The Site: The reason for the site is pretty straightforward; I want to keep writing new stories. That said, most of what I have written has not been published. I doubt that’s a unique situation, but the fact remains. After having lost six months last year to a serious physical injury I have taken a step back and reassessed the goals of this project moving forward. Quite frankly, I can’t keep throwing the same ten stories at the brick wall of lit mags hoping to get one through the submission window and land on their site. My successes are well enjoyed and appreciated, but the numerous more eggs splattered against the brick are, admittedly, frustrating. Scorched earth, then. Publish everything myself in some form. To find an agent or company to publish and market an anthology would require financing or social networking and then subsequent editing. Perhaps only one of the three, or two or all of those three things. None of them I am able to accommodate. I have very little experience in web design, but the general tools are easy to use and thus get the same project done as well as my pursuit of print would but with much less capital investment. Ignorance of systems, lack of research. Still, it’s the method I chose.

Me: I don’t seem it from this, but I’m not a very serious person. I don’t think with a pen in hand, and I don’t format creatively. It is a compulsion, and an expulsion, which produces what I create. Usually at great distance from each other. It was really only that trilogy of stories in Trunk Space (Lathyrus, Dianthus, Jessamine) which came at once. The rest are separate by much farther. It’s kind of like puking, or like drinking heavily at the occasional party and throwing up in the bathroom. If there was one, that would be my creative process.

Ideation: I do not want to commit suicide nor do I believe suicide is a justified method of dealing with one’s emotions.

Professionalism: I lack it greatly. I am of the mindset, these days, that professionalism is something which has been highly exaggerated in its importance. Generally, nothings that serious. If you’re in court, sure, but me sending Dr. Jane Doe from Blah Blah University a two thousand word story about a college girl falling in love doesn’t need to be treated with the same gravity as the law.

Tone: If I’m not professional, and think that a story about a college girl falling in love isn’t that serious, then why should you take me seriously? My point there was strictly in regard to the affectation of the literary establishment—one I share. You shouldn’t take me seriously. You shouldn’t take anything seriously. You can listen to a well-read or well-delivered philosophical point and then chuckle with the person who said it to you by mentioning expired pickles or something. After all, “…a relaxed house is the most peaceful…”, as the good Ryuuta said. I’m 25 now and I’m still writing about young people navigating relationships. That’s funny. Laugh.

Obvious: Stating the obvious is something I do a lot. I don’t like being told something I already know, and I don’t like repeating myself. That’s my arrogance, but it’s true. I especially hate being misunderstood, so I will state the obvious to ensure the point was not overlooked. While working against that behavior is probably more professional, we already covered that I’m not. It’s best, and more honest, to be straight up about it. Or maybe not. Maybe you think I’m a liar and performative in every aspect of this page and those on the site. Touche, I’ve got no material proof to one or the other.

Subject: I don’t like writing stories in America. My mentors lived in Japan, in Tokyo and the countryside, so I’ve done a fair amount of research into those locales and find them quite enjoyable. That’s called preference. It’s not a unique preference, I’ll admit, but it’s at least honest.

Right: I have none. I do it because I want to. If you want to read stories like mine but of a higher caliber, You should read Japanese Literature.

Recommendation: In a modern light, I’m only familiar with the work of Murakami, particularly Kafka on the Shore. Though I do “own” the Audible version of Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, the synopsis of which I find interesting though I have yet to turn it on. In the late Showa my only authorial influence and mentor was one Yuko Tsushima, Territory of Light and Nature Boy. My primary influence is Osamu Dazai, particularly his short stories “Early Light”, “One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji”, “Wish Fulfilled”, and his short novel “Schoolgirl”. I have read No Longer Human, Flowers of Buffoonery, and Villon’s Wife, but their impact on my style is less so than the aforementioned stories and generally I enjoy the former mentions more so than the latter. I have read Setting Sun. There is a short story collection of Dazai’s called Blue Bamboo which I have lost my copy of. But within is the titular story and many more which I highly enjoy. I live in the early to late Showa mostly. Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow is a very good story, and generally, despite his objectionable end, I do find his work as an author to be interesting despite having not delved too deeply into it as of this time. I find that my other major enjoyment from this period is Yasunari Kawabata; Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and Beauty and Sadness are the three which I am fortunate to be familiar with. Going back a few years I love anything Akutagawa that I can get my hands on. I kept a collection of his stories on the headboard of my bed for ease-of-access. Before him there’s Soseki, I Am A Cat and Kokoro, Sanshiro, these are pretty generic additions but they must be mentioned. I mean, it’d be a surprise for them to not be mentioned. Saying you like Japanese literature and not even mentioning Soseki is like talking about theatre and not saying a word about Shakespeare. Anyway, there are numerous other writers who I have read bits and pieces of like Ango and Tanizaki, but I’ve had less time to delve into their work than I have given to the previously mentioned, so pardon me that oversight.

Other: I’ve also read several of the Strugatsky’s stories, and quite a few stories from Pelevin. The less heavy stuff I’ve read includes Heinlein and Glukhovsky, and I’ve some self-study in stuff you’d hear from a half-dozen other people who study this type of thing; Fitzgerald, Conrad, the high school book report suspects, you know the story, you’ve read all of them too. I’m just trying to get it across that I’m not a total idiot and I’m not “better than that”. I have tried to read philosophy but it bores me to no end. I don’t know numbers and math well enough for Descartes, I get sleepy every time I try to even open my thick copy of Leviathan, and to be perfectly frank I like Plato but find the foundational texts—those Greeks to whom we owe the “privilege” of studying philosophy—tiring to actually physically read because it’s oodles of text about stuff you’ve heard repeated to you ad nauseum with maybe one or two stimulating thoughts for every hundred. I would say the one man who I actually do like to actively read, but that’s partially because it’s nearly like reading pulp, it’s philosophy on uppers. If I said his name the game would be up as well—provided, of course, you can’t already guess.

Music: There are numerous references to music in the stories on this site. Some blatant, others less so. Music often inspires my moods, and those moods produce much of the work I create. The primary fields being prog (Klaatu, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, etc.), Rock/Pop (The Beatles, Queen, Metallica, Weezer, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.), and various Japanese genre’s like JPop, City Pop, and JRock. (Nakamura Emi, MOROHA, Creepy Nuts, Keina Suda, siinamota, ANRI, Mariya Takeuchi, Sheena Ringo, Yuragi, and especially Yumi Matsutoya—Yumi Arai, the first album, particularly that titular song “Vapor Trail”—and many more that would make this longer than you care to read). The effect of music on my writing is such that, when struck by a special mood, I will put the song in question on repeat while writing. There are many homages to the music which spawned the writing on this site. If you know, you know. If you don’t, it won’t really stick out for the most part. I wear things on my sleeve. I like music, I get emotional and write. It’s not much deeper than that.

Defensive: Yep, to a fault.

Women: Genuinely I am laughing that I ended up choosing that for the section header. Simply there is a fact that I write a lot of female perspectives. So, to the question of why and the suppositions: I don’t know. I’ve retroactively attributed some of it to an internal inability to write a male character with the emotional vulnerability to internalize like many of my characters do because of un-progressive subconscious feelings about what a man should be like. But that’s probably bullshit, and I’ve written enough about Bullshit. The first novel I read which inspired me to the pen was The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, which, despite being written by a man, was in a female voice. Same with Schoolgirl, Dazai was a man. “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”, after all.

Conclusion: Did you gain anything from reading this letter? If so, good. If not, fine. It’s not important in relation to the stories on the site. Superfluous as a rule. Nonsensical as a matter of course. It’s a roundabout way of me getting across to you that I’m not terribly important compared to the stories themselves. That’s not to say they’re necessarily important per se, but what I mean is more that you are more likely to gain something from reading the story and not knowing a single thing about me than you are knowing my whole life story and then reading the piece. I’m not a full supporter of that “New Critics” thought process of divorcing the artist entirely from the art. Man is no island, and neither is art. We exist in our time and the work exists with us. Timeless work is of a higher level, and rare. To treat all art like you treat the Masters is a bit much. Again, my infinite battle against over-estimation and aggrandization. My inflated ego that says the stories I write have some small value more in relation to me than they do divorced from me. My hot take? Art is subjective. Radical, I know. I’m getting older and I don’t have the time to be wishy washy about it—said by someone who is only 25 by the way, but then 25 is the age of an adult, so you’d better have something resembling an opinion by then.

Truth: I want people to read my stories. That’s not happening, and I don’t like that. That’s narcissism. Okay, so now what? Well, don’t get affirmation of your passion I guess. Let it just be the “writing thing” and let people not care about it. I don’t like that either, I might not like that more than just accepting that I’m a narcissist who wants to force his fiction onto others. Okay, but then what makes that narcissist different from any other writer?

That one writes sectioned letters on his website.

Have fun reading these stories, I hope you like them.

TJ Daly