Featured Interview With Yurie Kiri
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Yurie Kiri, born in a trailer in rural America, studied Mathematics and languages and speaks Japanese, English, French and has also studied Chinese, Arabic and Spanish as well as a smattering of other languages such as Korean and Russian along with binary, octal and hexadecimal machine language because if you really want to get to know someone you need to speak their language no matter if they’re machine or human. Yurie lived and worked in Asia for decades before coming back to America where Yurie went on an extensive backroad journey across the US and Canada from the rough Mexican border towns to the icy cold town of Yellowknife in Canada’s NWT where you need to cross a frozen lake to get into town in the winter. Yurie also sailed (single-handed) from Mexico to the Canadian border, retracing a well-traveled road journey by sea in a small, live aboard sailboat. Yurie has been traveling and gathering story ideas from Asia for the Game Series which covers Japan and other Asian countries and North America for the Murder and Mystery Series which covers the American Southwest.
Yurie Kiri is a shy, secretive person who used to live on a boat, sailing between various ports in the Pacific Ocean. Yurie lived on the boat until some crazy mega-yacht got loose and went on a full throttle rampage through the marina squashing everything it hit. Alas, sailing was one of Yurie’s passions, now writing and photography are the main passions in Yurie Kiri’s life along with cats of course like the enhanced, intelligent cats featured in New York Stories…
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
When did you start writing?
In my childhood. I wish I still had the evidence of that but alas, couldn’t keep every scrap…
What was it like to write your first book?
My first book or rather the first book I planned to publish; Tokyo Games was written as a kind of revenge story about the people who unjustly kicked me out of a good job. So instead of moping around feeling sorry for myself I used my new, free time to construct a good story about their destruction. I changed everyone’s name as well as some of the circumstances but that book (like all of my books) are full of real people, people I know and new people I’ve met. The only thing I’d do differently would be to not use a “professional” editor who changed my style a bit and then I’d publish it instantly on Amazon instead of waiting around for all those agents and their rejection letters..
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read most everything: history, science, business, travel and fiction… I wanted to write about venture business and Asia as a straight up non-fiction, this is how it is book, so I arranged to study and interview some very rich and successful venture capitalists… however the information I gleaned from those studies turned me in another direction and went into parts of my novels, “Moonlight Beach”, “Tokyo Games” and “Osaka Games” all of which feature VCs from California. Names etc. have been changed to protect everyone including me and one subject actually tried to buy “the story” after I let him read it however I didn’t want to sell regardless of his “Hollywood connections” because I’d rather be free (and relatively poor) to do what I want which allows everyone to read those stories instead of keeping them locked away.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I will soon be releasing Advance Review copies (ARCs) of the latest book in the Moonlight Series called “Moonlight Skull” which won the 2024 Beach Book Festival’s award for Unpublished Fiction…. excerpts are shown below:
“Hey!” Gigi said. “What are you doing?” The sight of the big man carrying a bloody skull freaked her out. She wanted to run, but the horny Archeologist guy was still on top, pressing into her and he kept pumping like he was some kind of sex robot drilling for oil. It now felt like she’d made a big mistake letting the men pick her up at the truck stop.
“Relax,” Bob said. “Señor Ocotillo just wants to watch…” He held the skull carefully and let it watch. “He hasn’t had any in a long while since as you can see…. He’s been dead for some time…”
“You guys are too weird,” Gigi said. “This will cost you extra…”.
“Right,” Bob said with a laugh. “I’ll pay you even more to ignore me…” He held the skull and watched quietly for a while as the moonlight played on the canyon wall. He could almost imagine a ghostly moonlight skull image on the wall.
Margarita stared at the huge apparition that approached her. It was like some kind of evil nightmare had materialized right out of a bad dream. He was even more evil and more dangerous than before. He was someone who was supposed to be dead because she’d watched him die. She started to scream as he got closer.
If you want to get an ARC please let me know…
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