Jason Rohan introduces The Sword of Kuromori
Posted on Friday, May 2, 2014
Category: News
Jason Rohan delivers a punchy adventure packed with monsters, myths and butt-kicking attitude from its characters.
We asked author Jason Rohan to tell us more about his new action adventure series, beginning with The Sword of Kuromori (Egmont Press)
Read a chapter from The Sword of Kuromori
In the Sword of Kuromori, Jason Rohan delivers a punchy adventure packed with monsters, myths and butt-kicking attitude from its two central characters, Kenny and Kiyomi. The story, which is set in Japan and draws on Japanese mythology, has bags of appeal for boy and girl readers aged ten years plus and especially for Percy Jackson fans.
In the first book of the planned trilogy, Kenny is sent to Japan to join his father but on arrival, is kidnapped and then rescued by people who want him to help find the heavenly Sword of Kuromori and to use it to prevent a global catastrophe. So begins an adventure in which, guided by Kiyomi and her family, Kenny has just days in which to master ancient traditions, find the heavenly sword and save the lives of millions of people.
Q&A with Jason Rohan discussing The Sword of Kuromori
Q: Why did you set the book in Japan, is it an area you know much about?
A: When I was growing up in the eighties in London I watched Shogun, a big television serialisation, and I remember how impressed I was that in Japan, honour was more important than life itself. In our world at that time, there were endless revelations of political sleaze and the only shame was in getting caught...
So I already loved the idea of Japan and, after I did my degree in English, I went to Japan to teach English and ended up staying there for five years! I found Japan has a high level of technical achievement but within a society governed by very traditional social interactions.
Many years later, I decided to write something for my children, a fast-paced action adventure, so I wrote a book for them, got an agent - and no one wanted my story. I asked what kind of thing publishers were looking for and at the time, Percy Jackson was all the rage and they asked me, what can you do with myths? So that got me started on this series.
Plus I wanted to bring Japan to a western audience. Japan is not just Hello Kitty and cars. The day-to-day cultural life continues, there are still straw mats in houses and people bow in greeting, so I see my book as a little bit of a cultural guide. I like the idea that someone goes to Japan and, after reading my books, knows something about it.
I also liked the idea of exploring the harmony within traditional society in Japan, but also the friction between one generation and the next; the parents who built up the country don't really understand the next young generation with all their gadgets and brightly coloured hair.
Q: You explore Japanese mythology in your book as Kenny has to face down many strange and ancient creatures. However, as this is a fantasy adventure, how much of what you are writing is fantasy and how much is based on ancient beliefs?
A: When it came to writing my book, I felt that while a lot of mythologies have been covered before, especially Greek, Roman and Norse, Japanese mythology was largely unexplored in this context. So the Japanese mythology in the book is all as accurate as I could make it.
It's a very complex mythology as you basically have two competing belief systems. The older one is Shinto, the indigenous faith of the Japanese people, which is an almost Druidic belief in nature and the spirits of nature, but there is also a strong belief in Buddhism which came later from China. Today those belief systems are very mixed up so you find that people might have a Shinto wedding, but a Buddhist funeral. I have kept mainly to Shinto ideas in my book.
One of my favourite mythical characters were the girl vampires, the 'nukekubi' - think vampires that hunt in packs - whose heads can detach from their bodies. These creatures are unique to Japan. I originally wrote them as a bunch of old ladies or hags but I decided they'd be more interesting as girls with a fashion sense!
Q: You have drawn on your own experiences for the setting; is there much of you in your characters as well?
A: Kenny, who is the entry point for the reader and for a Westerner going to Japan for the first time, could probably be described as a stand-in for me at that age. He has similar insecurities and issues about parents that I had at that age; my own father was largely absent and so the way Kenny feels about that is authentic. Many of the things that Kenny says to his father are probably things I channelled from my own feelings, things I would have liked to have said to my father.
Q: Are there any other characters who stand out for you?
A: Kiyomi, who is Kenny's age and who helps him through his adventures, was always going to be the butt-kicking strong one. I have daughters and I didn't want her to be a weak character but to be strong and a capable guide; I am surrounded by all these strong women who have influenced her character. But although Kiyomi is very capable and assured and can deal with anything, inside she is also a vulnerable, confused teenager who is trying to make sense of the world.
Q: This is your debut novel, so how did you come to writing for children?
A: I had always wanted to write but it was hard to find the time until my wife told me to stop sitting around playing computer games and to find a hobby!
I had done a degree in English and wanted to write even then but it was hard to know how to get started, there was no training in creative writing at that stage. I wrote an 'epic novel that was 144,000 words and plotted in detail. While it could never be published, I learned so much from the experience.
I put that away and decided to write a book for our own children, who are now aged six to 15. It was a very different experience because I wanted it to be fast-flowing so I just wrote as I went. I knew what I wanted each chapter to do but I didn't plot any of it in detail. That book got me an agent, but not a publishing deal so although The Sword of Kuromori is my first book to be published, it's actually the third book I've written.
I am now fully qualified in telecoms engineering. That's my day job and I squeeze in time for writing during my lunch hour and in an hour after work when the office is quiet. It means I can get a book written in six months with the occasional week I take off to write.
Q: We've heard that you're a fan of comics - has that style of storytelling influenced your own writing?
A: I've always been a great fan of comics to the point that, when I had the chance to go to New York for the summer between doing my O and A levels, I presented myself at Marvel Comics building and asked to help out. I went back later for a proper internship, I even got a couple of stories published. I loved it but it helped me decide that comics wasn't what I wanted to do full time.
Reading comics undoubtedly informed my reading and my writing as I grew up. At a writer, comics taught me how you need to hook the reader from the first page and I know how much I liked all the action on the pages. When I read the chapters from Sword of Kuromori with my boys, the one thing they would always say is, 'more action dad, more action', so that's what I would do.
I still have my comic collection in the attic. I think my favourite comic character was the Iron Man because anyone could be the Iron Man - you just had to open a suitcase and take out the armour and wear it! I'm not a great fan of comic book movies, though. There's something inherently foolish about a person in a skin-tight costume running around trying to save people...
Q: What can we expect in the second book of your trilogy?
A: I've written two books and I'm planning a third. Again, comic books have influenced my writing because I like the way nothing is ever quite resolved, the door is always left open and no one stays dead for very long... Plus there is always a big twist in the story.
Book two, which is called The Shield of Kuromori, picks up six weeks after the events of the first book. We find that Kenny has opened a can of worms as a result of his early adventures and the repercussions and consequences from those adventures take the story in a different direction.
Kenny will face lots of other monsters and threats during his stay in Japan but he is more in control of things because of his new powers. There are hints and revelations along the way that will explain why he has become so powerful and these are all tied together in the third book.
Q: What are your top tips for budding writers?
A: Just to get out there and live and get as many experiences as you can gather, do things you wouldn't normally try, whether that's eating different kinds of food or going places you wouldn't normally go to. And don't be afraid of failure, you learn more from things that go wrong than you do from the things that go right. So, make lots of mistakes - but hopefully not the same mistakes...