FAQs

What's going on with the sphinx?

It's one of the statues in Crystal Palace Park, which is just around the corner from my flat. It doesn't mean anything, I just thought a sphinx in the forest was a wholly unexpected thing to find on an April morning in London. The park has dinosaurs, too.

Why Muramasa Industries?

I toyed with Satan's Little Helper, Wages of Sin or Speaker to Animals as possible company names. But in the end I went for the one that makes me sound like a giant Japanese corporation. You would be surprised how quickly people start paying when they think you have your own ninja division.

Isn't it confusing writing fact and fiction?

Not really. It puts me in good company, alongside Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman and Robert Silverberg, although they are all richer than me, obviously. The two kinds of writing do require very different approaches, so I tend to work on one kind for a few months, and then switch to the other. Don't ever try and write both simultaneously. Ultimately, a large proportion of my factual work forms research material for my fiction.

How come you've done so much?

I work every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I never take holidays. I have lived this way since 1993 or thereabouts. Is it really all that much? If you write one page of A4 every day, you will produce a couple of novels' worth of writing every year. The trick is to make those pages count.

I would like to be a writer, but I don't have the time…

You could write 500 words in your lunch-hour every day. That would give you a novel in six months. Gene Wolfe got up every morning at five o'clock for twenty years, and wrote for an hour before he went to work. How badly do you want to be a writer?

Why don't you have a blog?

I don't own any pets or take amusing online quizzes, so I fear I have nothing to share with the world. Besides, I look back through my correspondence with my friends and family, and I realise that my daily life is insufferably dull. It comprises endless diatribes about people who owe me money, and scandalous revelations about famous celebrities. The last thing I want is to give that kind of stuff away for free on the internet. I am saving it up so I can sell it.

What is your favourite book?

Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny. I know I am supposed to think of something more impressive, like Xenophon or Plutarch, but Zelazny is my literary hero. In my science fiction work, I enjoy plagiarising early Larry Niven. Close-run contenders for my favourite book include Pyrrhus by Mark Merlis, Cosmic Banditos by A.C. Weisbecker, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and whatever I'm reading right now.

What is your favourite film?

It's a constant duel between Casablanca and Silent Running.

Where do you get your ideas?

In one copy of the Sunday Times, I found: street girls in Brazil disguising themselves as boys; a gangster breaking cover after witness relocation; the last flight of JFK junior; talking chimps; annular eclipses; Mia Farrow selling Frank Sinatra's engagement ring to help Vietnamese orphans; a body-laundry machine in Tokyo; a virtual supermodel who is supposedly statistically perfect in every way; a theory that true love is dead in 30 months, with a half-life of just eighteen months; the story of Tim Westwood; the meaning of the term "dropping science"; a girl with Down's syndrome refused a heart transplant over "quality of life"; a trend in gender selection that suggests girls are more preferable than boys; an operation to track down Russian hackers called Operation Moonlight Maze; and a dancer whose death apparently "haunts Cambodia." Pick up next week's and see what's in it for you. I make it about seven pence per idea. And read the whole thing, not just the bits you like. I've been amazed by some of the weird ideas that leap out at me from the Style section.

Will there be a sequel to Pirate King?

Actually, there are three sequels to Pirate King - two historical follow-ups, and a travel book in which I retrace Coxinga's life and journeys. I haven't got time to commit to writing them for a while yet, though.

Would you like to see me and my friends naked on a webcam?

No. Why do you keep asking me?

Do you want to save $$$ on Microsoft OEM?

No, I don't. And I don't want V1agra or C!al!s either. I suppose this is the price I pay for all those dodgy websites I looked at while I was writing the Erotic Anime Movie Guide. I am stuck forever in a world of moronic snake-oil spam.

I've seen you somewhere before…

I was a presenter on the Sci Fi channel's Saiko Exciting show back in 2002, and I also introduced the late-night anime slots. I've done a lot of TV interviews as well, mainly about Japanese media. It's amazing how many people just happen to catch me at two in the morning when they accidentally channel surf onto a show called Erotic Manga.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted your job?

Write every day. Read all the time. Stop putting it off till tomorrow. Be prepared to live on the poverty line for ten years before you get anywhere. Have an alternate source of income. For me, it was translating other people's writing while I tried to sell my own.

To what do you attribute your overnight success?

The first novel I published reached bookstores twenty-two years after the first novel I finished. How's that for 'overnight'?

Why don't you talk more about your script work?

I am usually made to sign a non-disclosure agreement before I am even told the nature of the work itself. I am often uncredited, or perform an invisible function behind the scenes, hammering out the guidelines that the writers of the show will use later - characters, for example, or broad plot outlines. Sometimes, it gets really weird. Yes, it means that entire year-long periods of my life are shrouded in mysterious silence, and nine times out of ten, what I do never sees the light of day, at least in the form that I envisaged it. But such contracts often function as unwitting patrons of the arts. If I hadn't done Halcyon Sun, for example, I would never have been able to afford to spend a year off writing the Anime Encyclopedia.

Is Japanese hard?

Yes. But Finnish hurts the brain almost as much.

Have you done DVD commentaries?

Yes, I've done five at the last count, for Appleseed, Vampire Hunter D, A.Li.Ce, Blue Remains and Detonator Orgun. All of them are UK-only releases, so if you want to hear me wittering away, you will need to buy the Region 2 edition.

Will there be a new edition of the Anime Encyclopedia?

Yes.

I heard about a speech you gave being included as a DVD extra…

In 2003 I kicked off the London Sci Fi Film Festival by giving an hour-long talk about the history of digital animation in Japan, which was filmed by Artsmagic and, suitably shorn of any content they regarded as libellous (roughly half the running time), included as a DVD extra on the company's releases of A.Li.Ce and Blue Remains. I'm told that if you buy an American edition of Malice Doll you will also find my speech on that, but the distributor never bothered to send me a copy.

I have a question about Japanese animation…

In the last ten years, I have written over a million words on the subject. Are you sure that you can't find the answer in one of my books or on the interviews on this website?

Why can't I find your Masters dissertation from the University of Leeds?

Sharon Kinsella's book Adult Manga wrongly lists an undergraduate essay of mine as a Masters thesis. If you're looking for my actual Masters thesis, the correct details are: CLEMENTS, J. “Japan Inside: The Rise of Anime and Manga Publishing”, submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for an M.Phil in Publishing Studies, at the Department of Publishing Studies, School of English, University of Stirling, 1995. From the number of times I have to answer this question, I get the impression that a number of unscrupulous academics have been copying out Kinsella's bibliography without actually reading the works cited.

Why is there no contact e-mail address on your site?

Because I can be reached in many other ways, all of which involve you opening at least one of my books. You don't even have to buy one, just go to a library. I find that by not presenting an instant email batphone to the world, I am spared much spam, daily offers of drugs, and vague and illiterate queries from people with names like Dem0nmAsT3r and r0xxoR. At some point I may set up a comments section for the site, but right now I'm kind of busy writing a book.

What historical character would you most like to be?

Jonathan Clements.