This will be the first year I’ll be taking part in #PitchWars and I’m super excited! If you’re visiting to find out a little bit more about me and my submission, I hope this helps!
About Me
I’m Miyuki Jane Pinckard, but everyone calls me Jane. I live in Santa Monica, California, with my husband and our rescue pup, Bowie. I teach Game Design and Introduction to Interactive Media at USC part-time, which leaves me time to work on fiction and freelance writing and editing.
I was born in Tokyo, and I try to go back at least every two years to visit my family and friends. I’m fluent in Japanese although I’ve nearly completely forgotten how to read and write it. (Thank the gods for auto-correct on kanji in Japanese keyboards, is all I’m saying.) I studied Japanese history at UC Berkeley and also did two years of a PhD program there, where my focus was on Heian-era cartography and urban planning, before I realized the PhD path was not for me and I left to write about videogames instead. (Mostly because I was obsessed with Civilization II and had to find a way to justify my hours and hours of playing.)
I was also in a band, Dealership, long time ago. (Link is to a song uploaded on Youtube.) I miss playing music.
When we moved to LA from Santa Cruz, where I worked at UC Santa Cruz as Associate Director of the Center for Games and Playable Media, I decided to throw myself into fiction writing. In addition to my #PitchWars submission, THE TRAITOR’S DAUGHTER, I’ve written a romance novella, several short stories (still looking for publication homes — man, short stories are HARD) and I’ve got a steampunk-meets-Jane Austen MS in the works too.
Let’s see, what else? I love books, obviously! My favorite writer of all time would have to be Jane Austen. Some of my most beloved novels have been Jane Eyre, Little Women, Lloyd Alexander’s Book of Three series, Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, Lord of the Rings, pretty much anything by Lois McMaster Bujold, and of course the Harry Potter series. I read widely in fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, and romance, but I think my heart belongs to fantasy. More recently, I’ve loved The Accursed by Joyce Carole Oates, Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older, The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu (although I wish there were more awesome female characters in it!), Ash by Malida Lo, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho… and I could go on but I’ll pause there. (I read about three books a week during the summer — I’m greedy.) I love books with interesting, complex women at their centers. I would love to see more stories around older women and non-binary people too.
I love games as well — usually super long RPGs, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect. (And before that, Baldur’s Gate. Basically anything Bioware makes. I am the biggest Bioware fangirl.) I love Dragon Age so much I started writing a fanfic, which you can find here: Deeper than the Night. Alistair4Ever. (Except when he’s replaced by Carth Onasi from Knights of the Old Republic <3)
Favorite TV shows tend to be in the speculative spectrum: Once Upon a Time, Firefly, Buffy (even though I recognize a bunch of problematic tropes about it now when I rewatch it), Star Trek: Next Generation + Voyager, and I’m slowly getting into the darkness that is Penny Dreadful. Oh, I’m also enjoying Mr. Robot quite a bit. The anime Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is also one of my favorites (it stars a badass female bodyguard!!)
The ex-historian in me also has a HUGE soft spot for historical dramas. I devoured all the NHK Japanese historical dramas when I was living in Japan. My parents were big anglophiles so I also watched a lot of BBC historical dramas growing up, and I still love them. The costumes. GIVE ME ALL THE COSTUMES.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the show Drunk History, which is AWESOME, and Dan Carlin’s amazing podcast, Hardcore History.
My #PitchWars Manuscript
My submission is a YA fantasy novel, THE TRAITOR’S DAUGHTER! It’s about a fifteen-year-old girl who is struggling to keep food on the table when her little brother goes missing. You can find the query for it here. I’m also working on a synopsis that will be up shortly.
The story is told in dual POV by Thorn, my heroine, and Val, her best friend. Although they share a childhood friendship, circumstances have driven them apart and so they each bring a distinct perspective and interpretation of the events as they unfold. Their strengths and weaknesses complement each other — if only they can see it! And, of course, their differences bring them into conflict. Will their friendship survive?
The backdrop of the story is inspired by Heian Japan at around 950 CE. Val is a foreigner, from a city loosely based on Byzantine-era, post-Roman Venice (I am also a huge Classics nerd, I may have forgotten to mention that before.)
The reason I wrote this is because Thorn got into my head about ten years ago and, in her stubborn way, refused to leave. She was something of a reluctant warrior, and a bit of a mess. Off and on I wrote a few half-finished stories around her, and then she was joined by her friend Val, who insisted on being included. (He’s like that, you know.) But I didn’t think seriously about writing an actual novel until around four years ago. Then I sat down and wrote out a full draft (it was, of course, terrible) and, two years ago, I found myself an excellent critique group and got to working on multiple drafts of it in earnest.
And now it’s ready, I hope, for mentorship! Thanks so much for reading! I’m so excited to dive into #PitchWars 2016!