Success, of a sort, crowned my effort: I did indeed write the whole first draft inside the space of two weeks. (And that was when I was still gainfully employed, I might add: the two weeks in question were my summer vacation, not that writing five thousand words a day* was all that relaxing.)
The inspiration for the book was Barry Hughart's incomparable (so I didn't even try) Bridge of Birds, "A novel of an ancient China that never was." In the background was my own love of alternate history: the story takes place in a fantasy version of a California (that never was) settled by Chinese sent abroad by the Ming. (I highly recommend When China Ruled the Seas, by Louise Levathes if you didn't already know about the enormous ocean-going ships of Zheng He.) I suppose this could be called an orientalist or chinoiserie novel (see also Ernest Bramagh) but for me it was just a story I wanted to tell, about a clever thief-turned pirate who goes to hell. All of them.
The story starts on Monday, 27 July 2020.
*The first draft, then, worked out to roughly 60,000 words, which is definitely on the short side for a novel. I rather liked that effect, though, and wish I could do it again. The final draft of The Jade Maiden wound up being just under 75,000 words long. Still a short novel when compared with some of the doorstops in our library, but longer than I'd wanted.
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