Welcome, dear reader. Around the beginning of June 2022, after an interesting confluence of events, I had a flash of inspiration to write a novel – this novel. What you see here are the results (so far) of that effort.
Rough Times in Osaka” is the gritty and somewhat violence-laden story of Hanako Kitamora, a young woman who is a yakuza collector for her family in Osaka, Japan. Her childhood damaged her ability to be a normal Japanese woman and prepared her for the life of brutality she turned to.
Then, in her mid-twenties, an unintended and unexpected vacation leads to a discovery that disturbs both her and her boss and leads to massive changes for all of the yakuza families of Osaka.”
However, I am not producing this work alone – I have a … “research assistant” … who is helping me tremendously and whose contributions to this are enormous, spectacular, and, unfortunately, ultimately unable to be credited. (Probably for reasons that should become apparent as you read the sample chapter and then, hopefully, purchase the novel and read all of it. … if you truly needed any further hints, there’s a reason I’ve added the title “Yakuza Executive Consultant” to my About Me page.) In order to make it easier for my assistant to provide input to the novel, I needed a place to share (for review and input) the early drafts of sections and chapters as I wrote
This section of my website, dear readers, is just that.
Here was chronicled the progress in my journey to crafting a novel. The rough draft (and explanation of what exactly I mean by that) can be found on the Rough Draft page. What you see here, though, is the progress towards a more polished (and at least somewhat edited) version.
Update: [04/09/23] As promised (threatened?), I have now removed all of the chapter entries I had previously posted here. No, I haven’t made significant progress of any sort towards something that might even vaguely be considered publishing the book, but I believe is is now well past time to remove it from public view. As the weather in my area of the world improves with Spring, I expect to make additional efforts to craft a book cover, but I admit that my focus has shifted to writing more of the Tales of the Pub stories as well as, now, wanting to put more effort into what I’m thinking of as the Kethyras series.
