 Aloha. My name is Roger Jelenek, I'm executive director of the Hawaii Book and Music Festival, and this is the beginning of a new series that we call Book Worlds. I have here with me Chris McKinney, the author of his seventh novel, Yako Doshi, The Age of Calamity. This is a very well-known writer here in Hawaii. His previous titles are The Tattoo, Boy No Good, Queen of Tears, Bullo Head Row, Mililani Malka, and The Red-Headed Hawaiian. He's also written a couple of screenplays that we'll come to in a moment. He's been visiting distinguished writer, UH Manoa, and he's the winner of the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, which is given to two people every year. He's the winner of six Hawaii Publishers Association Kapala Pala Awards for Best Book of the Year. So, Chris, let me ask you first of all, what's the meaning of the title, Yako Doshi? Yako Doshi is essentially a Japanese thing, it's a Japanese cultural thing where certain ages, when you reach certain ages in your life, are considered bad luck. And for men, the biggest one is 41. And the main character, Bruce Blank, who just got out of prison, is about to turn 41 years old. And when he comes out of prison, he finds himself immersed in Honolulu nightlife, and it does not resemble what he had remembered when he was a younger man. And the main, the other thing that he finds out, of course, is that his son, who he's never met, has gone missing. So in a lot of ways, this is sort of an urban noir mystery in which the criminal, or the ex-con, is the one who is investigating the crime. What were you trying to do with the book? I think, well, the book, first off, I mean, the material for the book wasn't sought out intentionally. What had happened to me in my own life is that I was going through a divorce, and I actually just found myself going back to this nightlife thing, because I was newly single, and I was curious, and I wanted to see what was out there. And I had done that for a couple of years, and I felt like I learned a lot about it, but I wasn't necessarily to mine for material. What had happened was I met a girl, and the novel, in a lot of ways, is simply a novel-length love letter to the woman who is now my wife, showing off, essentially, and I'm showing her the book as I wrote it, chapter by chapter. That's the most original love letter I've ever read. Thank you. The nightlife you refer to isn't the nightlife that you see advertised in the newspaper very much. Tell us about it. In the book, it's called People Who Work Industry, and it's essentially the world that I encountered was very young. It was very Asian-American. I guess some people would say local Asian, and in some ways, and I don't want to sound like a crotchety old man. One of those people would say, oh, the kids today have changed, but I didn't notice that it was far more Americanized, and it was far more hip hop culture infused, and it was more materialistic and brand name conscious, I would say, cash conscious, and the drug scene was very different from what I had remembered, and it was very much driven by. I hadn't seen that many, for example, pharmaceutical drugs before in my entire life. Tell us about some of the characters in the book. Well, so Bruce is, of course, the main character. He's the first person narrator of the novel, and he meets a girl who is essentially the biggest drug dealer in town in Honolulu, and she is not what people would think of when they think of a sort of a drug kingpin. She's a tiny, skinny Korean girl, and it sort of blows his mind because what he had remembered during his era was that stereotypical drug dealer was all yoked out, thick gold chains, and he had this, he rolled with a heavy crew, but it's just this very young girl that seems to be running things in Honolulu, so that's one of the other main characters in the novel, and the other one is a sort of an old friend, someone who he knew back in high school, who is in some ways a trust fund baby, and he hangs with these guys, just these guys who are around the same age, around 41 years old, who maxed out on promotion, maxed out on salary, had their wives, got divorced, had kids, and they're hanging out at these bars because they just have no idea what they're supposed to do with their lives, because suddenly today we find ourselves living much, much longer than we did in the past, and it feels like life or society mapped out life for only X amount of years, and maybe whatever, 100 years ago 40 something was probably the life expectancy, and now it's 80, and it's sort of, we still live based on that schedule, and you just have a lot of these people who are in their 40s, who I think feel lost in that way. The Troy character you just referred to was, you say call him a trust fund baby, he had a very particular kind of trust fund, can you describe it? So on the surface it looks like that, that it's very simple that his dad was a very successful criminal attorney, and he inherited a bunch of money, but what his father, the backstory goes is actually got himself in legal trouble, and sort of lost everything, so what he actually ended up inheriting is his father's criminal connections. Was that modeled in anyone you know? I've heard things, but I don't want to say it's mod modeled on anybody specific, but it's one of those things that you sort of, especially when you live in a place like this, it's very small, and you hear things, or you hear about things that happen to people, and it sparks something, but I don't think I ever sort of dig deeper into, especially when it comes to fiction, is that's kind of like what I don't want to do. I don't want to write a character or create a character that is just purely based on somebody who actually exists. The narrator, the main character, went to jail, why did he go to jail? Drugs, drugs, and he went to jail for a long time. He went to jail for, and he went to federal prison, so the, and that's sort of the, what happens, I mean, that kind of crime is a federal crime, and when you are, when you are arrested and when you are convicted of a drug charge, for example, you serve time in federal prison, and federal prison is different from state prison, right, because with federal prison, you pretty much serve all of the time that you're sentenced. Do you hear about state prisons and overcrowding and issues in which an inmate can get out, get early release, but with federal prison, the budget is pretty much endless, so they can totally make you do all of the time that you were sentenced. Well, when he was, when he was there, he learned to speak in a different way. Yeah. It's one of the most remarkable aspects of the book is the language. Thank you. And can you tell us about that because it's not language you hear every day? Yeah, it's not, and I think that a lot of it, it's what I would call, it's sort of like urban youth language, and because he went to federal prison in California, it's not, it's not like his, as if his peers are local guys from Hawaii, so he learned that language from just this, just this large body of people who are young and who got busted selling drugs and who are sort of from all over the place in the United States. And I think that the language, even with the characters who exist in that industry, in that bar industry, sort of speak with this sort of almost like raised on YouTube and Jay-Z and Dr. Dre kind of Beyonce and Rihanna kind of thing where it's interesting, and a lot of the words are new and a lot of the words are created by these artists in their songs and in neighborhoods that are so far away from this one. So, you know, a word might have originated, say, somewhere like Brooklyn, and now everybody uses that word. Can you give some examples? Well, I guess my favorite word in the novel is ratchet, and you hear that. In the book I spell it R-A-C-H-E-T, and it is also the name of Troy's boat, and the way he has it spelled on his boat is R-A-C-H-3, you know, the backwards 3 and T. And I think that was one of the first words, and it sounds so silly because I'm sure that if, you know, young people are listening to this, that word's been around forever, but for me, when I was coming out, it was the first word that I'd heard in a bar, and I said, like, what is that? And when I heard the definition, it just sort of cracked me up that it just seemed so out of left field for me, and as I got more and more familiar with that culture, I noticed that it was just, it was used constantly. Well, the book even has a glossary, which I don't think I've seen many novels with glossaries, and the glossary is by no means complete. No, no, and glossaries are tough that way. It's sort of you start taking for granted what the words might be known by a general public, and it was tricky to make, decide which words to put in there and which to leave out. One of the surprises, and a lot of surprises in this book, obviously you like surprising the reader, is that this criminal becomes essentially a detective, and tell us about that. Well, the idea was that his son, when he comes out, he discovers that his son has gone missing, and there may be police involvement with the crime. So it's sort of like, as this guy, as this sort of, this ex-con, this hood, how do you go about solving this mystery when the police not only don't probably aren't interested in helping you because it's such an old case, but what if they're involved as well? He's almost forced to make the decision that he has to do this on his own. Remind us what the crime was. The kidnapping, yeah. So his son, he is, at first, he finds out what he believes happened is his son is dead, and then what, as he digs into it more and more, is what he finds out is that the kid had been kidnapped, and he doesn't know, he doesn't know if the kid is alive or dead, he doesn't know what happened, and that's essentially what drives the plot in the story, is this discovery. And it's just refusal to quit, he just refuses to give up, and he risks everything to find out, which he does at the end. I was very struck by, as a lot of readers have been about the amount of violence, which was pretty casually applied, but it occurred to me that it's quite analogous to the violence you see on, not Hawaii 50, but yeah, Hawaii 50, which is almost like another form of vigilante violence, but in your book, it's not a moral issue ever, it's just what you do. Yeah, and it's interesting, I mean, especially if you, I mean, talk about it in the context of something like 50. I actually met Peter Lenkoff, who's the executive producer, showrunner of 50, and his description of 50 is great to me. I mean, it's just this, he has this childhood memory of growing up in Minnesota, and you know, coming and being home, and it's freezing, and his dad would be on his barca lounge, and would crack open a beer, and he would just sit at his dad's knee, and this is the time that they would spend together just watching, watching to escape the bitter cold of that area, the United States, and he said that, I mean, that's really what the heart of, part of what maybe the heart of 50 is, it's this popcorn thing, this thing that is supposed to be entertaining, and is supposed to allow escape, and he does a fantastic job at it. If you watch that guy in action, man, that's a smart guy. Well, we'll just take a break. Okay. Thank you. Chris, you're now adapting the book into a television series? Yeah. Tell me, how did you get into that? Well, I've always sort of chased the notion of wanting to transition into working specifically on TV series, and what really sparked that was The Wire, which just blew my mind. But with this book, what had happened was I have a good friend named James Serino, and he owns a production company here called Kinetic Productions, and we worked together in the past. We've done a feature film together. And I showed him the book, and we started talking, and he really liked it, and he wanted to adapt it in some way to film. And what I suggested was let's maybe make it a limited series, just a one shot story, and we'll cut it up into six episodes that run roughly 50 some odd minutes. So what I did was I took the book and I adapted it into in the screen or teleplay version, and we went and we shopped it in LA. We attached talent to it. A friend of mine is his name is Sung Kang, and he's very much known for being the Asian presence in the past in various movies. And Justin Chan, as well, agreed to be a part of it. And Justin was in a number of the Twilight movies, and he also produced a movie called Gook, which recently did very well at Sundance and won an audience award. So we took this project and we found a partner in LA, a production company. And we're sort of at that place where we're waiting to hear back and see what happens. One of the challenges, I imagine, is how you deal with a narrator, because the book is written in the first person. How do you do that with a television series? It was something that we knew that we had to deal with right off the bat before I even just started adapting it. And we talked about whether or not do we want to do voiceover, do we want to do that kind of stuff, or do we want to peel it apart and create it in a more objective way? And what we decided it was is we decided against the voiceover. And it was a bit of a challenge because I feel like the voice in the novel very much drives the narrative. With the screenplay version, I didn't have as much of that. But what it did allow me to do is it allowed me to explore other characters more deeply. Because the novel is so first person centric, it's difficult to do so. And there's a rhythm to the book. But with the screenplay version, and because I expanded it to six episodes, the olive character, the Troy character gave me more time to sort of flesh out and develop those characters. The book is full of surprises. Obviously, you enjoy surprises for reader. I find myself quite often thinking I was going down one road and then going into another one. Probably the most surprising was the ending, which is a happy ending. It's not a book you'd expect to see a happy ending in. What led you to that surprise? Yeah, and it's funny because I don't know how much my my current mood has to do with sort of the way I end stories or my current just emotional being. With this book, I had a lot of fun writing it. It was a good time in my life. I don't know how much of that optimism sort of bubbled over in the narrative as I was writing it. But especially with this character, I felt bond with this particular character because to be honest, I mean, we have similarities. And you find or I found myself in a position where I'm and I wanted things to go good for this guy. No, I think you're right. It's actually, when I think about it, it's a cheerful book. You don't feel depressed by a lot of depressing stuff. It has so much energy going for it. So are you going to you've done seven novels? What's anymore in the making? Not right now. So I'm just I'm focusing on the on the screenplay stuff, the adaptation stuff, and I'm also trying to write new material. So my friend and I because because the process is about sort of pitching and waiting, pitching and waiting, what we're trying to do is we're trying to fill that sort of waiting period with productivity. So I'm throwing around other ideas. We did shoot a short film in December, and we're hopefully we're going to shoot something else by the end of this year. So right now I'm sort of looking at a possible another short film or feature film and or an indie feature film. So it's just continually trying to come up with ideas and write new material so that so that I'm not sort of stuck in a holding pattern waiting for somebody to green light me to work. So I just try to continually work. But why do you have a day job? I do. Yeah, I'm a English professor at Honolulu Community College. The great thing about that job is the the flexibility. I think because one of the difficult things that I've experienced and I'm sure I'm guessing that a lot of other writers experience it as well is when you can do this work. I would have a very difficult time doing this kind of stuff after I'd completed a nine to five shift somewhere. I just feel depleted. But with the job that I have, where I have flexibility with my schedule, I can wake up, I can do this, then I can I can teach and then if I have to grade papers, for example, I can do that 7pm if I want to. So you do have to show up the class, but I do have to show up show up the class. Yeah, and half of actually half of my courses are delivered through the internet and it's been like that for four years now. So I don't I don't feel overwhelmed with on campus class work. Yeah, it does. There are there are there are certainly like anything else pluses and minuses, but as far as schedule flexibility, it is definitely an advantage. So how does that work? They have to show up at a particular time or not? No, it's just it's basically it's a canned lecture. It's yeah, it's so you do you have a lecture, you have all of the sort of the course materials and you have them go through it and then you have them respond to the course materials to make sure that of course that they not only read it, but they they can comp they're comprehending it. And no, I mean, and it is most of these courses are composition courses anyway, and I teach creative writing as well. So really the large part of the content just like as I teach it in the classroom is student writing. So it's just going over their work individually and having them rework it find any writers. There's always and there's always there's always a couple of a couple of talented talented people in classes. And then there are of course understandably so the majority are just they need the credit. And it's just it's sort of trying to I guess that one of the challenges of teaching these courses on the internet is to present it in and as interesting of a manner as I can in person because of the fact that it can it can a lot of the material can appear very sort of dry and written form even if you if you have YouTube clips and all of that kind of stuff there isn't someone somebody there there's in somebody there present to sort of have them read your books. I'm never never never I just feel I don't know either gives me the sort of yeah I don't know I just have a problem. I hope so but I certainly yeah I wouldn't I would not ever want to assign a student of mine my own book. Do they ever give you feedback anyhow? They do and I but I never I never tell them it's it's me you know I wrote this and that or the other thing but some students are aware of the fact that that I had written some of these books and some of the students like the books so like they come up to me maybe I get approached after class and they tell me that they really liked what I wrote and it's it's always very very flattering and I'm appreciative. Looking back on it's now seven books do you have a favorite? No I I there's one there's something about each book that maybe makes it memorable for me but I wouldn't categorize it as a list of favorites from from least to the or from best to worst. I guess an example would be the first book that tattoo all I'll always sort of approve because it was I had no idea what I was doing and I remember I remember going through that process with somebody who just had no clue and I'll never sort of forget it and I don't say that and as it it was a negative experience it's a positive one it was just it was so it it was so interesting I mean it's just to do something that I just I just did not know really or understand what were the main lessons you learned from that? I think that I I there are certain basics that I just really it took me a while to sort of get down simple things like description things like pacing things these are things that I had to sort of had to work on time and time and I had to really take my time with because it was just I just was an experience but yeah so it's almost as if the the one of the large lessons I learned from that first one was just the sort of stylistic and mechanical issues that come up with with novel or with fiction writing um and as as I sort of if you get closer to sort of the last books that I wrote of sometimes the challenge is not to forget what I did with that first book I just told the story and I just tried to tell a good story and sometimes I really try to stop myself from getting wrapped up in the sort of the literary qualities or the symbolism or the does it get easier? Never never you get harder it's uh you set the set the bar higher yeah yeah anything it is it is harder I can do certain things probably more more quickly um but it is is harder because it's never it's not as if I I thought about this you know 20 things while writing the first one and now I only think about five it's always it's always 20 it's always 100 things you do a lot of rewriting I do I do I know I'm finished with uh a first draft when the very thought of reading it again almost makes me physically ill so yeah there's it up to that point and it's necessary do you rewrite as you go along or do you do the whole draft and then start over again? Typically I try to create markers um because I don't want to get I don't want to get obsessed with page one page one page so it's sort of let's say that I do and it depends on what the book is but if I get through maybe 20 pages then I'll say okay this is a good time to sort of stop and look back and go through it again um so I try to set these these rules for myself so that that helped me um but don't hinder me in finishing a project because I've seen writers do that get caught up in in the fine tuning and the perfection to the point where they have a difficult time completing a narrative. Well thank you Chris you certainly haven't had a problem finishing this one thank you very much so that uh thanks for coming and at the end of this session