Happy New Year!!!
Happy New Year from Tokyo! I hope 2022 brings you bountiful joy, robust health, sizzling romances, and other good reading.
There are many Japanese New Year traditions, and this year we followed a few. We ate soba noodles on New Year’s Eve for longevity. Long noodles = long life. We watched the first sunrise of the year. I made ozoni, a mostly vegetable soup with mochi pounded rice. It’s supposed to fortify our health. We also visited the local temple. Usually, the atmosphere is quite festive, but this year it was more subdued. Hopefully, we’re getting 2022 started off right.
These days I’m finishing the first draft of the manuscript I call Heat of Tokyo. Candler thinks it sounds like a buddy cop movie from the 1980’s. Eddie Murphy, Jackie Chan? Although intriguing and not entirely lacking in romantic potential, I’m not going in that direction. This story is set in 1903 and focuses on the romance between an American woman escaping a tarnished reputation and a Japanese baseball player with baggage of his own.
Speaking of movies from many decades ago and baseball, have you seen the Tom Selleck flick, Mr. Baseball? Confession time … my interest in Japanese baseball is pretty much owed to the movie. I’ve seen it multiple times. Although the ethnic stereotyping hasn’t aged well, the comedic vibe is strong, and Tom Selleck makes for a very believable grumpy goofball in all his hairy glory.
While researching baseball in Japan, I learned that when baseball was introduced in the nineteenth century, there wasn’t a tradition of team sports. The closest thing they had was the martial arts. So, when baseball arrived, they treated the sport like the martial arts in their training methods and in regarding the pitcher and the batter as a sparring duo.
Also, the first few times a Japanese team played an American team, the Japanese won. The day the Americans finally beat the Japanese team? On the Fourth of July, of course. Much more about that in Heat of Tokyo (or whatever we’ll call it). If you’re curious, you can read about the 1896 series of games here: https://galbraith.press/legendary-1896-ycac-vs-ichiko-baseball-games/
Talk of Tokyo, the first book in the Tokyo Whispers series and Scandals of Tokyo, the series prequel, are available now. I’m grateful for reviews from those who’ve read it.
For those who haven’t read it yet, here are the buy links:
eBooks: Boroughs Publishing Group (Talk of Tokyo), Boroughs Publishing Group (Scandals of Tokyo) Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBooks.
Print: Amazon (Talk of Tokyo).
Are you a reviewer on Goodreads, BookBub, or online retailers? Let me know at heather@heatherhallman.com.
My warmest wishes for a toasty January,
Heather
