Today please welcome Natsuya Uesugi to the Land of Make Believe. I haven’t hosted a lot of authors lately, but Natsuya’s books intrigued me that I signed up for his tour. After poking around his site and looking at his books, I’m glad I did. If you’re looking for something a bit different, read on to find out more. I think you’ll be glad you did.
~AQG
Author Interview: Natsuya Uesugi
How long on average does it take you to write a book?
I can write a book in a month. The longest I think I have taken is six months, the shortest for a full length novel is a week. I usually try to stay around a month when I am writing the scifi grydscaen series. If I am writing fantasy I do take a little longer as the world building for me in fantasy I find different in scifi and it takes more details. The grydscaen world is fully flushed out as I have been living with the story since the eighth grade and have had time to really perfect the world and put in the extra details. So I guess you can say I average about a month for a novel.
What do you do if you get a brilliant idea at a bad time?
I have an app on my smart phone that I will write notes in and come back and use that later maybe in a story or I am currently writing a free online scifi blog series called “grydscaen: darkness” set in the grydscaen world that takes place after the novel grydscaen: dark. I take notes on stories and then use those notes from my phone when I can be somewhere to sit down and write. Other times like I just updated the subway map for the current book “grydscaen: beginnings.” I couldn’t put the map in the phone since I hadn’t drawn it yet but I did use the phone to check out the New York City subway, the London Underground and the Washington DC subway map. I also looked at the Tokyo Subway and Shinkansen in Japan. I loaded those apps on my phone and was able to refer to them when I updated my grydscaen subway map for the book. Never wrote a book on the phone yet, but I might try that sometime in the future.
Why did you choose to write in your particular field or genre? If you write more than one, how do you balance them?
I work as a systems analyst in technology and I have worked as a hacker and a human factors engineer making UI designs and websites, and I have been a programmer. The story at the heart of grydscaen with its clandestine psychic operatives, nuclear war, and Zone Police, is really about hackers against the government. This is what I know. I have worked on jet fighter contracts for the government, hacked into systems for my company, and developed software. So I know a little about technology and I use that in my scifi. I also write fantasy and yaoi. I had some fantasy characters in mind since high school so I had to get that out there, and I like yaoi manga and anime so I wanted to lend my pen to that genre as well.
How long have you been writing?
Been writing since the third grade when I wrote a story that won a ribbon in a competition. I always found writing rewarding. I am a quiet person with a very small group of close friends. I write and I work and draw my original manga. So writing for me is both a past time and a way to express myself when I am not drawing. The first actual character design I drew for grydscaen was in the eighth grade and then the main character Lino Dejarre I wrote into another story and created a whole comic book around him in the seventh grade. Lino was not originally in grydscaen but now he is the main character in the story. So I have been writing for it seems forever and I don’t plan to stop.
Are there underrepresented groups or ideas featured if your book? If so, discuss them.
I make sure to have bisexual, transgender and non-binary characters in my stories as well as other diverse groups such as Native American and Asian characters and People of Colour. This is important for me because I ended up in grydscaen writing the books and the characters that were diverse that I could not find freshman year in college. I guess I filled in the gap I saw in books while I was in college and exploring my own gender identity and sexuality. I am Black and Native American and Japanese, there were no characters like that in books that I could find in college. Now I am actually writing my yaoi story with the amateur manga artist Noiz who is Native American and Japanese. I want to make sure young people can find themselves in literature and in order to do that I showcase diversity.
Tell us something we don’t know about your heroes. What makes them tick?
Lets talk about Naito Sennish the bisexual character in the grydscaen story. He is driven by beauty and personality. His personality is big and he is egotistical. He came from a privileged upbringing in the utopian City and gave it all up and abandoned his home, his trust fund and his family and friends to become a cyber terrorist in the slum-level Echelons and fight against the government. What drives him is his idea of right and wrong. He has a black and white view. He is right and the government is oppressive and wrong. Citizens in the City are wrong. The underprivileged in the Echelons who are being oppressed and manipulated by propaganda on the newsfeed are right. His black and white world is what drives him. You are either with him or you are not. He judges people quickly and if they don’t fit into his view then he will drop you quick. His sexuality is also like that. He goes for beauty and be it a man or a woman, the personality and the “feeling at first sight” is what makes him gravitate towards someone or not. Naito is bisexual and he is who he is. Even as the writer, he won’t let me change him. I have tried and if I do he writes me into a corner and I have to pull him out of there or otherwise he and the story do not cooperate.
What was the hardest part of writing this book?
The hardest part of writing this book for me was getting all the locations in the story in the right place, grydscaen: beginnings is futuristic scifi based on your original world in 2055. I needed to create two maps for grydscaen a subway map of the City, the Echelons and the Zone and a world map when the battles start between the Atlantea Federation and the insurgent Pacific Territories. The locations on the subway map were mentioned in the grydscaen: beginnings story but when the subway station stops were drawn into the map they needed to be in the right place in the right order to fit with the story. The subway map was pretty easy to conceptualize, but the world map, I had to move locations more than once on that final map to get everything where it needed to be. In the grydscaen subway map, it takes a hint from the New York City subway and streets in Soho, as well as the Tokyo subway. Also I am a pantser so sometimes the plot in the rough draft veers off which has to then get tamed in edits. That can be frustrating because a rewrite of something in the middle can change the dynamic of the ending and that can end up changing the whole story. I had to actually move streets in the Echelons on the map to get the visual to match the story.
Faid Callen is tired of life on the run in the Echelons trying to keep his psychic power in check. He founds the Packrats, a group of cyberterrorist hackers. A young powerful Psi Faction operative, Lino Dejarre, is sent on a mission to capture Faid. Wanting to keep Lino under control, the Psi Faction kidnaps his half-brother, Riuho, and they take him prisoner, experiment on him, train him, and subject him to mind control.
When Lino is assigned to a high stakes diplomatic mission to reveal a traitor, he finds another psychic operative in play, causing him to question the Psi Faction’s motives. Can Lino rescue his brother before more blood is shed or will Faid step in and destroy the Psi Faction’s plans?
About the Series:
Lino just wanted peace. All he got was war.
In After Colony 2055, the Atlantea Federation, a draconian power had taken over 75% of the world’s territories and launched a nuclear attack, the Dionysis Effect against the insurgent Pacific Territories. In a single brave act, the Pacific Territories retaliated in a battle known as the Blood Red Incident. The untested weapon’s radioactive fallout created Codess which manifested as psychic powers.
After the initial destruction, people struggled to survive and some developed psychic powers as others fell to the pervasive radiation sickness. Civil war ripped at the heart of society with cyberterrorist hacker groups rising up to fight the government. The son of the Viceroy, Lino Dejarre had psychic power. He joined the Psi Faction as a clandestine psychic operative tasked to capture Faid Callen the leader of the Packrat hackers.
Separated at age nine and banished from the royal family, Riuho Dejarre’s hatred for his brother Lino grew as he tried to scrape out a life in the slum level Echelons. Stripped of his citizenship, Riuho vowed to get revenge and thwart Lino’s every move as the young operative tried to govern and keep his people safe. With Faid and Riuho using the Packrat cyberterrorist hackers to attack the government even as the Atlantea Federation increased the threat trying to destroy the remains of the Pacific Territories and their allies, the war took a dire turn.
The Atlantea Federation attacked brutally on the ground and threatened the Pacific Territories’ space colonies. Lino and his Psi Faction team were roped into global diplomacy, inter-colony politics, covert missions, battleship scurmishes, jet fighter sorties, and space battles facing the Atlantea Federation head on. When Riuho once more entered the fray, his high stakes game of manipulation and lies threatened to destroy everything for which Lino had worked.
With threats to the fragile Pacific Territories coalition and the fate of the world at stake, can Lino, the Viceroy of the City, the Echelons and the Zone lead the Pacific Territories to a victory? Intrigue, fast-paced action, clandestine psychic operatives, hackers, the oppressive Zone Police, and shadowy government conspiracies, the situation couldn’t be riskier. Will Lino ever see peace and an end to war? Find out in the dystopian grydscaen series. Whose side are you on?
Giveaway
Natsuya is giving away an eBook copy of his grydscaen: rogue book with this tour – enter via Rafflecopter:
Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d4728/?
Excerpt
“Why is there a child here?” asked Jai.
“He will be staying here now. He has psi potential. We are giving him to Dr. Ren as a test subject,” said Gailen as they walked down the hall to the Controlling Chambers in the Psi Faction building.
“Where did he come from?” asked Jai.
“His mother sold him to the Psi Faction for a cit card,” informed Gailen.
“People actually do that?” choked out Jai.
“His mother was a prostitute. She sold him and was paid a hefty sum and given a cit card. The child has very high psi potential. We would have requested him if she had not offered.”
There was a maintenance crew in the hall. They were fixing up a room in the back of the Controlling Chambers to make a day care center, a playroom. It was to ensure there was some age appropriate place for the child to be kept during the day. Dr. Ren was in the Controlling Chamber area when they got there.
“How is it going?” asked Gailen coming up to him.
“Oh Gailen. Come in. Come see. It is going rather well. I think this room will be adequate,” said Dr. Ren.
There was an electrician at the wall installing an electrical panel and he handed Dr. Ren a remote control. The electrician finished up and placed the face plate of the panel at the wall and told Dr. Ren the panel was all set.
“The room has a damper, a psi shield and other features that will help to control the child. He has been here for almost six weeks now. We have just started the first level of his psi conditioning. He has been very receptive so far. Would you like to see him?” said Dr. Ren.
Dr. Ren walked with Jai and Gailen to the living quarters. They went to the main observation room with four rooms along the wall with glass windows. Each room had a bed and a dresser and a chair. There was a child in one of the rooms sitting in a chair. Gailen, Dr. Ren and Jai came into the main room with the lights out. The child could not see them through the one way glass.
The child had dull ash brown hair that kind of looked like it was blue since the colour was washed out. The child was rocking back and forth in the chair with his hands on his head.
“What is he doing?” asked Jai.
“We gave him an initial dose of nanomachines to see how they would take. He is reacting to that,” said Dr. Ren.
“Is it a girl or a boy?” asked Gailen.
“It’s a girl. But when I ask her she says she is a boy,” said Dr. Ren.
“She is transgender then?” asked Gailen.
“Yes, that is what it looks like. I did a whole psychological work up on her. We should start calling her he and just get used to that. She also refuses to wear dresses. One of the nurses in the infirmary tried,” said Dr. Ren.
“What is her name? I mean his name,” said Jai.
“Julian Iskafiin,” said Dr. Ren. “But he said he wants to be called Blue.”
“He is only five. How does he know what he wants to be called?” asked Gailen.
“Julian said his mother called him Blue.”
Jai looked over at Blue in the chair. The child stood up and went to the wall and started banging his head on the wall. Dr. Ren lifted up his arm and tapped out some buttons on a metal arm band he had on. A nurse came into the room and started comforting Blue.
Author Bio
By night, Natsuya is an author and manga artist weaving stories in his cyberpunk grydscaen world, his dark fantasy universe The Seer of Grace and Fire, and his contemporary yaoi graphic noiz which takes place in New York City. He studied animation and game design at the Art Institute of Phoenix where he learned sequential art and traditional animation that fueled his childhood dream of creating manga and anime.
To date he has created four manga and two episodes of the short anime grydscaen: A Storm’s Coming based on the teenage hacker Rom. He enjoys skydiving, cosplay, manga, World Cup futbol, watching French news, eating ramen and anything with matcha, watching anime in Japanese, and writing poetry.
Author Website: http://www.grydscaen.com
Author Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/natsuya.uesugi
Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/Grydscaen/
Author Twitter: https://twitter.com/natsuya_uesugi
Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4558587.Natsuya_Uesugi
Author QueeRomance Ink: https://www.queeromanceink.com/mbm-book-author/natsuya-uesugi/
Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Natsuya-Uesugi/e/B00J6EDQQ6/
Tour Arranged By:
Scott lives between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up, he wondered where the people like him were.
understand the connection between imagination, thought-creation and the limits we present ourselves.
I would love someone to pay me to travel the world and report on the local cuisine (think Anthony Bourdain), how interesting his life and experiences must be; and someone actually pays him to do this! The only drawback with this is, I’d probably end up the size of a house 😉
When Kim found herself divorced with 3 kids in 2007, she did what any thirty-something woman would do – she went to see a clairvoyant for the very first time.
Sixteen-year-old Shade has spent years imprisoned in a dark cellar after being snatched off the street as a young child. Events since his release have left him traumatised and desperate to die.
Comes a Horseman – Echoes Rising Book 3, sequel to Winter Duet
Anne Barwell lives in Wellington, New Zealand. She shares her home with two cats who are convinced that the house is run to suit them; this is an ongoing “discussion,” and to date it appears as though the cats may be winning.
Tali Spencer delights in fantasy and adventure, creating worlds where she can explore the heights and shadows of what it means to be human. A hopeful romantic and lover of all things exotic, she also writes romance and science fiction. If you would like to see inspiration pictures for her characters, or glimpse how she envisions her worlds, check out her Pinterest boards.