Michael Pronko

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve written five books, but it depends on how you count. I published three in Japanese, then two of those in English, one new collection of writing about Tokyo, and now two mystery/thriller novels. The third in the series is “written” but not rewritten (so not really written).

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Moving Blade has many inspirations. Mostly, the ideas come from living in Tokyo. I worked in the editorial section of The Japan Times, so that got me thinking about politics and how that intersects with people’s personal lives. I was also influenced by many of the old Japan hands, and China hands, I’ve met. Those older people were the basis for the character of Bernard Mattson. Originally, the book centered on him and his experiences, but by the time I finished it, the book starts out with his funeral.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Writing itself is an unusual habit, I would say. I love rewriting on the trains of Tokyo. Somehow the motion and the crowd really gets me to focus on the words. I can hear them in my head and make the sentences really sing like I want them to. Most of my good ideas come to me when I’m on the train, so I keep a notebook to jot them down, and a voice recorder for when I get off the train. Train time in Tokyo adds up.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
So many I can hardly list them. I’m always intrigued by the hard-boiled writers, Chandler, Hammett and Cain (the holy trilogy). James Ellroy, Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, Elmore Leonard. That’s not to say I write like them, but I find their stripped-down prose and unstoppable momentum fantastic. I also teach American Literature at university, so authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway and also American poets have a real grip on me.

What are you working on now?
The third in the Detective Hiroshi series. Tokyo Traffic. It’ll be rewritten and released by spring of 2019.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Well, there’s promotion and promotion. I like some sites which let my work come out as it is, but others are pure contact with lots of readers, so it’s always a balance.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write every day. Rewrite every day. Read and learn from everything. Shed that overly romanticized skin and just get down and do the work.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
It may be apocryphal, but one guy protesting at college said that the Navajo Indian tribe had a saying about the two basic rules of life: Try to be kind to everyone and try to understand everything. Sounds like a great goal to me.

What are you reading now?
I have things stacked so tall on shelves in my office, by my reading chair, by my bed, and for classes I teach, I can’t even keep track. I always have a page dog-eared in a dozen or more books, and a dozen more half-read in my e-reader.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I’ll finish the Detective Hiroshi series, and then I’ll do a couple of stand-alones, also set in Tokyo. I’m keeping notes on two works of non-fiction, too, one about Tokyo and another about teaching. We’ll see which ones scramble to the surface first.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Zorba the Greek, Slaughterhouse Five, Dickens (I’d have to argue out which one…), Plato (I was a philosophy major). Agh, that always breaks my heart to have to think like this. Forgive me, other writers, I want to bring your works, too!

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