Amnesia of June Bugs is a Bookshop New Release Title!

A Bookshop New Release!

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A Bookshop New Release! ::

I know it’s all about the little victories as a small press author, so of course I’m fucking ecstatic that Amnesia of June Bugs was one of just nine books included this week in Bookshop’s new releases! Sharing space with Viola Davis and Vaishnavi Patel, among others, my debut novel is off to a rocking start and I’m so grateful. Support your local bookstore by buying your copy here.

Pub Day for Amnesia of June Bugs!

It’s official! Amnesia of June Bugs is now out there in the world! I really can’t wrap my mind around that fact, least of all because for so much of my life, this novel has been inside my head, contained in my thoughts, stuck in the fortress of my heart, and sentenced to the prison of Word document. If you’ve been reading my blog, then you know I submitted a version of this novel to the Kaya Press editorial board back in 2015 after having worked with the smart and savvy Sunyoung Lee for two years on all the things the board wanted us to change (which we did dutifully). And while I was totally gutted after the second and final rejection, I’m happy now to see this novel reaching its audience at a moment in time when I think readers are craving complex, non-reductive narratives about BIPOC characters and their unique navigation of reality in this world. So, do yourself a favor and grab yourself a copy if you haven’t already! My debut novel will do the rest!

Cover Reveal for Amnesia of June Bugs!

After months and really, years of anticipation, my debut novel, Amnesia of June Bugs has a cover at long last! I can’t even begin to tell you how exciting, how deeply fulfilling, how incredibly satisfying it is to see the face of this novel. Part of my excitement is based on the fact that this novel was my MFA thesis at Notre Dame. I finished a version of this novel back in 2007 and then spent the next twelve years revising it over and over again, mostly on my own and then later with Sunyoung at Kaya Books, whose brilliance really helped push this book and who fought so hard for it. She lit did everything in her power to get the board to accept it for publication. When they rejected this novel, my heart was broken for years. It hurt even more that this book was rejected by the only mainland AAPI press in the whole country. Talk about damage to my soul!

The truth is, I actually abandoned this novel for years, heartbroken and afraid that I was the only one who saw its literary worth. In the back of my mind, though, there was this silent voice in my head that knew the board was wrong, that they didn’t know a dope book when they saw one. I believed that this book would someday find the right publisher, that with enough revision, dedication, dedication, and hard work, I could not only turn this novel in the tiny little masterpiece that it is today, but just as importantly, find the right home for it. I just needed to find the right (small) press that published transgressive work, that sought books that were audacious, creative, ambitious, multimodal, highly imaginative, beautiful, and a little experimental, and that’s exactly what I found when Leland, the editor at 7.13 Books, emailed me and said his 2021 catalog was full but that he was open to bumping my novel to the 2022 catalog. I said fuck yes and now my baby has a face!

Stay tuned for updates, interviews, reviews, and more!

So Now I'm a LA Writer

LB & I decided to move back to LA back in January of 2021 after she was offered an amazing job opportunity at CHLA, a decision that was difficult for me because of how much I’ve loved (working with) my BFA & MFA students & how much I valued my colleagues at BG, but also easy in other ways since we’ve lived in LA for over ten years, always coming back here over & over again. At some point, & I’m not quite sure where the timeline lands exactly, LA & not Chicago became our home even though we’re both from Chicago & even though we met each other in Chicago with a little help from MySpace. But that’s another story.

During the last pandemic wave in the winter of 2019/2020, I was completely stuck in Ann Arbor, constantly fighting depression, immobility, anxiety, fear, & hopelessness. Much of that was the pandemic, obviously, but much of that was also A2 too. After a while, LB & I ended up eating out at the same 3-4 restaurants, we did the exact same walk around the neighborhood 3-4 times a week, even my classes felt redundant, I found myself saying the same shit over & over again in response to workshopped manuscripts. I felt like I was stuck in a perpetual loop in Michigan & I wanted desperately to come back to LA, not only because this city was always the space before we tried to start a family, the space before the Covid-19 pandemic hit (because of when we left in June 2019), the place where I got my PhD before the job search, but also because this city shaped me. I became a doctor here. I became an agented writer here. I sold my first novel here. I revised my memoir here, which I sold in Michigan. I published a piece of flash nonfiction in the New York Times here. I got my half sleeve here. I got my first lectureship here. I visited my homeland from LA. I met my Japanese family while in LA. I fully developed my style here (half street style, half urban Asian preppy). LB became a supervisor here. We adopted Gogo! here. IOW, LA made me the person I am today & I kinda like that person. I relate to that person. I understand that person.

So coming back here felt like the most normal thing in the world & also the most surreal too since the time dilation I’d experienced back in the Midwest during the collapse of the world distorted my sense of how much time had passed & how slowly it was passing. Now, I’m a LA writer, I’m starting to schedule a remote tour with indie bookstores across the country, I’m working on ways to promote Counterfactual Love Stories, but I don’t fully know yet what that means. It’s something I can only understand after a couple years. Yes, I have three books coming out in the next 12 months, which I’m really grateful for (& have worked so hard for). But I don’t know yet where I’m headed, what the next step in my writing career is, whether I’ll end up writing screenplays, scoring a gig at Buzzfeed, working as an extra for Central Casting (because why the fuck not), doing freelance work as a copy editor, selling new post-rock & electronic music & tour merchandise from my Love, Amnesia, & Dream Tour, or something completely unrelated to writing & art.

TBH, I have no idea, but I have this (probably naive, definitely irrational) hope that everything is going to work out. It might be the beautiful weather that I just can’t take for granted after two winters locked in Michigan. It might be the superabundance of artists, writers, screenwriters, yoga fanatics, juice drinkers, Prius & Tesla drivers, actors, models, & influencers here. It might be the panoply of vegan restaurants, sushi joints, & cafés that serve perfect vanilla oat lattés here, but whatever it is, LA has become the place where I belong, where I thrive, where my partner can thrive, where it feels not only acceptable to not have kids or a typical nuclear family, but sometimes even necessary!

I’m happy we came back to LA. I’m happy to be here and see what my future holds for me now that I’ve centered LB for once & begun the next phase of my writing career as someone whose work is coming to a theater near you very soon.

The Love, Amnesia, & Dream Tour Poster (2021-2023) is Now Available!

Well, one of the things I longed for the most after I realized that I would have 3 books coming out in the span of nine months (which is every bit of a logistical nightmare as you can imagine, but also a beautiful problem to have if we’re being totally honest), was a poster for my book tour for the next two years. I wanted a tour or a “tour” or both in order to connect the three separate books (and genres) together. I also wanted a poster to graphically situate, connect, and unify my three books while also giving something to people like me who crave tangibility, especially tangible art and literary merchandise.

So, while this poster was conceptually created by me, it was completely designed, imagined, and realized by Aaron Draplin, who is an artistic genius. I’m so in love with this poster I’m about to frame it myself and hang it in my office. I might also consider raffling one or two free copies of this poster once Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments is out in the world.

Revisions Are Done!

I've been working tirelessly with my agent on my revisions for The Ninjas of My Greater Self for a solid three months now and we are finally done with the substantive edits, which feels fucking incredible.  I'm just waiting for a few blurbs from some literary superstars and then my agent will officially begin sending out cover letters to editors.  I'm exhilarated about this.  I'm also mildly terrified.  I mean, these next three to four months will shape my literary debut in the New York publishing world and also have a major impact on my literary career.  I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it's actually true.  I've been waiting my whole life for this moment.  My fingers are crossed.

3rd Piece Accepted in 2016

"Castaways and Worry Dolls," one of my self-contained chapters from my novella The Laws of Rhetoric and Drowning was accepted today by Joyland magazine and will be published in October 2016. While you're there, check out my friend Bonnie Nadzam's piece "4 Ghost Stories."

AWP Conference 2016 (LA)

Remarkably, it's been ten fucking years since I've been back at AWP.  The last time was in Atlanta in 2006, back when I was a confident, driven, ambitious, but also paradoxically naive, trusting, and hyperidealistic MFA student whose only aspiration at the time was to publish short stories and essays in the best literary journals possible.  The idea of publishing novels was fundamentally foreign to me for the simple reason that I hadn't written a novel yet, nor a collection of short stories.  There was no lofty expectation because there was no product.

Ten years later, I'm both amazed, horrified, and also humbled by how differently I look at the publishing industry in general and at my literary ambitions in particular.  Unlike ten years ago, I have a bunch of stories and essays published in a number of legit literary journals, but it's no longer enough for me anymore.  Also, unlike ten years ago, I have several manuscripts that are ready for publication.  I have more than a few realistic publishing possibilities with several awesome indie presses (though they remain merely possibilities until those manuscripts become material objects of art for public consumption).  I have--I always seem to have--several agents and a senior agent at a major New York publishing house reading my novels.  I have two rad lecturer positions at UCI and CSUN teaching literature, writing, rhetoric, research, and creative writing.  I have probably too many advanced degrees now, but whatevs.  I have a network and a community of friends (many of them APIA writers, but certainly not all of them).  I have some fans who follow me on Twitter because of the things I've written.  Most importantly, I feel--possibly irrationally, possibly delusionally--that I finally have momemtum in my writing career.  So, I apologize for this self-indulgent recollection, but the point I'm making here is that I see this conference in such a different way than I did before because I bring a different emotional and professional technology than before.  I feel like I can almost touch my future, as absurd as that sounds.

Among other things I did at this year's AWP, I got to:

1.  Attend readings from Claudia Rankine, Eula Biss, Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Dyer, Leslie Jamison, Maggie Nelson, my friend and mentor Percival Everett, Shonda Buchanan, Judy Grahn, Joyce Carol Oates, and Peter Ho Davies, which were all pretty amazing.

2.  Attend a fascinating (and inditing!) panel by Adam Atkinson, Lillian Yvonne-Betram, and Sarah Vap (an SC student) that presented the results of its survey and data collection about race and racial representation within PhD programs in Creative Writing.

3.  Talk to editors of several of my favorite indie presses and do a tiny bit of politicking (almost all of it unplanned and unintentional)

4.  Make new writing friends and also do some networking (which never hurts in this business)

5.  Most importantly, meet up with and reconnect with former professors and old friends from my MFA and PhD years, many of whom I haven't seen in years and whom I've missed, sometimes terribly, including Steve Tomasula, Marc Irwin, Joshua Bernstein, Chris Santiago, Lily Hoang, Gwendolyn Oxenham, Casey and Denise Hill, Heather Dundas, David St. John, and Percival Everett (who hugged me and then said, "What's going on, brother?")

6.  Buy a shitload of books and literary journals from indie presses

7.  Remember again why I'm a writer, a writer before I'm anything else in the professional and artistic domains

This Will Sound like a CIA Cypher

I wish I could give more specific deetz about this astonishing development, but I just can't.  It's just not possible.  This is the one thing I can tell you in my infinite vocabulary of vagueness:  one of the most respected editors at one of the most respected publishing houses is now reading The Ninjas of My Greater Self.  I can't even tell you how it worked out this way because that too, my dear reader and anonymous friend, is top secret, but suffice it to say, this is a rare and amazing opportunity.  I really don't know what's going to come of this, and I realize the odds still aren't in my favor even with this opportunity because publishing is a motherfucking business not an art gallery, but for the past ten years of my life, it's felt like literary agents (not talent or vision or even the product) have been my greatest obstacles to publication, and for a few weeks or months or however long it takes this incredibly gracious and brilliant editor to read my novel, that obstacle has been removed.  This is the first time I can say that.

Aragi Agency Asks for Full Manuscript of Amnesia

At this point, it's just a request for a full manuscript.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Still, it's hard not being a tiny bit giddy when Frances Coady, one of the two stellar agents at Nicole Aragi's top-shelf agency, asks for an exclusive of your debut novel (which I couldn't give her exclusively since I already have three other agents reading full manuscripts).  I know that Frances Coady is a widely respected, admired, even feared former publisher at Picador and Vintage.  I know she is a hands-on editor who works with authors line by line if necessary to strengthen not dilute a book's force.  I know she values and understands the importance of the graphic elements of a novel (e.g., the cover design, the format, possibly even the font).  I know that in the publishing world she is an absolute giant, both equal to but also complementary with, Nicole Aragi.  I know all of these things and honestly, it makes my head spin.  But I don't know the most important thing, namely, whether she'll like my novel.  That's the only thing that matters.  The only thing I care about right now.  I'll do my best not to freak out, but that's pretty much impossible . . .

Three Agents Read Full Manuscript of Amnesia of Junebugs

Well, if there's one thing I'm completely sure of right now, it's my ability to write a decent query letter.  I now have three (plus) agents reading full manuscripts of my debut novel, The Amnesia of Junebugs, which is pretty damn exciting.  I'm not surprised that AMNESIA is getting lots of interest from agents considering it's a transnational, multicultural, multiracial, urban, character-based, literary novel.  Right now, multicultural novels (and multicultural narratives in general) are in with America's changing demographic.  Linked short stories are in again too and AMNESIA straddles the space between a novel and a collection of linked stories (that come together at the end).  I'm cautiously optimistic (as I always am) because I think this novel is finally ready for prime time, but only time will tell.  Stay tuned!

Mean What You Say

My big wish for this upcoming month is that literary agents who state they want literary fiction in their agent profiles actually want literary fiction and not commercial fiction with a few literary flourishes.  I say this because having looked at some of the good rejections I've received the past couple of years, I've noticed most of these rejections were by literary agents who said they wanted literary fiction on their website but still rejected my manuscripts for being, well, literary and stuff.  It's complete speculation on my part, but here are some possible reasons for that:

1.  The agent prides her/himself on representing literary fiction but most of her/his client list is actually (or has become) commercial fiction, so including the category of "literary fiction" in their list of desired genres is more about how they see themselves as an agent and less about the kinds of manuscripts they actually sell to editors these days

2.  The literary agent has a divergent definition of literary fiction (that more and more resembles uptown fiction or top-tier commercial fiction), which is why s/he gets snarly when you declare foolishly that "literary fiction doesn't sell"

3.  The agent doesn't want to feel like a complete and absolute sellout because who does?

4.  S/he is keeping her/his options open, but literary fiction has become more aspirational than vocational.

5.  The term literary, as all other genres, just doesn't have stable genre conventions and doesn't mean shit anymore, so it's almost impossible to define and just as impossible to exclude other overlapping genre conventions

6.  All literature, in one amorphous sense, is literary (right?)

7.  If an agent could know ahead of time that a manuscript would sell for one million dollars, they'd probably accept it regardless of its genre, so literary fiction isn't out of the question technically

8.  The agent used to look for and sell literary fiction actively, but as the market has contracted and as Amazon has taken over the world, s/he has become much more conservative in the kinds of authors s/he represents, and commercial fiction has always had a better payout.  So, finding the next Pulitzer prize winner has become much less important than paying the mortgage

9.  The agent, once a brave and fearless bellwether in the publishing industry (whose "experimental" authors once violated rules of form, structure, and content gleefully) has dug his/her heels in and now rejects more and more literary fiction and accepts more cookbooks and dystopian YA knock-offs because there's already a pre-manufactured audience.  Yes, s/he has literary authors, but s/he's had them for thirty years and they're remnants of the golden age of literary fiction

10.  Why the hell not?

Ideas for the Future

I may rage against the machine when a particular rejection stings, but I'm the kind of dude that gets back up (literally) the next day and tries another way to make it work.  Writing, after all, is the one thing I'm great at.  Resilience is another.  And Ima figure out how to get my novels in the hands of my future readers because that's who I am.

In the next month, I'll be sending AMNESIA to several indie presses that I think might be receptive (among others, FC2 and Curbside Splendor) as well to a few laser-targeted literary agents who represent multicultural literary fiction.  One of them will be Zadie Smith's agent, because of the obvious similarities between The Amnesia of Junebugs and White Teeth. 

With a clean break from Kaya, I have the power to (re)consider all my options, not just the obvious ones.  I have the possibility of finding an even larger audience and a much more supportive editorial department.  I have the right to try again and find the right press for my manuscripts as a hapa writer of fiction. 

I may be bruised, but I'm still standing.  I'm still going to make this work.