The House in Which Nightmares Dwell Volume 1 Afterword

[touchturnfly]

Afterword

To new people, pleased to meet you.

To people who I have met before, thank you once again.

It is time for the afterword. I am the author Ono.

It's been one year since my last book. What I wrote last time was a fantasy book, so it's been a while since I wrote anything other than fantasy.

I think I may have disappointed people who took obtained this book and said, "What, it's not a series of cases?". I truly apologize to those people. Actually I've become a person who is into horror by nature. Therefore this type of work is my main road, but there's no way I will forget about the Twelve Kingdoms series. The plans for publication are near, so please forgive me.

-- I think there may be some people who are surprised at my way of writing. You who thought, "The previous afterwords were different somehow." -- Indeed, I'm talking about you (laughs).

Well, I made you wait for a long time, but the much rumoured 'will it or will it not?' continuation came out after all. I received plenty of threats and teary persuasions, thank you very much. ♥ Thanks to you these fellows have appeared again.

... ... Somehow, after finally doing this, I feel giddy even if I say so myself.

I debuted in the year 1988, so 6 years have already passed since then. My debut work was from the same X Bunko as this work, but it was published from the famous Teens Heart with a pink binding. That time was the golden age of love stories and then it was the case that I wrote a love story just like the others, but when I look back at that time I am shocked with how I could have survived it. Anyway, love stories are not far beyond my ability, but actually, I got the impression that my friends who heard the story of my debut were surprised or amazed.

The content is also far from from a love story and though it's painful and tragic, I still think it's far from a work that entertains a girl's feelings. There have been no words of gratitude from the benevolent fans who stayed in touch since then.

... ... In any case, although I somehow debuted and even though I wrote a love story, I was in dire distress. The genre I was looking for somehow had to be a genre that would be easy for me to write and something that was enjoyable for the readers as well. The genre was called horror.

Originally I was a huge fan of horror movies. I loved horror stories by authors like King and Saul and I love the nostalgic scary manga. I am the type who goes out to look if I hear ghosts appear in such-and-such places and tell a hundred stories where people gather, so I think I have an interest in scary things to begin with. If it's horror, I want to try write it, I might be able to write it, besides I considered that girls may be interested in those things, I wrote a horror story -- or better said, a ghost story.

　It gained unexpected popularity and was given one series at Teens Heart. Because I made horror my foothold and continued to write fantasy with a strong sense of horror, and fantasy without horror up until today, I feel like it wouldn't be an exaggeration if I said that it's thanks to horror that I somehow survived the intense up and downs of the junior novel world.

For that reason, horror is my own home ground after all. Late at night when all sounds die in a silence, when I think about how to make my stories scary, is the most enjoyable and the best time I feel like working.

This work is the sequel to Teens Heart's popular Evil Spirits series. Fortunately it was popular, so when the series was just about to end, I received a lot of correspondence calling for me not to stop it. As a writer, the Evil Spirits series was the series that sustained my living for a full nine years. so I myself feel quite attached to it as well. For this reason I felt inclined to write a continuation.

Of course, I thought about the people who are new to this work and as much as possible I took into consideration as not to inconvenience the people who don't know the series before. I intend to let people who know the Evil Spirits series enjoy it as a continuation and let people who did not know about it enjoy it as an independent work as far as possible. Because of this I created a few characters that makes you wonder why they have appeared. I did that for the story continuation, so I beg your pardon.

However, since it's a sequel at any rate, if you're able to read either, I think it would be more enjoyable to read it in a chronological fashion starting from Teens Heart. I think it might be a little difficult to obtain it, but I think it's still possible to order it from a book-store (if that's not the case, what should be done... ...). If you read volume one and grew interested, I'm pleased to meet you. -- Wow, this is unusual. I'm doing business (laughs).

At the time of writing this story I went back to reading the previous series and I was astonished with the surplus amount of line breaks in my early works even if I say so myself. The age of White Heart's target audience is considerably different, so it's no good if it is extremely unsuitable. In each volume, the editor took what was given up on into good line breaks and increased the kanji. I smiled bitterly at seeing those changes as it revealed my own struggling style.

Actually it used to be decided that the protagonist had to be an ordinary girl and in the first person narrative of that girl. Which reminds me, I thought "Well then, let's write a novel only in first person narrative," and I deeply recall how the plot of the previous series was constructed like that. Because I received teaching on how to properly write a novel by people in the field of mystery novels, I wasn't able to describe falsehoods in a third person narrative. I dearly remember how I was hooked at that point and thought about all the spoilers in the series.

The rules of the afterword are also completely different. I was told to, "keep it light if possible," so I made effort to do it that way. It was the afore-mentioned person (laughs), and the title was light as well. Such as "Evil Spirits Abound!?". By the way, I'll list the titles here, start from "Evil Spirits Abound!?" to "There really are a lot of Evil Spirits!" "There are so many Evil Spirits, I can't sleep" "The Evil Spirit is all alone" "I don't want to be an Evil Spirit!" "Don't call me an Evil Spirit" "I'm okay with Evil Spirits! Volume 1 and 2", which is the order of all seven works, eight volumes. Even if I say so myself, any of these titles do not seem understandable. (laughs).

Although there was talk about a sequel before this, the entire eight volume series, a horror done in first person, I discovered something like a type of wall (certainly there are advantages as well). I thought it would be interesting if there wasn't any wall and received the approval to carry it over from Teens Heart to White Heart.

With White Heart as well, the illustration changed, and it is a considerable change compared to the previous series. Even so, the manner of writing the structure of the story hasn't changed. This was also the same when I was writing fantasy. One might say, what is learned in the cradle is carried to the grave.

Anyway, if you liked volume one, it would be great to meet as well in the second volume. Just to be on the safe side, as usual I handed in the manuscript for both volumes at the same time, so the second volume will be published next month. I'm in your care.

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Back to Chapter 7.6 | Forward to Chapter 8.1

Notes

Kodansha X Bunko Teens Heart: Teens Heart was a light novel label aimed at a female teens, founded in 1987 as a sub-label of Kodansha Bunko X (1984). It was part of the girl novel boom in the 1980s and 1990s, but was unable to respond to changes in readers' tastes. Eventually it ceased publication in March 2006.

Kodansha X Bunko White Heart: Light novel label founded in 1991. The label publishes fantasy, Boys Love as well as 18+ works aimed at adult females. Well-known for Ono Fuyumi's other work "Twelve Kingdoms".

Authors mentioned: Stephen King and John Saul.

Comments

Re: Announcement

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for all the hard work!!! :)

I'll miss your amazing and frequent updates, but you deserve a nice break- so be sure to enjoy yourself :D . It'll give me time to reread your translations from beginning to end. Ono Fuyumi really is a great author.

Oh! If you do not already know, I've read online that there is going to be a Ghost Hunt live-action movie--- it'll only be released in Japan, but I'm sure it'll eventually make it all over the internet with sub titles, so that's something to look forward to (I really hope it does justice to the novels). Enjoy the summer!

Nicole- your Canadian reader