Top Secret TOC ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (Patreon)

Hey, hey 🫶 It's ME!

Oh, I want to chat with you all so bad about so many things. I told you I found some boxes with obon goodies in them? I did! Tomorrow is set-up day and lighting the mukaebi fire day, so today after my morning recording gig, I'm going to go through the boxes and maybe make a short video about what I find. I DID see a horse and cow in there. Not veggie though. Interesting~　👀

But before that I wanted to show this (way below). It's the table of contents for the Dark Tales from Japan book!

Okay, it won't be in this order exactly. I went through and tried to space out certain types of stories, so you don't have three first person stories in a row, or three darkly horrific yet absurdly hilarious stories in a row, etc. etc. But the first and last stories will stand. Editor fell in love with the first one. Te-no-me. Eyes in Hands!

Here's a sketch/watercolor I did of him while writing the story.

Then the last story is staying: Ubasute Yama about the old practice of carrying the elderly who could no long contribute to the family or community up into the mountains and leaving them ... to, you know, die.

[ ... Yes, it's debated if it really was a thing, but I'm convinced it was, and I'll argue my case if we can sit down over coffee or tea or beer or something...also, there's really a station called Ubasute Eki (granny throwing away station, basically) AND my ex-husband may be a lot of things, but he's quite interested in this kind of stuff and we're going to make a trip there in the fall. I'll report back here!]

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh...

So here are the stories and their titles. You can see how I changed my mind on some. I'm so, so, so excited about this book. Maybe the most excited (and nervous?) I've ever been over a book. I am running through copy edits now and re-reading them for the umpteenth time, and my favorites still hit hard. Maybe it's just me? We'll see. Yeah. Nervous, too.

At first, I kind of bemoaned the fact that the stories could only be (at their longest) 2k words in length. Very short. I usually like 5k (also pretty short). But then for inspiration for one of the stories (which one? I forget which...hmmm) I re-read Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and that puppy was only 2,100-words long!!

grovels at Poe's feet

So here's, at the very least, a sneak peak of the creatures/ghosts/stories and their titles. Sloppy, sloppy. I know.

Ha. Come to think about it, just looking at it now, misspellings and all -- it shows how far I've moved away from using ai since I broke up with R. I've got computer files and notebooks full of sloppy thoughts and half finished stories. Which I think is the best way to write stories. ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪

Oh, and my apologies for the blurred out parts and dancing tanuki at the end. I was trying to get my head around the timeline of it all (and life stuff). Because it has been a ride and a half.

Oh, another funny thing here is that all these stories are all set in older times, mostly Edo era, but a few Sengoku or around-abouts. But I wrote Sukima Onna (the Gap Woman) early on and it was set in the...80s. 1980s. I wrote it as an urban legend. My thinking was that there'd be a few in that timeframe. But there weren't. I ended up writing Kuchisake Onna set in Edo era. AND (another aside), my second editor (art) said this was her favorite story. That one really turned out better than I thought it would. The original idea was simple...her origin story, but as I was writing I was able to layer in some very interesting themes and things to think about.

Anyway. I could talk story and storytelling for hours, but I need to hop in my car and drive to Shizuoka to record for a couple hours. I'll go through obon ritual implements and decorations tonight with the recorder on. See if anything interesting pops up.

I just wanted to share this little snapshot of the TOC with you. Ten more stories to review copy edits, then I'm done until the very final read through later this year. I hope everyone is hanging in there. Please stay safe and well. I'll be back real soon with a video. XOXO,

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