Week 29 - Western

Photo by Rene Rauschenberger

​I think this winter has started out on the wrong foot, at least for me - after being sick for a month in September-October and just recently catching up with posting my Author Versus AI videos, I got sick again last week and am just catching up AGAIN.

​Ugh. Universe, I think I've had my quota - no more illnesses for me, okay? Thanks. :)

So, what book did I write two weeks ago? It was a super fun genre mashup that combined Japanese samurai in the Wild West. It's called The Wild East, and here's what it's about:

​In this new alternate history novel, several groups of samurai and their households are sent to the “Wild West” in two waves—one in 1844 and one in 1854—by order of the emperors ruling over Japan. As treaty negotiations between the East and the West advance when Western powers try to force the Japanese empire to open its borders to trade, Emperor Osahito orders the settlers to stay and establish a permanent town in the newly ceded Mexican lands as a base for trade and, more importantly, espionage.
 
During and after the Civil War, the town of Nyūnagasaki (New Nagasaki) becomes integrated by Europeans and several local indigenous populations, and tensions go high between these three disparate groups. Events come to a boiling point when a group of cowboy vigilantes try to drive these “foreign devils” away.
 
But Sheriff Shirō Hattori and Mayor Hōjō Bashō aren’t going to cede their hard-won settlement so easily. The round up a posse to combat the interlopers trying to take over their turf, and start an epic battle that will not only span many miles, but generations to come.

I'll shortly post the excerpt for the new book, so stay tuned!