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Eric Madeen

Eric Madeen is an award-winning, literary fiction author of six books. His writings have landed in executive suites of publications, from senior to junior: Time Magazine, Asia Week, The East, Daily Yomiuri, Kyoto Journal to East of the Web, Metropolis, Japanophile, Tokyo Journal, Blip Magazine (New World Writing Quarterly), The Imperial, Peace Corps Worldwide which honored him with a Profile in Citizenship for his investigative feature on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his ambitious missionary hospital in Lambarene, Gabon -- still standing!

About The Author

As for vibing on soulfulness, such won’t leave you as it left Madeen … humping the bejesus out of the muse a la crackling literary fiction in his third-floor garret in Japan, where his career found long runway as a senior associate professor of literature at Tokyo City University and adjunct professor at Keio University …

This followed earning his MFA in creative writing and literature from San Diego State University. Faculty there granted him scholarships, nominated his first novel for awards (L.A. Arts Council and Associated Writing Programs), and farther down the road he won awards for his fiction and teaching.

Like wunderkind best-seller Paul Theroux, Eric Madeen will always think of himself as a Peace Corps volunteer, one who, just after graduating from the University of Arizona, constructed in Francophone Gabon, Africa a primary school complex in an equatorial village surrounded by rainforest … where he got lost for three days while hunting monkeys for the cooking pot … and where notably he fell in love, giving his first novel Water Drumming in the Soul a vigorous fictional reality.

A Midwesterner like Ernest Hemingway who inspired him even when he wasn’t teaching him, Madeen at several junctures put down the chalk long enough to travel write his way across the sprawl of Southeast Asia for All Nippon Airways’ inflight magazine Wingspan, boasting a monthly readership of 350,000; all those essays brutally lived are now recognizable as his travelogue Asian Trail Mix: True Tales from Borneo to Japan.

Not a money writer, Madeen, however, found some, the folding kind, in his early career as a copywriter for then world’s largest ad agency Dentsu, brainstorming/executing/champaign-popping worldwide ad campaigns for clients as diverse as Mazda, Subaru, Canon, Konica and Sony – Sony No Baloney!!!

Those were heady times in Japan’s bubble. Tokyo streets ran with gold, jingling in and out of deep pockets of drunken salarymen corralling him into extravagant hostess clubs with tabs they graciously threw for as they ran into thousands … of dead presidents.

Go places across the wounded galaxies by simply cracking open this guy Madeen and thus skipping all those dreadful hours in the dentist’s chair … and the interminable delays …, ughhh!!! You’ll be smitten with any of his far-ranging books, stitched together with the sizzle of love and exotica … sprinkled with a dash of erotica ...

Water Drumming in the Soul: A Novel of Racy Love in the Heart of Africa

In this fiery tale set in steamy equatorial Africa, Peace Corps volunteer David Fields is on mission: to build a medical dispensary in a remote village where spells are cast on enemies and fear of a witch doctor reigns. Early on David is captivated by Assam’s water drumming, her playing the stream as a drum. So mesmerized by her … everything, he becomes the hunter captured by the game. And what a rollicking game of love it is … until the haunting end.

“A novel so beautifully and realistically written I found it on par with works by whom we consider masters … Hemingway definitely comes to mind. I wasn’t, however, bargaining for needing quite so many tissues! But that’s a good thing. – Elizabeth Montano, author notably of The Eternal Dawn Trilogy.

“A love story masterfully crafted, drawing readers into the heart of Africa with a blend of adventure, love, and cultural exploration. Madeen's storytelling prowess shines through and resonates with authenticity. The characters, particularly Assam, are beautifully developed, challenging traditional stereotypes as in presenting a more nuanced and genuine portrayal of African culture.” -- Zaheer Baber; Professor of Sociology; University of Toronto.

“A riveting journey that crushes the stereotypical love story. Thought-provoking and emotionally charged, it challenges conventional narratives and in doing so becomes a modern-day classic. Go there.” – Harold Jaffe, Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature; San Diego State University; former editor of Fiction International.

Tokyo-ing!

Tokyo-ing! Is an apt word for this trio of tales chiming with anyone even slightly interested in Asia’s most dynamic metropolis and its glazing of layers – be they cultural, sexual … or taking-wing exuberant. Madeen does deep dives in three fascinating directions and voices, including the persona in first-person female. Then doesn’t let readers come up for air because they don’t want to -- until the delicious end.

“… a masterful tour de force of a book focusing narratively on a compassionate and profound look at life and culture in contemporary Japan. Though author Eric Madeen has taken on serious matters — karoshi (overwork death), alcoholism, Machiavellianism in academia, eroticism, the disruption of traditional male/female work and family roles, old world superstition and new world life solutions, his tales are told with sly ingenious humor, affection, and happy fable-like endings while miraculously straddling the roles of both soto (outsider) and uchi (insider) … Trust me, you’ll enjoy the ride.” — Marnie Mueller, former Peace Corps volunteer (Ecuador) and multi-award winning author of nonfiction books focusing on Japanese American incarceration during WWII.

“An extremely well-executed collection! From an American professor falling into a sex trap set by a Chinese female student, to a Japanese career woman plunged into after-work drinking culture to a fascinating love story starring in the end a rarity in the Far East: a woman born in a Fire Horse year!!! All told, Tokyo-ing! is a terrific trio that’ll rock your socks!” — Cami Michaels, award-winning author of The Sheffrou Trilogy.

“Root for the characters in all their shadings and be so utterly surprised by how things turn out. These are real tales of Tokyo in their ground-breaking revelations of what it’s like to live here.” — Michael Pronko, award-winning author of the Detective Hiroshi mystery series and professor of literature at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.

Tennis Clubbed, Snubbed and Rubbity-Dub Dubbed

In historically rich Yokohama, where Captain Perry and his Black Ships cracked open Japan, the wicked shiver of the tennis snub in the postmodern present pits David Adams against K: a puffed-up xenophobic tyrant who rules over the courts of a club that has as its anthem, ironically, the promotion of international friendship.

Off the courts, David labors on a "McContract" at a Japanese university while married to the proverbial nail that sticks up, a fiery medical doctor who rides a 1200cc rice-rocket Yamaha. A heady tale of comparative culture and revenge, Tennis Clubbed goes down like a cocktail of pure fire ... served up in the hall of the mountain king,

“Madeen’s exuberant prose whisks the reader through the trials and tribulations of tennis enthusiast David Adams, a big, blustery American university lecturer on a limited contract in Yokohama, struggling to make his way and maintain his dignity within the constraints of Japan, as he deals with archrival K. Many of David’s misadventures are laugh-out-loud funny, but there is enough truth within these pages to make a long-term foreign resident such as myself wince!” — Suzanne Kamata, award-winning author and Associate Professor at Naruto University, Japan.

“While I came into it expecting a cringy sports novel I was amazed at its wit and insight into Japanese culture, layered deeply and transcribed brilliantly in all its idiosyncrasies on and off the courts. The characters, particularly the professor’s wife, are endearing. All in all, breathtaking tennising across cultures …” — Mark Collins, North Carolina.

Asian Trail Mix

** Amazon Bestseller **

By turns pathbreaking and intimate, this smorgasbord of travel essays scales down the sprawl of Asia by focusing on the unique and revelatory in sharp, crisp prose. See up close and personal the razzmatazz of novice monks at play in northern Laos, the hustle of pedicab drivers in Ho Chi Minh City, rainforests blazed on gutsy treks across Borneo and Thailand's Elephant Island. Served up nice and spicy, it’s a travelogue at its most sumptuous. Snack on it!

“…profoundly rich travel experiences, as if the author macheted a fresh trail for the homebound. Roam through Raffles Hotel in Singapore and peek into the rooms where world-famous authors stayed. Then it’s 22 hours by jeep to Berau in Indonesian Borneo, following Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. We visit the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center where orphaned orangutans go wild. We brave roaring traffic in bustling Saigon. In Thailand we backpack through rainforest, avoid king cobras, and lie in a hammock spellbound by stars. In Japan we experience a horrible death at an Onbashira festival, an ancient Shinto tradition of riding huge logs down a steep slope …All so very double f: fresh and fascinating!!!” — Edward Dickey, former director at the National Endowment for the Arts and author of Shakespeare Meets the Buddha.

“The title might lead you to expect fluff and/or hippie vibes. Neither is the case, although the book is a trip, quite literally, and is gemmy and poetic with writing that is lush and emotive. This springs from the author’s literary background and sensibility … and curiosity, all adding up to creativity coming from, as Henri Matisse has it, courage, raw courage which takes Madeen so far off the beaten track you almost feel beaten down by his rigorous adventures. And I loved that he didn’t leave out the budget treehouses and bamboo huts filled with the latest Lost Generation.” — Duane Martin, Amsterdam.

Massage World: The Novel

Peek under the drape ... The body is in pain. So around the world the massage industry is booming, from airport massage bars and upscale spas to risqué outcall and down-market parlors. By turns holistic and erotic but always zesty, Massage World is a literary, multicultural thriller and concerns one driven massage therapist, Ingrid Swanson, opening a straight, grandiose health spa - Massage World - against the wishes of a wild parlor lord hellbent on taking it over with his rogues' gallery from the likes of a Dionysian dream.

“It’s a titillating, wild-ass ride through the booming world of massage therapy, unveiling by turns an oily and crystally - as in new aged - tale of straight up massage clashing with the greasier side of the tracks as in anti-hero parlor lord, Jack Cobb, directing his crooked vice dick into eliciting “extras.” It’s Rousseau clashing with de Sade in overtime, metaphorizing the delirious Americana divisions and frictions for the amusement of the wider world.” – Vladimir Nenchev; Sofia, Bulgaria.

“It combines gritty realism, lurid sensationalism, and darker-than-black comedy to conjure up a phantasmagoric vision of a world in pain … So earthquaking powerful and fresh it is, I've never read anything quite like it, not even close.” — Larry McCaffery, author notably of Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors and former Professor of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU.

“It’s a sizzler of a thriller bursting with eccentric energy.” — William Luvaas, winner of a Huffington Post Book of the Year award.

“Very cinematic with a canny and calculated construction. A really high-octane potboiler. Motion and emotion. Exotica and erotica from SoCal to Japan and back. Conflict galore. Kinkiness with and without aromatic oils. Who could ask for more?” — Harold Jaffe, Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and Literature at San Diego State University and former Editor of Fiction International.