Tomioka Castle lies on the northern end of the Amakusa Islands. I had planned to continue the trek on foot, hoping to walk the entire route of the Christian ...

If you were a Doomsday prophet in the late-1630’s Japan, you’d have had an easy time making your case. Those years were plagued with terrible disasters; mass...

The Amakusa Islands don’t get many foreign visitors. Despite their beauty, they are a very quiet and remote region of Japan. Yet the views were stunning and ...

(The following post - the first in a series of five - comes from my travel journal detailing a journey I took through southwestern Japan in the spring of 201...

(Following the awards at Killer Nashville, the Price County Review ran an article on my award, my writing background, and my upcoming novel. Below is the ful...

“Just keep your expectations realistic,” my father told me as we prepared our trip to Nashville. “Who knows, you might actually win this thing. But even if y...

For a first-time author, the literary world can seem a frightening, hyper-competitive place. It’s tough enough writing, revising, and completing a full novel...

Amid soaring temple pagodas, countless bursts of cherry blossoms, and herds of deer that rove among yards, parks, and even the streets, a springtime visit to...

Iga and Koga. The names have a shadowy, almost mystical connotation as the twin heartlands of the ninja. Supposedly, as the stories go, the remoteness and in...

There comes a point during many of my travels—usually when I’m huddled under an umbrella beneath a tree branch in a sheeting rain, or shivering at night on a...

As someone from a small, rural Midwestern town, I’ve found Tokyo to be a veritable jungle of new adventures, experiences, and opportunities that I’d never im...

One of Japan’s peculiar delights is the seeming prevalence of quiet, serene, out-of-the-way temples and shrines, hidden in the nooks and crannies of the coun...

Somewhere in the midst of writing my novel, I reached a point where I could barely proceed. I’d hit writer’s block, though perhaps not in the way that most p...

Though I was born in summer, I’ve always been an autumn child at heart. The poetry of fall lies in its distinct melancholy—that time when the air grows coole...

One of my perennial frustrations is that I can’t just sit down in the corner of a coffee shop, music bar, or train car and write. My friend Cody told me once...