In Japanese, tomodachi means friend. Why have you chosen to name one of your more recent novels Tomodachi: The Edge of the World?
What a great question! That actually goes to the heart of the novel, because the Tomodachi series (book Two, Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night should be out by 2011, and a third is on the drawing board) is all about finding true friendship at the far end of the earth, in a culture so alien to your own that it seems miraculous to find a place in it. So I guess that in a way, this first book I wrote about Old Japan is actually the autobiographical one, as well as an imaginative variation on something that really happened back in history. Daniel Marlowe in Tomodachi is an echo of William Adams, a real historical figure who was shipwrecked in Japan in 1600, during the tail end of the long civil war era known as Sengoku Jidai.
