Tobacco-Stained & Out There

Well, the novel is now out - in fact it has been for a month now - and slowly starting to garner the occasional review like the one at Forces Of Geek.

My publishers are currently putting together the digital versions for iPad and Kindle (stay tuned), but in the meantime the classic old school paperback - sorry, trees! - is up on Amazon UK, Amazon USA, Amazon Canada, Amazon Japan, and Alibris.

Even better, you can order direct from my cool cat publishers Another Sky Press, where the price for the paperback is much cheaper ($4.74 plus postage), and you also get bonus glossy bookmarks (see above) featuring the cover artwork on both sides.

If you feel like it, while online @ Another Sky you can contribute more so that the publisher, the cover artist (Scott Campbell) and I actually make some dosh in the long run.

The funky postcard is not yet available except here in Japan, but I'm working on it, and eventually hope to achieve world domination with bumper stickers, a Scout patch and iPad apps... even if I don't have one of those darn tootin' gadgets yet myself.

Bah; humbug.

TSMG: the published tome!

One hefty element of happiness is... getting the printed, bound and published version of your novel for the very first time in your mitts!!!

They're here - ZOUNDS!!!!

Talk about insanely cool timing, since we're doing the Tokyo launch party for the novel tonight at the Pink Cow in Shibuya (see post below). Up to this point we were thinking it'd be a paperless affair (weird for a book launch party, I know), but the gods - whomsoever they may be, and regardless of whether or not the blighters actually exist - have been kind.

The biggest ever possible thanks to Kristopher, Bob and everyone else at Another Sky Press for their tireless work, belief and madly cool assistance on this beastie - it's their baby as much as is mine. And cheers to family and mates for all their support and encouragement over the years it took to finish off the yarn.


Here's the back cover, with the barcode - and we even have a darn-tootin' ISBN number! x

I think I'm still a little bit in shock, really - so I'll stop gabbling here and sit down with a strong coffee to pore over one of the copies I have beside me.

If you're interested in checking out more about the novel, head on over to the Tobacco-Stained Another Sky site (just click the highlighted bit).

WOW. Bliss.

More Ado About Japan

Mad.

Unless you’ve had your head buried deep inside some sandbox in a place a million miles from the nearest social network or wireless connection, you’d already know precisely what I’m leading into - or if you'd bothered to read the entry immediately beneath.

So let's get straight into it.

On Friday March 11th, at around 2:45pm local time, the east coast of Japan was hit by an earthquake that tipped the scale at around 8.9 – 9.0 on the Charles Richter magnitude charts.

I’ve since learned that we survived the fourth or fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history, and the worst ever in Japan – which is one of the world's most seismically active places.

But Tokyo was lucky compared with other places in this country just north of our city, like Miyagi Prefecture.

Straight after the earthquake there were tsunami waves of up to ten metres (33 feet) that struck the Pacific coast north of Tokyo, ploughing inland up to a dozen kilometres – sweeping away the towns and cities along the way.

The footage has been so surreal: That tsunami rapidly filling the streets of the city of Kesennuma as people watched (and filmed) from atop hills; cars and air-conditioning units bobbing and floating by, followed by houses that started moving and weaving between overturned boats; the aftermath with ships and trucks on top of highways and houses. It was like looking at The Day After Tomorrow rolled up into Dante's Inferno.

But the sad truth is that it isn’t surreal at all. This is no dream. It’s been neither fiction nor the unrealistic segment of a disaster movie – it's cold, hard reality.

Somewhere around 10,000 people have been killed, though no-one knows the true extent of the fatalities even now – at the time of writing this – seven days after that initial disaster. Our thoughts go out to all the people affected.

But I say “initial” disaster, because we’ve since suffered aftershocks numbering in the hundreds and varying in intensity depending on the area. The other night night in Shizuoka, near Mt. Fuji, there was another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4.

I got woken up by an aftershock at 5:00am yesterday morning - rattling doors and shaking bed. When we went to the supermarket almost half the shelves were empty as people are stocking up in case of another emergency.

And yesterday my daughter and wife flew down south to join the in-laws in Fukuoka.

It makes me far happier to know they're safe(r) - especially since there are the melting-down nuclear reactors at Fukushima, 170 miles north of Tokyo.


These babies were initially damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, and are currently out-of-control, spewing forth radioactive particles that are being felt as far south as, well, here in Tokyo.

This past week has been a little too close to home, and I say that not just because I currently live in Tokyo. The quakes and shakes this time were real, not cheap FX on celluloid with high-definition surround sound.

It’s eerily like the plot in Sakyo Komatsu’s novel Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks) – I saw both the spin-off movies made in 1973 and 2006 – but defies the page or the artificial image of a viewfinder.

Real people have died, and thousands of other bona fide human beings have lost loved ones and friends. They’re destitute, lacking basic provisions, and braving up to zero-degree temperatures up north.

This is going to take a long time to clean up and forget.

And while the Japanese people here have been astoundingly resolute – not here the looting and general mayhem on the streets you see in other lesser disasters elsewhere in the world – it's a mind-numbing situation and an emotionally debilitating one to see this country and these people go through all of this.

In the meantime the best thing to do as hang onto the coattails of a sense of humour about it all – and gaze somewhat wistfully at the Japanese kanji "kibou", which means “hope”.

Which brings me full circle to some untimely, self-indulgent navel-gazing... but I guess that's what blogs are all about, especially ones like this which have only a couple of entries anyway.

Amidst all this madness I'm releasing my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which is coming out through Another Sky Press in the U.S. on 31 March.

As previously mentioned here it's a sci-fi/noir tome that's set in Melbourne, Australia, but mostly rewritten here in Tokyo and heavily influenced by my 10 years in Japan.

I'm going to stop with the hype right now. It tastes wrong. If you're interested at all in checking out the novel, fantastic - thank you. If not, that's cool too - but please think in some way about how, in whatever small or seemingly inconsequential way, you can assist Japan. It all helps.

Rant out.

TSMG: the promo video/trailer/teaser thing

Here's a YouTube teaser for that upcoming new novel I'm going to be a heel and shamelessly flog hereabouts over the next couple of months. Hell, it's my novel, I've never had one published before, and of course I'm completely over the moon about the upcoming publication date. Self-indulgent propaganda shells are to be expected.



Pre-order for this tome is available directly from the publisher, Another Sky Press, in the U.S. by clicking this link. There's also a free download feature there for the first 2 chapters (shh!).

Hyperbole out. For now.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - 2011

Hey mates,


I'm dead sure there's a separate entry somewhere here in this blog to stick this update, but I'm chilling out with La Familia as the New Year wind-up and beginning is more important in Japan than Christmas (in my case I get to celebrate both!), so in the meantime I'm putting this here in case anyone's at all vaguely interested.

My debut novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat will now definitely be published, through US label Another Sky Press, at the end of January 2011.

It's a bit of a cut-up fusion of genres and cultures (blame 10 years in Tokyo and the rest in Melbourne, aside from six months in London and a little bit of time on the Gold Coast).

My editor (Kristopher Young, who penned Click), when pressed, put it thus:


"The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really - noirish, subtly sci-fi, hard-boiled, futuristic; Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or The Third Man. And a shot of bourbon."

Anyway, though I'd struggle to insert my own work in the same sentence as these cool people (a list that includes Kristopher himself), I like to believe that's what we've at least fractionally achieved...

While we're still in the edit on the book (mostly cleaning up and organizing the cover artwork - front and back both done by the insanely cool Scott Campbell), we have a sneak preview of the original, unedited first two chapters here, plus you can pre-order the beastie if that insane compulsion grabs you - it's retailing at only US$4.50 plus postage.

Cheap is always good.

Plus we've got some great feedback to the tome from magazines, newspapers and blogs like The Age, Vice, Filmink, Forces Of Geek and Impact.


You can find out more plus peruse the better-tuned propaganda and info online at
Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Anyway, I'm obviously over the moon about publication of the bugger in the new year and hope you have the inclination to check it out. If you do find the time to potter over something a little different... read away.

I'd love to know what you think!


Otherwise, two wise last words here: HAPPY NEW YEAR. Oops... them's three, not two.

All the best,
Andrez

Soon to be Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Melbourne (Australia) in the somewhat vaguely not-too-distant future. An alcoholic film-buff detective who smacks of vituperativity while leaning heavily on chemical dependency. An over-boiled world in climatic and moral decline, a mystery, a geisha, kanji clues, goats aplenty, several murders, the obligatory femme fatale, and an array of sweaty red herrings.

The novel I've been hacking away at for an absolute age (with huge thanks to Kristopher Young, Bob Young, and the crew at Another Sky Press in the US, plus insanely cool cover art by Scott Campbell), in the process helping me to shed 12kg over the past few months - an editing diet... nifty! - is about to be published next month.

If you're at all interested you can keep an eye on things on this sista/bruvva blog thingy: TSMG Updates.

In the meantime, if you haven't caught a glimpse of this flick (below) already, it's time you should - chances are it'll put you in solid with me once you do so, even if I'm ne'er the wiser. ;)

Tokyo Tower vs. Tokyo Sky Tree!

It seemed somehow fitting when, in late May 2008 at the 12th Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF 2008), a charming, quirky little anime feature titled Tokyo Marble Chocolate was awarded the Grand Prize in the Feature Film Category.

After all, much of the anime’s unfolding romantic comedy and poignant philosophizing about love and life in contemporary Tokyo takes place around Tokyo Tower – an obelisk that in 2008 also celebrated its 50th anniversary.

While there are a lot of other symbols of Japan that weigh in much older and further tip the scale in the history stakes, when you're debating the preeminent visual icon in Japan's capital city, and its more famous ones, you can’t possibly ignore Tokyo Tower.

Besides, it’s impossible to miss the tower – painted, as it is, in vivid red and white and gorgeously spot lit after hours. Stature-wise, it reaches upward to a peak of 333 meters, thus edging out its earlier doppelgänger, the Eiffel Tower, by around nine to 13 meters, depending on whether or not you include their antennas in the equation.

Tokyo Tower also continues to dominate the skyline as the world's tallest self-supporting steel tower, easily seen from the Imperial Palace and Roppongi. It boasts an otaku-revered antenna that broadcasts all that vital anime we watch on TV stations here in Tokyo like NHK, TBS and Fuji TV.

The past 50 years have been quite remarkable, and monumental unto themselves in terms of the life of this tower and its impact on this city as well as Japan and the outside world.

It dominates the back-drop in the recent, nostalgic feature movies, Always: Sunset on Third Street, parts one and two, that were directed by Takashi Yamazaki (of Returner fame) and set in the late 1950s, during the tower’s construction. And our metallic altar was used as the titular name of a movie in 2005 that starred Junichi Okada, who more recently did the voice of Prince Arren in Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea.

And just two years ago the movie Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad, starred the very cool Joe Odagiri (Shinobi).

In contrast to such dramatic attention, however, the tower has long been Godzilla’s and Mothra’s favoured plaything, and in manga has been particularly ill-treated: it was sucker-punched in Geobreeders, became the center of paranormal activities in the pages of Tokyo Babylon, and was the focus of some alcoholic excess in Wings of Wishes.

The tower also features heavily in anime.

It was shown destroyed in Cybuster, then popped up in a more romantic light – before being partially ransacked – in Sailor Moon, as well as in other anime like Card Captor Sakura, X, Magic Knight Rayearth, Angelic Layer, Someday’s Dreamers, and Burn Up Excess.

In fact if the anime outings are to be believed, the structure is actually a magnet for mayhem and a portal for inter-dimensional mysticism.


All the iconoclasm may be fictional, but the tower came a hair’s breath from destruction in September 2004, when a 747 accidentally passed within 200 meters, en route to Haneda Airport.

And yet, while the monument may have been crushed, squashed, melted down, transformed, and manhandled like a mammoth toothpick, and represent an object of some cynicism in younger Japanese’s minds, Tokyo Tower wasn’t raised for ruin alone.

Twenty-something Japanese English language school advisor, Shoko Shima, sees the tower in a more positive light. “For me, Tokyo tower is one of the symbols of Tokyo. When I see it, it makes me feel nostalgic. It’s not cute, nor interesting, but I think we need it in Tokyo as an older symbol of the city.”

And acclaimed electronic music producer, Toshiyuki Yasuda (Robo*Braziliera), says that “It is most assuredly a romantic symbol in mid-Tokyo.”

The obelisk was designed by Nikken Sekkei Ltd., and constructed in 1958 by Takenaka Corporation, Japan's oldest architecture and engineering and firm, at a cost hovering at around ¥2.8 billion.

It has an average 2.6 million visitors per annum and has been romantically illuminated at night – with 164 globes that change color according to the season – for enamoured young and old couples alike since 1989. Many of them visit the first-floor aquarium, which houses some 50,000 fish, or the wax museum on the third floor, and then the self-explanatory Trick Art Museum. The view itself is an optional extra.

On a clear day, Mt. Fuji is visible from the tower. On most days, unfortunately, it isn't.

Regardless, all this is set to end in a way when Tower Tower is superseded by its younger, more virile replacement, the Tokyo Sky Tree – currently being constructed in Sumida (see below, this week) - which aims at almost twice the size of our existing aging hero.

Turns out that Tokyo Tower just isn't tall enough in the 21st century to offer complete digital terrestrial television broadcasting coverage - but at least this may mean that Ol' Red will be left in a secure retirement from attacks by Godzilla and his kaiju cronies.

The Tokyo Sky Tree will just have to lean to deal with the abuse.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - the novel

Big news for myself this week relates not to hack muzak but hack writing - my novel is finally starting to emerge from its 18-month sub-editing purgatory!

The first 2 chapters are now online as a bit of a freebie teaser HERE; there're
some typos I noticed the other day, but otherwise pretty much tweaked into (final) submission, with huge thanks to Kristopher and Bob - the two best people I could ever imagine helping me to reign in the beast - and gratitude going out to Scott Campbell on cover art chores (the version here is the initial rough sketch Scott ran by me way back at the beginning of the editing process).

So, Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat is finally going to be published in 2010... thank god! The people generously running with it are this way cool, semi-punk, ideologically wunderbar publisher in the U.S. called Another Sky Press and I love 'em to death.

Along with Scott, they've become mates and a virtual family over the course of the past 540-odd days of fine-tuning.

So what's the novel all about, anyway? I think my editor, awesome scribe Kristopher Young, put it way better than I ever could in a recent interview with Verbicide:

"We’ve spent... wow, at least a year at this point hammering his novel into shape. It’s a huge undertaking; he’s got this brilliant voice that only he could have, but it needs fine tuning, so that’s what we’re doing. The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really — noir-ish, subtly sci-fi, hard boiled, futuristic. Think Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or better yet, The Third Man. And a shot of some good bourbon."

Anyway, enough blabbering.

If anyone here ever gets time, have a peek, download the PDF, and I hope to hell you dig... No correspondence, however, will probably be entered into as I'm just too goddamned busy finishing this baby and the off-beat travel tome!

Andrezzz