various literary journals. In her spare time Wendy sings bossa nova, cool pop, jazz standards and Japanese songs accompanied by her surfer dude husband Manabu on electronic keyboards. They live with their cat Meow in the San Francisco Bay Area, a short walk from the Pacific Ocean

Wendy put down her microphone for a few minutes to answer some of my questions …

Tell me a little about what inspired Love in Translation

Many things inspired the writing of the book. Love in Translation is my cockeyed valentine to Japan, which is a place I’ve both loved and loathed, a place that has fueled both fascination and frustration. And it is also a place that has had a huge impact on my life and writing. I also wanted to explore what it means to be a gaijin (foreigner) in Japan and the benefits and downsides of that status and what happens when a gaijin sings in Japanese. I also am fascinated by the concept of the homestay, (something I never experienced), and how that would impact someone as an adult who grew up in foster homes and who never experienced a real family.

How long did it take you to write Love in Translation

That’s kind of difficult to say. Parts of Love in Translation came from an unpublished manuscript that told the story of two characters who “trade lives”—a young, Japanese idol singer who comes to the U.S. after her career goes down the tubes, and an American woman who has been drifting and at a crossroads in her life who ends up finding herself by going to Japan. Eventually each character ended up getting her own book. I also was writing it while in the throes of finishing my MFA in Writing, and was working on the Japanese idol singer novel as my thesis. That was kind of a juggling act! But I guess the short answer is: approximately two years.

When do you write (mornings, evening, lunchbreaks)?

I generally try to write new material in the morning and do revision in the afternoon. I’ll print out what I’ve written and go off to a coffeehouse or somewhere and make notes. Then I’ll come home and input any changes.

Where do you write? Describe your writing space – is it a cluttered mess or minimalist heaven?!

I have a home office that is a real cluttered mess. I do clean it up occasionally but it gets messy again really fast. Like everyone, I have a lot going on in my life besides writing so all of that piles up and more. When I worked in an office at a company my desk was always pretty neat, but now that I work at home, it’s a disaster. I guess it’s because I don’t have to care what co-workers think!

Writers are usually big readers too. How do you make time for reading and what are you reading at the moment?

Lately I don’t spend enough time reading and I have to do something about that. With writing and promotion and marketing, I find I don’t always feel like reading. To take a break I’ll veg out and watch some old film on Turner Classic Movies. Perhaps reading more books should be my New Year’s resolution! But at the moment I’m attempting to read Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby.

What’s next for you? Is there a new book in the pipeline?

I’m working hard on a new novel that is a bit of a departure for me and has very little to do with Japan.

Find out more about Wendy and her new novel at www.wendytokunaga.com. And look for her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Melissa Senate’s The Secret of Joy

17 November, 2009 | No Comments »
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It looks like November is turning out to be a great month for new books. Jess Brody’s fabulous Love Under Cover came out last week and now we have Melissa Senate’s latest release, The Secret of Joy. Melissa is the author of the bestselling novels See Jane Date and Love You To Death. She’s also one very cool writer-mama with a son in first grade who procrastinates way too much on Facebook and Twitter. Sounds exactly like me (especially the very cool part;-)). Maybe we’re half-sisters… Now that would be spooky because long lost half-sisters is exactly what The Secret of Joy is all about!

Here’s the blurb:

What would you do if you discovered you had a half-sister you never knew existed?

28-year-old New Yorker Rebecca Strand is shocked when her dying father confesses a devastating secret: he had affair when Rebecca was a toddler—and a baby he turned his back on at birth. Now, his wish is that the daughter he abandoned, Joy Joyhawk, read the unsent letters he wrote to her every year on her birthday. Determined to fulfill her father’s wish, Rebecca drives to a small town in Maine—against the advice of her lawyer boyfriend who’s sure Joy will be a “disappointing, trashy opportunist” and demand half her father’s fortune. But when hopeful Rebecca knocks on her half-sister’s door, Joy—a separated mother who conducts weekend singles tours out of her orange mini-bus—wants nothing to do with Rebecca or the letters her father wrote to her. Determined to forge some kind of relationship with Joy, Rebecca sticks around, finding unexpected support from Joy’s best clients—the Divorced Ladies Club of Wiscasset—and a sexy carpenter named Theo…

Melissa currently lives on the coast of Maine with her son and their menagerie of pets. She’s the author of eight novels (seven women’s fiction and one young adult) with two on the way. However she finds the time to procrastinate, I don’t know!

Melissa took a break from her writing to answer some questions…

What’s the inspiration behind The Secret of Joy?

Several years ago, I received an email out of the blue that said: I think you might be my half-sister. I was. Am. It took me a long time to decide to take that little (huge) nugget and write a novel to help me figure out the answer to some burning questions, such as: if you haven’t seen or heard from your biological father, or any member of his family, since you were little (or, in Joy’s case, never at all), is his child from another relationship really your sibling? Or just a stranger? Does the word father or sister or brother mean anything without back up? I had a ton of questions and set out to uncover how I felt through a fictional character, but it’s interesting to me that I flipped everything on its head in the writing of the story. Nothing but the basic questions that are proposed in the novel are autobiographical. Just the questions! And I surprised myself quite a few times during the writing of this story with how I felt about certain things. Amazing how writing fiction can teach you so much about yourself.

Who do you picture in your mind when you write?

Sometimes I picture a lone woman reading my book on a bus or on her sofa or in a coffee shop, and I imagine what she’s responding to, relating to, thinking about as she reads. Would this scene make her smile? Would she relate? But most of the time, I picture my characters’ faces with their personalities etched into their features. I rarely base my characters physically on celebs (except for my first book—Jane from See Jane Date looked just like Ann Marie from “That Girl” (a young Marlo Thomas). She did not look like Charisma Carpenter, who perfectly played her in the TV movie, but now when I think of Jane, I think of Charisma only. Which makes me think of hot David Boreanaz, which is a good thing.

Writing a letter can be daunting. How do you even begin the process of writing a novel? Does it start with a title? A character? A plot? All or none of the above?

An idea flits into my heart, mind and soul (if I may be so dramatic!) and I just know. The idea, just a wispy thing, grips me and I think about it until the two major characters—my protagonist and the person or thing who “forces” her change—become clear. Then I write out a one page treatment, a bare bones synopsis, then think about that, then revise the storyline into a “pitch” I can share with my agent. If she green-lights it, I’ll then let myself dream it into a full blown synopsis, which is what I usually sell a novel on. The synopsis, in its major plot points, rarely changes, but how the characters get from page one to page 325 is another story.

Any tried and true tricks for beating procrastination?

Tried but not true: taking laptop to a library or coffee lounge without wi-fi. I can’t handle more than an hour or two without checking email or reading through Twitter or Facebook. Tried and true: a deadline, whether self-given or publisher-given.

What’s next for you?

Next up is my second novel for teens, The Mosts, which will be published by Random House in June 2010. Then, my next women’s fiction novel from Simon & Schuster, The Love Goddess’s Cooking School, about five people in an Italian cooking class, will be published November 2010. I’m staring down a 1/1 deadline (the worst deadline to have!) And I’m being poked at by a new idea…

Because Melissa loves Facebook and Twitter, make sure to find her there! If you are trying to avoid the lure of social networking, just visit Melissa’s website at www.melissasenate.com.

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