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It’s time for GCC again. This Wendy Nelson Tokunaga drops in to discuss Midori by Moonlight.

About the book:

MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT is a comic, cross-cultural novel, out now, that has a mouth-watering pastry theme running through it. What happens when a young woman, fresh from Japan and too independent for Japanese society, finds herself suddenly lost in translation in San Francisco as she searches for her American Dream and the perfect

Cover:

About the Author:

Wendy Nelson Tokunaga was born and raised in San Francisco. She attended Lowell High School and San Francisco State University, and is now finishing up her MFA in Writing at University of San Francisco. Her short stories have appeared in The Abiko Literary Quarterly Review, The Plaza, and Yomimono among others. 

She is the author of the self-published novel, No Kidding, which won an award in the Mainstream/Literary Fiction category of the Writer’s Digest Best Self-Published Book Awards in 2002, and MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT, published in September 2007 by St. Martin’s Griffin. Tokunaga lives by the ocean thirty miles south of San Francisco with her Osaka-born surfer-dude husband, Manabu Tokunaga and their Burmese cat named Meow. Drawing on her extensive experience in studying the Japanese language and culture; living, working and playing in Japan, and her cross-cultural marriage, she explores the theme of why some people feel the need to trade their native culture for a new one.

Wendy’s Answers to the RosettWrites Q & A:

Dream vacation destination?

~ Maui

You’ve just won the lottery. What’s the first thing you do/buy?

~ Condos in Tokyo, Paris and Maui.

Favorite mystery/thriller movie?

~ “Michael Clayton”

Favorite junk food?

~ French fries

What’s one food you absolutely can’t stand?

~ Refried beans

Paper or plastic?

~ Paper

What’s one talent you wish you had?

~ Ability to draw

M&Ms or Godiva?

~ Both

Favorite time of day?

~ Around two o’clock in the afternoon on a warm, sunny day.

Tell us a little about your book. Did an event or idea inspire the book?

~ MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT is about 30-year-old fresh from Japan Midori Saito, who finds herself lost in translation in San Francisco searching for her American dream and the perfect dessert. It is inspired by my Japanese husband’s story of how he never felt he fit in Japan and ended up trading his native culture for a new one when he settled in the United States.

What’s your writing style? Outline or no outline?

~ Outline

What do you wish you’d known about either the craft of writing or the business of publishing when you first started writing?

~ That in the publishing business things move either very fast or very slow and there is no in between.

What’s up next for you? What are you working on now?

~ I just finished my second book and have sent it to the publisher. Here’s a brief description: After receiving a puzzling phone call and a box full of mysteries, 33-year-old fledgling singer Celeste Duncan is off to Japan to search for a long, lost relative who could hold the key to the identity of the father she never knew. She stumbles head first into a weird, wonderful world where nothing is quite as it seems; a land of gaijin worshippers, karaoke boxes, sushi fortune tellers, and unbearably perky TV stars. But when she learns to sing a Japanese song called “The Wishing Star” Celeste finds herself on a path to finding real love, understanding the true meaning of family and, most of all, discovering her own voice.