Burn & Learn with American Fuji

Eric, why would readers of American Fuji appreciate your novel Burn & Learn?

You and I share a belief that readers are the most important people in the novel. What I mean is that we both do our best to be clear about the story we are telling, and we try to make our novels clear and accessible.

And accurate.

Each of us uses our strengths. You are a plotter, and your plots are surprising and logical and satisfying to me. Plotting is not my strength, so I made a strength of focusing on the event, which others might call scene, but to me, scene implies a narrative arc whereas an event begins and ends where the brilliance is, and that is all I am interested in. I provide a number of events in Burn & Learn, and I leave them for readers to assemble. You make your novels fun, and I try to do the same. No matter what the subject matter, we work to make the telling intriguing. We both employ all aspects of Eastern thought, belief, and action and work where the conflicts and impacts of Eastern and Western worlds are. Both of us are knowledgeable enough about the two spheres that we can use the connections and contradictions to the advantage of the story.

You also wrote a terrific book of poetry, Portable Planet, which features material about Japan. I've used your poems in many of my college classes.

Thank you for the kind words.

Thanks for the photo of you time-travelling from the 1970s into the 1990s. I remember that day--twice!

Next up: Eric as Fred Flintsone