Annu Mari as Misako in Branded to Kill
Annu Mari as Misako in Branded to Kill

Since finishing Scribbles of the Empress, I’ve been struggling to figure out what to write next. I was kicking around three novel ideas but ended up writing a ten minute stage play that I plan to enter in some contests and if I get a production somewhere (fingers crossed), I’ll travel to where ever and watch it performed. The play is called The Tattooed Dentist. The play centers around being true to yourself and making your parents proud. The play feels very personal. I also wrote it with the hopes of giving a lead role to an elderly woman and calling for Asian actors.

I recently watched the Outrage Trilogy which is a series of three yakuza films. I loved it so much that I watched them twice. Then I found a list on IMDB of the 50 best yakuza films. I’ve watched a lot of samurai films, but this is new to me and I’m really enjoying it. I watched Branded to Kill (1967) and loved how dark it was and how it appeared visually. The character of Misako inspired me to consider taking on the novelization of my screenplay Filming Tara Raikatuji. So now that The Tattooed Dentist is basically complete, I printed a copy of the screenplay so I can read it and see if I still feel motivated to make Tara my next protagonist.

Share This Post

My writing sprint was successful. It was helped by taking three Fridays off in a row in order to give myself three, three-day weekends. I always write more per day during a three-day weekend than I do in a regular weekend. Today is the end of my third three-day weekend. Twenty-four days after conceiving of the idea for my ghost story, I finished writing it. I titled it The Last Midnight. It’s fifty-six chapters and just under 17,000 words, making it a short novella.

I didn’t write every one of those twenty-four days. There were a couple days where depression got the best of me, and more days when I was too stressed and exhausted from my day job.

This is a different book for me. For starters, the chapters alternate between the points-of-view of two characters, one character written in first person, the other in third. This structure is something I’m considering doing if I ever get around to writing Filming Tara Raikatuji as a novel. This will be the first time I publish something in third person which I’ve thus far been too afraid to do as I feel like there is more responsibility required when writing in the third person.

Though this is another story about love, I really struggled to write it. A couple of days ago it occurred to me why. In The Scribbled Victims, Yelena’s love for Marcel is lost love, and the love between Yelena and Orly is the love between mother and child. In Scribbling the Eternal, the love between Orly and Mirela is dysfunctional, and the love between Orly and Berthold is unrequited. In The Last Midnight the love may be a tad impulsive or even obsessive, but it’s the closest thing I’ve written to healthy romantic love. I don’t know if I succeeded at expressing it. Only Amirah has seen it and on Friday when I sent her the ending chapters, she sent me back a video crying after finishing them. That felt like a success, but I just don’t know if the love is believable. I hope so. I really want people to love this love story.

After I post this, I’m going to email my beta readers to ask if any of them would like to give feedback. I’ve written this so quickly that this will be the first time my beta readers will see something all at once, rather than a few chapters at a time. I’m terrified of their responses, one beta reader especially. Wish me luck.

Share This Post