Tag: A Secret Sisterhood

Reaching out in the Darkness: Making connections with readers of A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ 2 Comments

Regular readers of this newsletter will know that my debut novel came out in the UK in late July. As was the case with my previous (nonfiction) titles, launching A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing into the world has been both exhilarating and exhausting.

Blackwell’s, Manchester – with Susan Barker, author of Old Soul

The months leading up to and surrounding a book’s publication are frequently filled with the highs of unanticipated joys and excitements and the lows of frustrations about things over which you, the writer, have very little control.

If you’re not careful such difficulties can become overwhelming, so much so that you end up not fully appreciating the best parts of the experience. In the past, I have sometimes been guilty of falling into that trap. This time round then, I made a conscious decision that, come what may, I was going to thoroughly enjoy every good thing that happened.

An online workshop with Creative Courage’s Rachel Connor at the start of the year was very useful in helping me work out how I would stick to my plan. The exercises set by Rachel made me realise that in order to really absorb publication’s best moments I would need to be fully present for them, as opposed to letting my mind wonder to any adjacent worries simmering away.

By throwing myself into the best parts of the experience, I would ultimately come to recognise that one of the most fulfilling aspects of publishing a book for me is the opportunities it brings for making connections with other literature lovers. Such connections can occur on a large scale, or small. Both can be emotionally rewarding.

Over the past weeks, for instance, A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing has been reviewed in an eclectic mix of British publications. Among these, The Sun newspaper gave it a five-star rating and called it ‘gripping and full of suspense’. The Japan Society Review said the novel ‘eloquently describes that struggle to find one’s way in a land with unfamiliar customs … and the tension that comes with often being on the “outside”’. Elle magazine praised the way the story ‘plunges readers into the nightlife of Osaka’.

It is wonderful to imagine these articles piquing the interest of faraway readers, who might then get hold of a copy of the novel. I am reminded of the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose literary friendship with George Eliot I explored in my first book A Secret Sisterhood (cowritten with Emma Claire Sweeney). Stowe likened a book, from its writer’s point of view, to ‘a hand stretched forth in the dark passage of life to see if there is another hand to greet it’.

Sometimes, of course, especially these days, an author gets to see a bit more of her audience than Stowe’s quote suggests. I’m very grateful to the readers of A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing who have shared their views of the story of Anna and Loll online.

These include Linda Hill of Linda’s Book Bag, who called the book ‘fabulous’, ‘intelligently written, intense and intimate’ and Jo Leevers, bestselling author of, most recently, The Museum of Second Chances, who very generously remarked on her Substack that ‘certain sentences are so elegant I had to stop and read them again’. Up and coming novelist and BAFTA-winning producer Joe Evans, too (whose own novel Den launches next year), made an enthusiastic Instagram reel.

Many others have helped spread the word via social media, or left reader reviews on GoodReads, Amazon, Waterstones and other review sites – which is something that really, really helps authors.

Some reviews were handwritten – booksellers’ review at Collected in Durham, which also hosted an event with me

The forging of connections with fellow book lovers doesn’t only happen online. I’m so happy to have met many readers in person at the various bookshops and libraries I visited on my UK tour – occasions that, perhaps partly due to the promise I’d made to myself at the start of the year, were an absolute joy each time.

Having begun A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing close to a quarter of a century ago – at a time when its early-2000s setting was contemporary! – it was astonishing to finally be able to discuss the novel in front of such supportive crowds and in the more intimate settings of the book signings that followed.

But publishing a book isn’t all about building new connections. It’s as much about strengthening links that already exist with organisations and individuals an author has enjoyed working with, or writing for, before.

Two of the authors who interviewed me at my events are writers I admire and also close personal friends: my Secret Sisterhood coauthor Emma Claire Sweeney (at Burley Fisher in London) and Susan Barker, author of Old Soul (at Blackwell’s, Manchester). I was delighted to mark the publication of A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing by contributing a guest essay to the website of another writer friend, Sarah Emsley, author of The Austens. I was also recently given the opportunity to return as a guest to one of my favourite podcasts, Lost Ladies of Lit – due to air in September. It was a thrill to chat with Kim Askew and Amy Helmes about the underrated brilliance of Celia Fremlin, whose 1950s domestic noir novel The Hours Before Dawn has been an important literary influence. I have a few more collaborations in the pipeline too, which I’ll look forward to sharing in a future newsletter.

Every bit as important as such public-facing examples, however, are the quieter forms of connection. The old school friend with whom you had long lost touch who messages to say they have read your book. The reader of your previous nonfiction titles who decides to give your novel a go. And just the fact that, though you may never know anything about them, somewhere out there in the darkness – as imagined by Stowe– are people who have read your words and have formed a connection with you.

Happily signing books and meeting readers at my Woolwich Centre Library / JET AA event

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing is published by Manilla Press in the UK and is available from Blackwell’s, Waterstones, Bookshop.Org, Amazon or your favourite independent bookshop.

The US paperback will be published by Open Road on 10 November and is available for pre-ordering from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.Org, Amazon and independent bookstores.

The novel is also available as an ebook and as an audiobook, narrated by Jacqui Bardelang.

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing was recently featured in The Sun (5* review), Elle, My Weekly, the Japan Society Review, Linda’s Book Bag, Jo’s Substack and the Debut Digest.

I wrote a guest post for Sarah Emsley’s website about what this debut novelist learned from writing biography.

If you would like to make sure you receive my next monthly essay, and others like it, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Out today: A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ 7 Comments
Book signing at London’s Goldsboro Books

It still feels surreal to me that the novel I began close to a quarter of a century ago is finally being published by Manilla Press today! It amazes me that I can now walk into a UK bookshop and pick up a hardback copy of A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing. The novel is also available as an ebook and audiobook, beautifully narrated by Jacqui Bardelang.

I’ve spent some very happy hours this week signing copies of my novel at Burley Fisher Books, Goldsboro Books and West End Lane Books in London ahead of today’s official release date. It was also a thrill to launch A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing into the world a couple of days early with a pre-publication event at Burley Fisher, chaired by my friend and Secret Sisterhood coauthor, Emma Claire Sweeney.

Since Emma has been a part of my novel’s strange and convoluted journey right from the beginning, when we were both young English language teachers in Japan, it felt particularly apt that she should be the one sitting there with me in that East London bookshop on Tuesday asking me questions about the book and its long and winding course to publication.

Emma’s engaging interviewing style kept us all entertained at my book launch

As I wrote in a previous newsletter, the two years I spent in Japan as a young woman – and meeting Emma in particular – marked both a personal turning point and the very start of my writing career. And so sitting there in a shop packed with family and friends that evening really felt like the culmination of a very long chapter in my life as well as a new beginning.

Other things I’ve been up to this week include recording an episode for one of my favourite podcasts, Lost Ladies of Lit, to air as part of their next season in September. It was such fun to chat with Kim Askew and Amy Helmes, and to share my passion for the 1950s domestic noir The Hours Before Dawn, which I count as a literary influence. I also took part in the July Bàrd Debuts night at Bàrd Books, at which I shared the stage with other debut novelists: Lorna Elcock, Karishma Jobanputra, Kim Willis, Phil Melanson and Stacey Yu.

Tonight I’ll be at Blackwell’s in Manchester, where I’ll be in conversation with Susan Barker, author of Old Soul. On Wednesday 29 July I’ll be heading further north for an event at Collected in Durham. I’ll be back in London for a talk at Woolwich Library on Thursday 6 August, co-presented by the JET Alumni Association. If you can make it to any of these events, it would be lovely to see you.

Like Tuesday’s discussion with my longtime friend and writing partner Emma, there is an element of things coming full circle with the Woolwich Library event in particular.

The two years I spent living and working in Japan in my twenties were organised by the JET Programme. If I had not applied for this scheme, I would not have met Emma; I would quite possibly never experienced living in the country in which my mother grew up; would most certainly never have written A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing. Perhaps I will have the chance to reflect on some of these things on 6 August in Woolwich. Either way, I am definitely looking forward to this event.

If you can’t make it to any of my live talks, but would be interested in finding out a bit more about A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing and the story behind it, you might want to take a look at this video conversation between me and the author and creative coach Rachel Connor. I’ll be sharing more news of video and audio content in my future newsletters, as well as getting back to the usual essay style of these postings next month.

For now, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported my novel at different stages along the way. That includes all the individuals and organisations mentioned in this post, plus my literary agent Ariella Feiner and editor Zoe Yang who were in it for the long haul, my friends and family, and every single person who’s taken the time to buy a copy or spread the word about A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing. It may sound trite, but I mean it sincerely: your encouragement really has meant the world to me.

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing is published by Manilla Press and is available as a hardback, ebook and audiobook. In the UK, copies are available from Blackwell’s, Waterstones, Bookshop.Org, Amazon or your favourite independent bookshop.

The US e-book, published by Open Road on 4 August, is available for pre-ordering from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.Org, Amazon and independent bookstores. The US paperback will be released in November and will be available for pre-ordering soon. (The audiobook is already available in the US and Canada, as it is elsewhere.)

Tickets for these upcoming events are available at the following links: Blackwells, Manchester (Thursday 23 July), Collected in Durham (Wednesday 29 July) and ‘A Tiny Speck of Black and then a Conversation with Emily Midorikawa’ presented by Woolwich Library & JET AA in London (Thursday 6 August).

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing was included in the Crib Notes Hot Mum Summer Reading List 2026.

If you would like to make sure you receive my next monthly essay, and others like it, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

The Long and Winding Road to Publication

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ 8 Comments

There are just under three months to go until A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing, the novel I began over twenty years ago, will be published in the UK. I’ll be back in Britain for much of the summer and will be marking publication day with an event at Blackwell’s, Manchester on Thursday 23 July. I will be in conversation with Susan Barker, author of the highly acclaimed literary horror novel Old Soul among other brilliant books.

I still sometimes struggle to comprehend that I am in this position at all – preparing to speak at public events about a novel I’d once thought would never see the light of day. Tickets are available here. If you can make it to Manchester, I would love to see you at Blackwell’s!

As I wrote last month, I began writing A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing when I was in my early twenties and working as an English language teacher in Japan. After returning to the UK, aged 23, I initially moved back to the town where I grew up, took a part-time secretarial job that left me ample time to keep working on my novel, and began applying to university creative writing programmes.

Following an acceptance to UEA’s famous MA course, I packed the bag containing my laptop and the loose printed pages of my novel-in-progress with a great deal of nervous excitement. But my time at UEA, though wonderful in many ways, would turn out to be more emotionally difficult than I’d anticipated.

Halfway through the year, my father died. Losing him when I was still only in my mid-twenties, had a profound effect on me. Afterwards I never felt young in the same way again, and, looking back, I can see how the grief I felt transformed the way I wrote about loss in my book.

By the time I left UEA, I had a scrappy first draft. An extract published in that year’s course anthology attracted the interest of a couple of literary agents, but it didn’t lead to any formal offers of representation, much less to a publishing deal.

Still, I kept going, (mostly) firm in my belief that – although aspects of my novel still needed lots of work – I had a story worth telling. Eventually, a different agent took me on and, after revising the manuscript extensively with her, I steeled myself as it went out on mass submission to publishers. Some editors showed an interest in the book’s urban Japanese setting; my depictions of hostess bars; and the central storyline of an intense friendship between two young women, one of whom suddenly disappears. But, although I seemed to get close on a few occasions, it didn’t lead to a publishing contract.

By this stage, I had been living with A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing for a long time – around eight years in fact. Having already committed so much time and energy to the novel, it was very difficult to put it aside. Dejectedly, I did, though, to concentrate on other writing projects, including various collaborations with Emma Claire Sweeney, whose friendship – as I described in my March post – has been of the utmost importance to me.

In 2012, my mother died. I was 32, still relatively young to have lost both my parents. Again, as in the case of my dad’s passing, the long shadow cast by Mum’s death would go on to affect the ways in which I approached the theme of loss in my novel when I unexpectedly found myself returning to work on it some years into the future.

During the decade and more when A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing largely languished in a metaphorical bottom drawer, I occasionally dusted off the draft to enter it into competitions for unpublished writers. My novel had some success with the SI Leeds Literary Prize and Yeovil Literary Prize. Then in 2015, it made the shortlist for the influential Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. At that year’s prize ceremony, to which I took Emma as my guest, I was stunned to hear my name announced as the winner.

Being announced as the 2015 winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize by Professor Janet Todd OBE
(Image courtesy of Lucy Cavendish College)

It is hard to overstate the impact of these small victories on my confidence at a time when my belief that A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing would ever be published was at an all-time low. These wins opened doors, offered unexpected opportunities and led to lasting friendships with fellow shortlistees and other people associated with the awards.

Such prizes also helped me to be taken more seriously when I was pitching proposals for my two nonfiction books, A Secret Sisterhood (cowritten with Emma Claire Sweeney) and Out of the Shadows, published in 2017 and 2021 respectively. Both were historical group biographies. I relished the research and writing of these works, but after Out of the Shadows came out I decided that I wanted to give fiction another go.

As the mother of two small children by then, my progress was slow and steady. But I had begun a new novel when, completely out of the blue, in early 2024, I received word from my agent that that an editor who’d read the manuscript of A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing some time ago was asking if it was still available.

In the years since she had begun representing me as a writer, my agent (whose commitment to this novel has been extraordinary) had continued to show my manuscript to editors from time to time. As before, some had shown an interest but nothing had ever worked out. So, although I was happy for this editor to take another look at the work, I didn’t hold out much hope.

You can imagine my amazement then when, two decades after I first began writing my novel, I found myself signing a publishing contract at last – and being faced with the somewhat daunting prospect of returning, in mid-life, to a book I originally conceived as a young woman.

The process of revising the manuscript for publication has been surprising, challenging and illuminating – and more than a little uncanny at times. There has also been pleasure in meeting the writer I once was on the page, and in the realisation that the passage of time has, in fact, enriched the story I am able to tell.

In May, I will explore what it’s like to come back to a creative work after a long break.  If you would like to make sure you receive this next monthly post, and others like it, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing will be published by Manilla Press on 23 July 2026 and is available for pre-ordering now.

Tickets for my Blackwells, Manchester event with Susan Barker are available here.

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing – available for preorder!

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ 6 Comments

After a long hiatus, I’m so happy to be able to be able to announce that I have a new book coming out this year!

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing – my debut novel – will be published by Manilla Press in July 2026.

Set in the Japanese city of Osaka in the early 2000s, it is the story of Anna, who teaches English to bored students by day; and Loll, who passes her nights working in the smoky atmosphere of the Moonglow hostess bar, where she pours men’s drinks, lights their cigarettes and laughs playfully at their jokes. Unlike Anna, who has come to Japan to learn more about her Japanese heritage, Loll seems to have no clear reason for being there and no easily discernible past. And so when she suddenly disappears, there are only the barest clues as to where she might have gone. But, desperate to find her friend, Anna refuses to give up. Soon she is thrown onto a trail that will take her into the darkest corners of the neon-choked metropolis – hidden, forbidden places from which those who know the city best warn her to stay away.

To readers of A Secret Sisterhood and Out of the Shadows, this may seem like something of a departure from my last two published works, which were both historical group biographies.

However, my novel doesn’t really feel like a departure to me. This is, in part, because I began work on it many years ago, meaning that its development overlapped with the period when I was researching and planning A Secret Sisterhood (coauthored with Emma Claire Sweeney). It’s also because, having already published my two nonfiction books by the time I began revising the novel ahead of this year’s release, the lessons I’d learned from those experiences fed into the way I approached redrafting the novel. Finally, being able to view all three complete texts now, I can see links between these books – shared concerns; repeated motifs – that were not apparent to me before.

I first began sketching out A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing well over two decades ago, when I was in my early twenties and living in Japan. I am in my mid-forties now (and living, for the time being, in the USA), which may give something of a sense of what a long and convoluted path this book has taken to publication!

While A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing is a work of fiction, it was influenced indirectly by the two years I spent working in Japan as a high school English teacher; my experience growing up in a British-Japanese household; and the family stories my mother used to tell me.

I’ll be sharing more about all of these things in the near future, but for now I’ll just leave you with the news that until this Friday only (20 February 2026) Waterstones has a 25%-off offer on preorders for the hardback.

As you might know, preorders are enormously helpful to authors because they let publishers and booksellers know ahead of publication that there is already reader interest in a book. If you are thinking about purchasing a copy anyway, I’d be very grateful if you would consider preordering one from Waterstones.

  • The offer runs only from 07.00 on Tuesday 17 February until 23.59 on Friday 20 February (UK, GMT)
  • Customers will need to enter the code “FEB26” at the checkout to redeem the offer to receive 25% off the RRP.
  • The offer will be exclusively available on the Waterstones website and the Waterstones app.

Being able to say that  A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing is going to be published, more than twenty years after I began it, still feels a bit unbelievable. For a long time, I had given up on the possibility of it ever seeing the light of day.

If you’d like to hear more about how the book was rescued from its metaphorical bottom drawer, its plot, main characters and inspirations – and you don’t already receive emails from this site to your inbox –  please use the sign-up box on my homepage to get yourself on my mailing list.

This has all been a long time coming. I really look forward to sharing more about the twists and turns of this novel’s unlikely journey with you.

A Secret Sisterhood – out in paperback today

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ Leave a comment

I’m so happy to announce that A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf is out in paperback today. My friend and co-author, Emma Claire Sweeney, and I are having a blog tour to celebrate, and there’s a post about this on our joint website, Something Rhymed.

In this post, we also talk about some planned changes we have coming up on Something Rhymed, which include opportunities for those who’d like to write a piece or two for the website or to help out with editorial or admin. Do take a look if you are interested.

Coming Soon! – A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ Leave a comment

It’s been ages since I posted anything here and so I thought I really ought to remedy this.

Emma Claire Sweeney and I have spent the greatest part of the past few months, working away on our co-authored book. Most frequently, we’ve been hunched over our desks in our own studies or at Senate House Library, but we also spent an enjoyable – if chilly – week in January on a Bread Matters Cultural Foundation residency near Lisbon.

This was, in fact, the same place that we’d taken ourselves off to when we were first planning our, then unnamed, website about female literary friendship, which we’ve been running for the past three years. So it seemed especially fitting to return here in early 2017, when we were in the final stages of editing our book on the literary friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontё, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

Proofs for A Secret Sisterhood. Looking forward to seeing the real copies…

At last, the UK edition of A Secret Sisterhood has gone off to the printers and the US version will not be far behind. The UK edition is available for pre-order here, the US one here.

Unlike the posts we write on Something Rhymed, necessarily limited to a few hundred words, each section of A Secret Sisterhood delves in far greater detail into one of the book’s four main literary friendships. We’re both looking forward to hearing what readers think of the stories we’ll be sharing of Jane Austen and the amateur playwright Anne Sharp; Charlotte Brontё and the feminist author Mary Taylor; literary legends George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the combative, yet affectionate, friendship of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.

Another thing I’m eagerly anticipating is the prospect of doing more events with Emma. The last talk we gave at City, University of London – with Something Rhymed guest bloggers Susan Barker, Ann Morgan and Denise Saul – feels a very long time ago now, and so Emma and I are glad to be in the process of organising many more literary friendship-themed sessions. One of these will be the 46th annual lecture for the George Eliot Fellowship, at which we’ll be the keynote speakers. We’ll be focusing on Eliot’s transatlantic literary friendship with Stowe – surprisingly little known today despite its historical importance.

The lecture takes place at 2.30 pm on Saturday 16 September. Tickets can be purchased here.

A Secret Sisterhood: a book written with my friend, Emma Claire Sweeney

~ Emily Midorikawa ~ 2 Comments

Creative Commons licence
Creative Commons licence

Emma Claire Sweeney and I already blogged about our forthcoming book on Something Rhymed, but I thought it would be a good idea to share a link to that post here too. A Secret Sisterhood, which focuses on the literary friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, will be published by Aurum Press in the UK and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the USA, both in late 2017.

Emma and I are heavily into research and writing now, but we look forward to sharing snippets of the stories of these friendships on our website, and delving into everything in much greater depth in our book, A Secret Sisterhood.