Yurie Kiri interview

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

When did your love of books begin?

From a very early age - can't even remember learning to read, just always did.

When did you start to have the wish to become an author?

Wasn't a wish - loved to write as a child, always wrote stories - sometimes for other kids who needed help with homework.

How have you found the process for becoming an author?

Writing is the easy part.  Love to just escape into a story and into the characters which results in creating massive things that have to be cut down again and built up again until they are small enough to go into a normal sized book.  Anyway writing is the easy part - the hard part is all the other stuff, getting published etc.  and the business side.  Given the celebrity culture these days, if you don't have 40,000 followers on Instagram you're out of luck and need to rely upon places like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing -- the place for DIY people.

What would you say to those wanting to become an author?

One word - write.  I had a professor in college who held writing drills in class.  He'd yell, "write" and we'd start writing (pencil and paper days) as fast as we could about anything that sprang to mind... do that day after day and you'll have something... something that needs editing a bit.

Tell us about your book/books:

I have developed a couple of series - first the Moonlight series and then the Game series with a couple of not yet released "other" books.  The Moonlight series explores the dark side of things hopefully from a realistic perspective.  The first book, Moonlight Beach which won the 2020 Hollywood Book Festival’s award for Genre Fiction - one sentence summary:  Four friends, who live and work around Rancho California, have a witchcraft ceremony, contact the spirit of dead Indian woman and have to fight for their lives against the serial killer who had been chasing her.  Moonlight Canyon has some of the same characters on a trip to New Mexico where they run afoul of some very bad guys.  Moonlight Rocks takes place in the Mojave Desert outside LA and involves a battle over a meteorite which may contain a message from God -- goes kind of deep into good vs. evil in various forms.  Anyway, have about three more planned... and there may be some additional overlap with other stories in work.

 

The Games series take place in a slightly future Japan where VR game players control (from the other side of the world) game characters who wear sensors that let the players see the action while the game characters run through crowds (of normal people), searching for whatever hidden treasure their players demand.  Along with all that is the magic and mystery of Japan's religions including Shinto spirituality stretched very far to include new technology that can allow one to have very active out of the body experiences.  Anyway, Tokyo Games is the first soon to be followed by Osaka games and several others - have a total of 7 or 8 in the works...

What do you love about the writing/reading community?

The people are accepting and supportive.

If you could say anything to your readers what would it be?

Please read more -- if you can't do that in this video dominated world then listen to audible books from good narrators who can read for you.  FYI, hoping to do audible versions of my work soon.

Where can people connect with you?

info@yuriekiri.com - or - twitter @Yuriekiri