Award-winning indie filmmaker Darrell Gabonia is doing the book trailer for The Musubi Murder!

This is not going to be your ordinary book trailer.

The twisted genius behind DorkCore

Darrell Gabonia of The Kellogg’s Network and DorkCore fame will be taking on The Musubi Murder as his first book trailer project.

Darrell is a writer and filmmaker from Hilo, Hawaii. After graduating from the Academy of Art University San Francisco, he spent a couple of years honing his craft in Los Angeles working with non-profit 826LA and talent management company Principato-Young.

Darrell is a co-founder of the award winning sketch comedy group Super Genius Momo and works closely with the Performing Arts Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He currently has several projects in development with San Francisco based production company Dawnrunner Productions, and splits his time between Hawaii and California.

Darrell’s keen timing and offbeat humor are a perfect combination for The Musubi Murder. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, andiTunes.

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Is it “killing the golden goose,” or “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs?” Audio sample from The Musubi Murder

The Mubusi Murder audiobook is headed to retail and will be available for download in just a few days! To whet (not “wet”) your appetite, here is a sample. Molly Barda is arguing with her best friend, biology professor Emma Nakamura. Voice artist Nicole Gose does an amazing job with this scene, portraying two different people in a spirited discussion.

The golden goose? Or the goose that laid the golden EGGS?

Click to play on SoundCloud.

Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.

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Author Interview: Justina Taft

Justina
Hawaii Island author Justina Taft

 

 

Raised in Hawaiʻi, Justina Taft has lived on most of the major islands except Kahoʻolawe and Niʻihau. She earned her Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and now lives on the island of Hawaiʻi where she teaches courses in writing and theater. Her first novel is  After Dawn.
AfterDawn
After Dawn

 

 

Q: After Dawn has been praised as a fresh and original take on the paranormal romance.  I’m not a big paranormal reader myself, but I couldn’t put the book down. Briefly, what is the book about?

A: After Dawn is about a young woman named Aurora who is troubled by dreams that she can’t understand. As she studies Hawaiian Language in college she gradually figures out what her dreams are telling her: she has cancer. Her parents and friends do their best to support her through the medical treatments, but they also face their own challenges. Eventually, a dream lover tries to persuade her to go away with him, and she has to choose between her world – and his.

Q: What inspired you to write After Dawn, and what was the development process?

A: The development process was… a long and winding road. It started when I was a teenager, and a young friend died. That caused me to reflect deeply on impermanence and the unpredictability of life. I wanted to write a story about the need to seize the day, living your life as fully as possible. At the same time, I was trying to live that philosophy, so writing took a back seat. But the story kept nagging at me, so while I was in college I began to put it down on paper. Since my background is in theatre, I initially wrote this as a one-act play and it was staged in my hometown. It was very rewarding to see actors breathe life into the characters. But I didn’t feel that live theatre was able to fully capture the otherworldly nature of the story, so I put it back in my desk drawer and let it sit for a few years.

In graduate school I had to write a short story in Hawaiian for one of my classes. I decided to try writing Aurora’s story to see how it would come across entirely in that language. It was an interesting experiment. I got an “A” on the project (and in the class), but I felt the story was better told primarily through English because part of the suspense involves Aurora’s struggle to understand what those Hawaiian language dreams are about. So again, I put the story away and left it alone for a few years.

Eventually I decided to rewrite it as a screenplay. The story switches back and forth between reality as we know it, and Aurora’s dream world; and writing for the screen allowed me to explore what those realities would look like. I received great feedback about the script but quickly found that local producers already had their own pet projects, and without money, turning my script into a movie was not likely to happen. I put it in a drawer and tried to forget about it.

A few years later, I dug it out again. Although I had no experience in novel writing, I decided it wouldn’t cost me anything to experiment with that form. This allowed me to explore the interior lives of the characters more fully than I could in other formats. Since I was older and had a different life perspective, the story evolved in unexpected ways. I was happy with the result, but having no knowledge in the world of publishing, I didn’t know what to do with it. So I set it aside and continued with my daily life.

Then, last year, I had a health crisis that brought me back to the question of mortality that sparked my initial desire to write the story. I asked myself if I would regret leaving anything undone if my life ended suddenly. With that in mind, I quickly researched publication options, and the day before flying to Oʻahu for surgery I sent my manuscript to an independent publishing company. Suddenly, it was out in the world. It was exhilarating and a little scary, but I’m glad I had that impetus or it would probably still be sitting in a drawer.

Q: The Hawaiian language and culture are at the center of After Dawn, rooting it in Hawai’i; this story couldn’t have taken place anywhere else.  Why did you choose to place the story here? 

A: I wanted to explore the idea of language: how it is tied up with identity, how it is acquired, how it works in our subconscious lives, all those things. I use standard English, Hawaiʻi Creole-English (Pidgin), and Hawaiian in the story, because those are the languages I grew up hearing and speaking. And as you said, that makes Hawaiʻi the only logical place to set it.

After Dawn is set on the island of Oʻahu. I chose that locale for a variety of reasons. As writers, we are often admonished to “write what you know,” and since I was raised in Hawaiʻi, that is the environment I am most familiar with. I would’ve had a hard time writing with authenticity if I had set it anywhere else.

I chose Oʻahu specifically because it has a big city, Honolulu,  where young adults can have adventures, get in trouble, and separate from their parents to immerse themselves in the college experience as they try to figure out who they are as human beings.

Oʻahu also exemplifies the cultural/environmental disconnection that many contemporary people face. Beneath all the concrete and cars, it is a breathtakingly beautiful island with deeply significant wahi pana or sacred places, but that is a reality that most of us don’t see when we are caught up in the rat race of daily life. Aurora grew up on the outskirts of the city, and on the outskirts of her own culture. She knows there is a wealth of traditional cultural knowledge that she hasn’t had the opportunity to learn because her family always encouraged her to focus on the here-and-now; what it will take to survive in the world today. I wanted the setting to reflect that.

Q: You say Aurora grew up on the outskirts of her own culture. What do you mean by that?

A:  Aurora’s father is Hawaiian-Chinese, and her mother is local Haole. So she is the product of two different cultures. Really, her father is the product of two different cultures, and that is reflected in the way he and Eileen have raised Aurora. Like most local kids, especially on Oʻahu, Aurora is surrounded by the trappings of American culture: TV, cars, fast-food, etc. And because her mother values a higher education, she also has that drive to go to college – which is a pretty mainstream American value. Aurora grows up more American than Hawaiian. As a child, she was close with her Tūtū (grandma), who was her strongest connection to her Hawaiian roots. Tūtū wanted to teach Aurora about her culture, but she was discouraged from doing so; and then she passed away, taking that knowledge with her. It’s a common story here in Hawaiʻi. There was a period of time, several generations, when the language and traditional knowledge was devalued, and many kūpuna (elders) passed on without being able to transmit their skills and traditions to the younger generations. Today there is a much stronger desire to acquire that knowledge while there are still people around who can share it.

 

Q: What would you say is the unique twist that makes After Dawn stand out from other books in its genre?

A: Because of the Dream Lover, some would consider it a contemporary “paranormal romance,” but I don’t think readers of that genre would ordinarily pick up a book like this because it is set in Hawaiʻi. And it uses more Hawaiian language than is normal in a book aimed at non-Hawaiian speakers. For readers of Hawaiʻi based fiction, the focus of this story isn’t really to celebrate or to challenge expectations about our unique culture in Hawaiʻi, it seeks to tell a more personal story. I would classify it as a “New Adult” novel, which is different than a “Young Adult” novel. Although the main character is just recently out of high school, there are some steamy scenes in it that make it more appropriate for older readers. And although there are definitely romances of one type or another going on throughout the book, the story is about much more than romance. Set against a backdrop of cultural loss and renewal, it also explores loss and hope on an individual level. While there is no escaping the tragedy at the core of this story, what dances around its dark edges is love in its myriad forms. I guess the unique twist is that it doesn’t fit neatly into any single book classification.

 

Q: Why did you choose to write under a pseudonym?

A: Mainly for a sense of privacy. We live in such a public world now, where information about anyone or anything is right at the tips of our fingers via the internet, it’s a double-edged sword. I just wanted to have that extra layer – however thin it may be – to separate my artistic self from my everyday self.

 

Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a Hawai’i based author?

 A:  For me, the advantages are the inspiration I draw from the rich cultural diversity and fascinating history of these islands, along with the breathtakingly beautiful environment that can’t help but color any story set here.

The disadvantage is the difficulty in getting a book “out there,” whether that’s getting it seen by a publisher, getting it into stores, or promoting it through author appearances. There are only a handful of bookstores on this island. To promote the book beyond that means flying to other islands or other states, and those costs quickly become prohibitive. Thank goodness we have the internet these days; it helps us deal with those limitations in ways that we wouldn’t have even thought of a decade ago.

Q: Was there any point at which you had planned to have characters do something, and they insisted on doing something else, and you had to let them have their way?
A: Ha ha! I think Aurora and Eileen are the only characters who did exactly what I had planned for them. The others all surprised me in one way or another at some point in the book. Especially Gary. He was kind of unpredictable.

 

Q: Are you a “plotter” or a “pantser?”

 

A: Normally, I’m a “plotter.” Once in awhile, though, I have to fly by the seat of my pants and let a character take the lead. Generally, I have a starting place and an ending place that I would like each character to get to, and I try to be flexible in how they get there.Currently, I have my sequels roughly plotted out, mainly so I can track the timelines and make sure that if their stories overlap they’ll make sense. But once I get into the actual writing, the characters will very likely influence the way the stories develop.

Q: So, there will be other books?

 

A: I think so. I’ve had enough people ask me “what happens afterward?” that I’ve decided to follow some of the main characters to see where their stories take them. At this point I can’t tell you which characters I’ll be focusing on, because that might give away information that I’ve deliberately left ambiguous in After Dawn. Well, I can tell you one… Aurora’s best friend Alex is definitely getting his own book. He has just kind of taken on a life of his own. I don’t know if that book will be the first sequel I write, but it’s definitely going to be one of them.

I’m definitely going to pick that one up. I adore Alex! For readers who want to find out more about Alex, Aurora, and the rest of the cast of After Dawn, it’s available here:

On Hawai’i Island
Basically Books (Hilo)
Banyan General Store (Hilo)
Kona Stories (Keauhou)
Kilauea Kreations (Volcano Village)
Big Island Grown (Honoka’a)
Bentleys Home Collection (Waimea)
 
Online

Author Interview: Mark Panek

Mark Panek

 

Mark Panek is a Hilo-based scholar and author and a professor of English.  He is the author of two books on sumo: Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan (A Latitude 20 Book) and
Big Happiness: The Life and Death of a Modern Hawaiian Warrior, which won the 2012 Hawai’i Book Publisher’s Association’s award for excellence in nonfiction. Mark was recently honored with the Elliot Cades Award for Literature.

 

Mark stopped by to discuss his latest novel, the controversial and highly readable Hawai’i.

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Q: Your most recent novel, Hawai’i, has been hailed as “our Bonfire of the Vanities” by the Honolulu Weekly. The novel clearly rings true, and it’s obvious that a good deal of research went into it.  What initially gave you the idea for Hawai’i, and what was your process for writing it?

 

A:  My prior nonfiction book, Big Happiness: The Life and Death of a Modern Hawaiian Warrior, is partly a biography of a friend who was killed as a result of a drug epidemic that is now decades old and showing no signs of getting fixed.  That research taught me much about a real range of issues: how addiction works, post-statehood Hawai’i history, the impacts of development on local communities, who profits and who loses–all these things turned from abstractions into concrete reality thanks to research.  Soon after, I was attending a fundraiser for a local drug treatment center in this Waikiki hotel ballroom, because among what I’d learned was that treatment really works and these places should be supported.  At one point a group of recovering addicts was brought on stage to perform a hula, every one of them clearly Hawaiian, each of them heroic for what they had done to free themselves from meth addiction.  Then I looked out at the ballroom, and all I could see were corporate tables–each had a sign–representing the same interests, I’d learned, that had contributed most to creating a stage full of Hawaiian recovering addicts: tourism, development, finance, and a few show-face legislators who had done little over the decades to effectively address the meth problem or such root causes as public education, the brain drain, absentee land ownership leading to so many multi-generational households, etc.  And all of these people were going to drive home later feeling as though they had really done some charitable good to help the meth problem.  The eighty dollars they’d paid would certainly help the treatment center holding the fundraiser, but that disconnect–it made me feel like something needed to be said.

 

As far as the process goes–I did what I always do.  I bought a few marble notebooks at Long’s and started writing.  Hawai’i required a lot of additional research, of course, but I had a basic idea that I needed some kind of central conflict, POV characters representing different points of local power, and symbolic settings.  After that, I blasted out a draft of set pieces and met with my writing group–Chris McKinney and Robert Barclay–about once a month for two years–one to draft it and a second to revise it–and then had several other people read and discuss drafts as I trimmed it down.

 

Q: In the course of doing your research, did you turn up anything that surprised you?

 

A:  I think what surprised me most in the combined research for both Big Happiness and Hawai’i was what a small town Honolulu is, and how its small-town nature so often contributes to the illusion of corruption.  As a storyteller, you go into these things wanting to uncover the dirt and name names and call out the bad guys, but everyone I interviewed was a really nice person with very good intentions, and not at all “corrupt” in some evil scheming sense of that word.  This complicated things in ways that made for a much more interesting story that tries to get at how all of us justify actions we know have negative consequences for somebody–it could be as simple as failing to choose to buy the more fuel efficient car, but we’re able to justify a choice like that, rationalize it, drive away feeling good about ourselves because maybe (to stick with this example) we’ve just installed solar panels on our roofs to compensate.
 

 

Q: There are few heroes in the book. It’s scathing, because it’s so spot-on. Of course all characters are works of fiction and so forth, but: Do people recognize themselves? And of those that have, how many are still speaking to you?

 

A: Hawai’i is a work of fiction, and because it aims to be completely realistic in depicting a real place and real institutions, I even took steps to further push my first-draft characters away from resembling any real waiter or MMA fighter or legislator, etc., if it was even close.  Having a clearly recognizable character would detract from the book’s value, because it would allow readers to single out a culprit and then assume the problem could be fixed by removing that particular culprit.  If it’s a politician, for instance, I would rather have a character who stands for a type of lazy-lifer politician, because from a social commentary standpoint, it would cast a wider net.

 

The second half of the “character” concept in fiction is kind of wrapped up in what I said above about “justifying” things.  You want to create characters that are deep enough that readers will recognize themselves in all of them–especially those who work in professions and are in circumstances far different from their own.  When readers tell me these very flawed characters in Hawai’i are somehow likeable, I feel as though I’ve gotten it right.

 

As far as folks not speaking to me anymore goes…well, while nobody’s said anything to my face yet, I can assume the book has pissed some people off.  I certainly hope it has.  I do know that the editor of Hawaii Business just declined to hire a friend of mine because his story pitches made him sound “just like Mark Panek.”  But if the book has ruffled some feathers, I would hope that the afflicted at least understand how the fiction technique of Point of View works.  I would hope further that such readers examine exactly why the book might have angered them.

 

Q: While Hawai’i isn’t a sunny book, there’s some sly humor. For example, the restaurant scene and the thing about the octagon near the end were hilarious. Do you think most readers pick up on this? It seems that most people who review the book focus on the serious themes.

 

A: Hawai’i is funny, and I had a lot of fun writing it, and truly enjoyed listening to the readers of early drafts discuss it and point out all the “LoL” parts.  But yeah, you look at the reviews, and it seems like the humor did the job humor is supposed to do as the ultimate pathos appeal: it seems to have softened readers up for the big blows, the thematic stuff about how this place has surrendered its power to outsiders, and who’s been complicit in it the whole time, which is all of us.  Look at the UH/Cal Tech relationship.  Hawaiian Electric now based in Florida.  The public hospitals are about all we have left, and they’re next on the auction block.  So in a way, I’m glad the reviews focus on the serious thematic issues, but I’m sure more people would pick up the book if they were aware of what a fun read it is at the same time.

 

Q: Hawai’i opens with football, and football continues to be an important thread throughout. Any comment on the current state of UH football? Do you think Hawaii will follow University of Alabama-Birmingham’s example?

 

A: Football, as you know, is a tremendous waste of UH resources, time, attention space, media real estate, donation efforts, etc., at a time when the flagship campus is crumbling, faculty lines aren’t being filled, students are being charged more and more, and so on.  An athletic program pitting the ten UH campuses against one another, maybe divide UHM into separate college teams, maybe even invite HPU and BYUH into the league–I’d be all for that kind of replacement.  I just read a great book called Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk that does on a national level (with “America’s Team”) what I try to do with UH football, which is detail how it distracts us all from far more important matters, all at the expense of the athletes themselves.

 

 Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a Hawai’i-based author?

 

A: If I have developed any “insider” status after over two decades here, it’s probably helped most in its effect on the dynamic of the many interviews I’ve done for these books, and on my overall grasp of the context of such seemingly simple events as, say, the TMT protests, or the Superferry.  So from a research standpoint, the advantages are many.  We are also blessed here in Hawai’i with a thriving local publishing industry, which means somebody like me can at least count on having my manuscript read by an editor, even if it isn’t published, and if it is published, that it will be reviewed, or I’ll be invited to wonderful events like the Hawai’i Book and Music Festival.  UH Press, Lo’ihi Press, Mutual, Watermark, Bess, Bamboo Ridge, Island Heritage, Bishop–that’s quite a list for such a small town.

 

The downside to being from here is that a national agent or publisher would rather send a writer way out here like some kind of anthropologist who then returns to “civilization” with the “real story” about Hawai’i–that seems preferable to me or Chris McKinney or Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui or Lisa Kanae or any of a number of talented local writers who would know far better about their subject.  Hopefully e-books will catch on and we’ll have less need for national distribution.

 

Q: What’s next for you?

 

A: Next up? I’ve got a manuscript on Hawai’i ag I hope to send to UH Press in a couple of weeks.  We’re working on an audio version of Hawai’i.  But there’s always more to say.

 

Hawai’i is available from Basically Books in downtown Hilo, the UH Hilo campus bookstore, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.