Spent January 2023 at the American Academy Library in Rome, researching life ways and means in Rome of the Antonines. All the juicy details I gathered are grist for the Ourania mill…
Artists must frequently provide an “Artist Statement” explaining their creative ethos and motivation. It is only logical, however, that a writer should provide a drawing. In my this, my drawing-manifesto, I espouse a writing which is universally appealing yet locationally specific, full of color and dimension, and bright with lifelike highlights; privileging the tasty, quotidian, and generous over the foul, strange and cruel.
Forthcoming 2021 from Sojinsha Joint-Stock Enterprises, NJK Kotobuki 1-3-4, Taito-ku, Tokyo is my non-fiction history: 鳳来の夢、伊達政宗の慶長遣欧使節 Horai no yume: Date Masamune no Keicho Ken-oh shisetu (“Horai Dream: The Keicho Mission of Masamune Date”).
After many years of research and slowed by the difficulties associated with COVID-19, my book on the Keicho Mission of Date Masamune will be coming out soon!
So reads the ambitious title (and abstract) for the paper I’ll be giving later this month at the WCAAS (check out the details on my Daimyo and Saint Facebook page!), but it has been most instructive to write. I am reminded that General Sebastian Vizcaino was more than the bete noire of the Keicho Mission, he was also its catalyst!
Here is the 1602 portolan chart of the coast of California made by Vizcaino’s cosmographers, not published by Spanish authorities until 1802, when the English were trying to claim the coast for themselves. (Map 37 in Hayes, Derek, 2001. Historical Atlas of the North Pacific Ocean, Maps of Discovery and Scientific Exploration 1500-2000. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, under the auspices of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization.)
First in the “Finds & Keepers” series of three archaeological adventures (“Urban Fantasy Romance”) from DLG Publishing Partners LLC, San Antonio, TX, my very first published novel, is out NOW.
Books 2 & 3 in the series, Deep Scansion and Place of Sacrifice are due to be released by the end of the summer and the end of the year.
See the Folk Like Me blog for a special treat: a Chapel-length play about Saint Nicholas in honor of this fine piece of Cathy Rylander’s artwork from Folk Like Me turning up on a Saint Nicholas clip-art site. Blog has more details! Yes, I know that Saint Nicholas Day isn’t until December 6th, but it’s always best to plan ahead…
I tightened up a chapter from Ourania — set here on Villa Appia, where she decides to free all her slaves, whatever the consequences — and entered it in the Golden Quill Flash Fiction Contest last fall. It turned out to be a winner…or a Finalist, anyhow.
Better even than winning was tasting what fine writing felt like to DO, and meeting a fellow writer at the awards ceremony to confabulate with, back here in the Bay Area.
Read the entry for yourself in my Blog, elsewhere in this site, and let me know here how you liked it!
Forging ahead on "Race Across Gaul," the second part of the Ourania story, I will soon bring my family of characters (some of them, anyway) safely to Augustodunum, today Autun, then as now a center of learning perched on its ridge overlooking the mysterious "breasts of Epona" seen in the middle distance...
Returning to my research on the Keicho Mission, I hope to present a paper on the subject at the national convention of the American Association of Geographers, next spring.
My book, currently seeking a publisher, will deal with the little-known Keicho Mission (1613-1620) sent by Sendai Daimyo Date Masamune to Rome for the purposes of establishing trade with New Spain (specifically Mexico) and inviting more priests to serve churches in the region of Japan known as Oshu, today called Tohoku.
Off to the Central Coast Writer's Conference and Book Faire in San Luis Obispo, later this month, peddling a little of everything I do to agents, publishers, and the general public. Also entered a chapter of Ourania in the Short Fiction Contest, so we shall see!