My Writing

25 February, 2020

Introducing "Sowing Ghosts"


Yoshino Hiroki doesn’t want to be in Japan’s capital, he wants to be home and killing someone. Anyone. Hiroki has spent nearly two decades running from his aristocratic past, becoming samurai. But “samurai” means “to serve,” so when ordered to investigate a murder he knows he must obey.


Instead of returning to his predictable ― if not safe ― provincial life, Hiroki is drawn deep into the treacherous world of the burned and barricaded capital. He is guided by Katsumi, a tea-shop girl with poetic ambitions, and threatened by enemies and friends, all of them dangerous. Worse, his investigation threatens to revive his dead past, and brings him face-to-face again with the woman who destroyed his old life: His mother.

Could she be the killer? Or is it the adolescent, descendant of a powerful family and seeking his own power? The secretary who wants to wield a sword, not a brush? Hiroki must learn more than spy-craft to deal with what could be domestic violence ― or a political conspiracy that will engulf him and the empire.


Sowing Ghosts is a murder mystery set during the Sengoku Jidai, the age of the country at war. It's not fantasy, nor is it alternate-history.

And before I start serializing the book itself, I'm going to post a few items that I trust will help readers understand the period, and possibly help in keeping track of the characters. The novel itself begins on this site on Monday 2 March.

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