David Joiner's Blog

I'm very happy to announce that The Heron Catchers was just named the winner in the fiction category of The Rubery Book Award! It was up against some truly excellent novels, so this is quite a surprise to me – but a wonderful one, and a huge honor as well.

This is what the Rubery Book Award judges wrote about my The Heron Catchers:

"A lovely novel about relationships and duty told from the perspective of an American expat in Japan. Sedge’s wife has left him, and the novel deals with his predicament and how cultural sensitivities and obligations bear on his understanding and response. The complexities of his relationship with Mariko, a woman he meets at his place of work, make for an interesting love story. Her unsympathetic stepson, Riku, provides a moral test for the protagonists, and an effective element of tension that builds nicely as the book develops. It’s a love story between Sedge and Mariko, but it’s just as much an exploration of Sedge and Riku’s relationship, too, which is far more complex, and compellingly conveyed. The tone and atmosphere are expertly handled - it feels like an English translation of a Japanese novel (something like Murakami, or Banana Yoshimoto). The narrative style is often deceiving in its simplicity, and I think it’s this style that confirms the sense that Sedge is always, and perhaps will always be, an outsider in this Japanese culture. The author is clearly steeped in the culture, and the heron imagery is integrated into the story well, and nicely handled, particularly at the end. All in all, it works brilliantly."

I'm happy to announce that The Heron Catchers has become a finalist for the fourth time in a literary competition. This time it's the Rubery Book Awards. Here's hoping that the fourth time is a charm!

http://ruberybookaward.com/2024-winne...

“A meditative novel about love and abandonment set in the picturesque Japanese countryside…Joiner’s novel is full of pastoral beauty…with characters who feel full and human, and whose dramas, in their quiet way, will leave a lasting impression.” –Kirkus Reviews

I was really pleased to receive a positive review of The Heron Catchers from Kirkus Reviews yesterday. It’s very difficult to get your book in front of potential readers, especially if you’re not supported by a Big 5 publisher, so hopefully this will help, as libraries often make buying decisions based on good reviews in major trade journals like this.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/.../dav...

“A powerful journey through emotional devastation led by characters whom readers won’t soon forget.” –Kirkus Reviews

In November 2023, my latest novel, The Heron Catchers, became a finalist for the 2023 American Writing Awards. In March 2024, the novel became a 2023 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Finalist. (In 2022, my novel Kanazawa was also a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Finalist.) And now, in May 2024, The Heron Catchers has earned its place among the finalists for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I'll take these nominations when I can!

“…an enjoyable look at life outside the major Japanese tourist haunts, and an examination of the issues faced by those who attempt to make a life for themselves there.”

TonysReadingList.wordpress.com, a well-known and popular book-reviewing blog out of Australia, just followed up its positive review of Kanazawa with another positive review of The Heron Catchers. To read the review, please see the following link:

https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.co...

Blurbs for The Heron Catchers (publication date: November 21, 2023) are starting to trickle in, and I thought I'd include below the five that I'm fortunate now to have:

“David Joiner’s The Heron Catchers introduces us to the quiet green abundance of the Japanese mountains, the slow beauty of pottery, and the pain of love ended. We follow wounded characters, Sedge and Mariko, as they learn to heal after each has suffered from devastating betrayals. Like the herons they ultimately rescue from injuries incurred by natural and human calamities, they too strike out at those who seek to help them. Not unlike the wandering poet Matsuo Basho who steps into the frame of the story here and there, Joiner offers flashes of insights as sharp and beautiful as a heron taking flight. Readers will find in this elegiac, imaginative work, space for reflection and discovery.”
—Rebecca Copeland, author of The Kimono Tattoo, co-editor of Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch

"An intimate, rewarding novel of people linked by misfortune who search for redemption, wholeness, and purpose. Joiner evokes his protagonist’s inner world vividly among descriptions of the life, culture, festivities, and natural environment of a small hot-spring town near Kanazawa. The Heron Catchers is an engrossing sojourn in one of Japan’s most charming off-the-beaten-path destinations."
—Jeffrey Angles, translator of Hiromi Itō’s The Thorn Puller and author of My International Date Line (Winner of the Yomiuri Prize for Literature)

"The Heron Catchers is at once a novel about a particular place, but is also a novel for us all, as our fates and feelings are intertwined with the natural world. Joiner's deeply felt and sensitive rendering of the inner lives of men and women in midlife, who are more affected by the place they live than they are aware, shifts in subtle waves, like the ocean that borders the town of Kanazawa where much of the novel is set. Closely observed and with care paid to emotional nuances, Joiner has written a book about adult life, and the endless striving we feel for meaningful connection."
—Marie Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey and the forthcoming The Tree Doctor: A Novel

"This slow burn of a novel sears itself into your consciousness with equal parts tension and poignancy. The Heron Catchers skillfully captures one blended, broken family's experience of growth and healing amidst the beauty and precariousness of Kanazawa's natural world."
—Leza Lowitz, author of In Search of the Sun: One Woman's Quest to Find Family in Japan

“Joiner reels the reader in with characteristic fine plotting, carefully crafted writing, vivid imagery and descriptions of life in the Japanese countryside, and a tone of authenticity belonging to a writer who knows and loves Japan. A riveting and worthy follow-up to Kanazawa.”
—Amy Chavez, The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island.

That’s all for now. More updates later…

I finally found the location in Kanazawa of the cover image to my novel. As with most places 100 years old in Japan, it’s almost unrecognizable now.

You can see the original woodblock print followed by a photo of its present-day location here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr5syhOp6xb/

The second photo shows the Shimohondamachi (金沢下本多町) area of Kanazawa today, between the Great People of Kanazawa Memorial Museum and the Ishikawa International Salon, where in 1921 Kawase Hasui rendered this spot as part of his second collection of paintings in his series Souvenirs of Travels.

You can match where the walls in the woodblock print curve with the curve in the same (widened) road in my photo. Also, where the telephone pole is in the print, a lamppost now stands. Finally, the four rows of rocks in the wall in the photo could well have been three rows in the painting 102 years ago. Unfortunately, the beautiful trees along the road are long gone, and the same could almost be said for young women in kimono holding traditional sun parasols.

My publisher, Stone Bridge Press, has just entered my third novel, The Heron Catchers, into their catalog for 2023 releases. It’s scheduled to be published on November 21st, 2023, and is already available for pre-order in the usual places. Here’s the publisher’s link:

https://www.stonebridge.com/catalog-2...

I’m now working on a third novel that’s also set in Ishikawa prefecture – Kanazawa again, and possibly Katayamazu Onsen, which is around 45 minutes south of the city – that as yet remains untitled. After that one’s done, I need to go north for something set on the Noto Peninsula, or something along the Sea of Japan, anyway.

Kanazawa has just been listed as a 2022 Indies Finalist for best multicultural novel by Foreword Reviews. Honored and happy about this, and hoping for even better news when winners are announced in June!

Peter Goodman, my publisher at Stone Bridge Press, kindly interviewed me about my novels Kanazawa (2022) and The Heron Catchers (forthcoming) and what it's like to be a writer in Japan. It's barely 20 minutes long, so have a listen if you've got the time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf9U9...