19 June 2017
When I was trying to sell my first book, a collection of short stories, my eventual editor at W.W. Norton, Alane Mason, asked to speak to me on the phone. "Are you working on a novel?" she asked. "Uh, unfortunately, no," I said. "Well, do you have an idea for a novel?" Alane persisted. I made something up on the spot, a plotline about hapa-or half Asian, half white-characters living in Tokyo, where I had spent my childhood as the son of a career Foreign Service officer. "Wonderful!" Alane said, and promptly offered me a two-book deal for the collection and the unwritten novel.
