Debut novel – Emily Midorikawa

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.

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At the start of 2003 – the year in which my forthcoming debut, A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing, is set – I was a young English language teacher working in Japanese high schools. I had arrived on the island of Shikoku two summers before, in late July 2001, bringing with me the secret desire to write – and publish – a novel.

The novice writer I once was (© Erica Crump)

I had recently graduated from university and the decision to spend some time living in Japan had seemed a natural one. My mother was Japanese and, although I wasn’t bilingual, I had grown up in a home steeped in Japanese traditions. Unusually for the northern England of the 1980s, for instance, our family never wore shoes indoors. Our regular meals might include tempura, tonkatsu, bowls of rice and miso soup. There were Japanese books on my parents’ shelves; hanging scrolls daubed with swirling kanji hanging from the walls.

When I applied for the job, I’d hoped to be offered a position in one of Japan’s urban centres: Tokyo, Kyoto or perhaps Osaka, the major city I’d get to know best and the place where my novel is set. I was initially disappointed to learn that I would be posted to Matsuyama, the comparatively small capital of Ehime Prefecture, located on the smallest of Japan’s four main islands.

The location, however, would turn out to be serendipitous. Quite apart from the fact that I would grow very fond of Matsuyama itself, I can now look back and feel that, on a personal level, it was exactly the right place for me to be at exactly the right time.

For one thing, I consider it a great stroke of luck that my arrival in Ehime Prefecture coincided with that of another young woman, Emma Claire Sweeney, who had been offered a similar job in a nearby town. Like me, Emma secretly hoped to write and publish a book some day and, although we initially said nothing to each other of our shared ambitions, we became firm friends very quickly.

We often travelled together – Emma at the wheel of the car while I sat in the passenger seat, paper map in hand, directing us inexpertly. At the parties we went to, we’d huddle together in the corner, talking nonstop between sips of Asahi beer. Still, we didn’t mention our shared interest in writing, but as the months passed our conversations frequently turned to books we’d been reading and the writers we each admired.

When in the summer of 2002 we finally ‘came out’ to each other as aspiring authors, it felt like such a relief. We both sensed immediately that we would be able to support each other practically and emotionally – that we could try to achieve our aims together.

Although Emma left Japan, to continue travelling in Asia, shortly afterwards, our friendship only grew stronger.

US paperback cover (same book, different title)

After many years of critiquing each other’s manuscripts and even publishing a number of cowritten articles, we published a jointly-authored group biography, A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf, which explored historical literary collaborations.

In addition to my important friendship with Emma, the other gift my time in Matsuyama gave me was the luxury of solitude.

Prior to moving to Japan, I had always lived with other people. Now I rented a tiny studio apartment on my own and, although I never felt that I lacked for friends, including Emma, I seemed to spend great swathes of each week alone. I used to while away many hours reading books in favourite cafes, watching English-language films with Japanese subtitles rented on chunky video cassettes, or simply riding my bicycle around the streets of the city: passing roadside shrines; traditional noodle bars tucked behind curtained doorways; fashionable clothing boutiques, J-pop melodies trailing from their doors.

I would record my impressions of sights like these, and much more, in a series of notebooks. Over time, I began jotting down snippets of fiction among these day-to-day scribblings. Eventually, I started writing my way into a version of the book that would eventually become my debut novel.

When my plane rose into the sky above Matsuyama in July 2003, at the start of my journey back to Britain, I could feel how much I’d changed from the person I was when I arrived two years before. I had a better understanding of the country in which my mother had grown up; I’d found a friend who shared the same writerly ambitions as me; now that I had committed to the book I was writing, I even had an end goal:

I would finish my novel and try to find a publisher. It sounded simple when I put it like that. But, as I’ll explore here next month, these things would be much easier said than done.

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing will be published in the UK on 23 July 2026 (US release date to follow) and is available for pre-ordering now.

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Tag: Debut novel

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

In Exactly the Right Place at Exactly the Right Time