Ask the Author: Con Chapman
Answered Questions (2)
Con Chapman
I am currently working on a history of Kansas City (or more broadly, Southwestern US) jazz for Equinox Publishing. While the subject has been covered before, my goal is to write for the general reader rather than the jazz aficionado.
Con Chapman
"Kimiko Chou: Girl Samurai" will be published in March from Atmosphere Press in Austin, Texas. I suppose the original inspiration was a blog post I read by a young American woman living in Japan who likes to "cosplay" as a samurai. Her profile picture was sweet and a little silly--a very fierce expression on her face, like in samurai paintings, and her somewhat frail-looking body weighed down by samurai armor and helmet. I'd previously used a samurai character in an incongruous setting; there is a samurai relief pitcher in my baseball novel "CannaCorn." I read a book that included accounts of female samurai (Pamela Toler's "Women Warriors"), and a few young adult novels with boy samurai protagonists. When I couldn't find any YA novels about girl samurai I decided to write one in the plucky heroine vein a la "True Grit."
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