Way, waaaaaaaaaay back in those olden days of 2003, Fat White Vampire Blues was published in a very smart-looking edition (trade paperback with slip cover and built-in bookmark) in Japan, in Japanese. I exchanged several emails with my Japanese translator, who was incredibly sweet and polite and wanted me to explain some New Orleans local lingo so he could properly translate it. I received in the mail a small advance payment (which I greatly appreciated) and a copy of the incredibly neat-o edition of my book (which I think I appreciated even more). Then I never heard another word from that Japanese publisher. They opted not to translate and print Bride of the Fat White Vampire, so I assumed the first Jules Duchon/Fat White Vampire book had dropped like a stone into the pond of the Japanese market and hardly created so much as a ripple.
Well, it must’ve created at least something of a ripple, because I just stumbled across a Japanese fan site dedicated to Fat White Vampire Blues. If you are a fan of Jules Duchon and the series, you should go to this link, even if you don’t read Japanese, because the accompanying photos are so perfectly selected. This Japanese fan has assembled a small portfolio of fat New Orleans culture. Below is a sample: an obese cab driver waiting for his next fare.
Now, if I could just get that Japanese publisher interested in the next Jules Duchon book, which features a trio of Japanese super-heroes (Fat White Vampire Otaku, due out next month, May, 2014), maybe I could be big in Japan!
