ericmarin) at Lone Star Stories has purchased 'Black Betty' for the October issue of the zine.'Black Betty' is my pirate story, but it was inspired, structurally, by the story 'In a Bamboo Grove' by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, which was eventually turned into the film, Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa. I've not seen the last, still, despite being a big fan of both Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, who stars in the film, but Akutagawa was a fine writer who, sadly, killed himself much to early in life. There's a current translation of his work out by Jay Rubin, who does half the Murakami output (he translated Murakami's most recent novel, After Dark), and even comes with an introduction by Murakami himself. Which may or may not be incentive for anyone to read the work, but I dug it, at the very least. At any rate, all that aside, I actually quite like 'Black Betty, and I'm pleased that it's going to see print, rather than sit in the back of my notebook, gathering dust. It's one of the stronger pieces of mine that will be published this year, I believe and, lets be honest, it's my take on pirates. Every author should get to do it once.
