Here's the cover of my upcoming book (may be modified slightly when it comes off the presses this fall):



You can pre-order now over at Amazon.com!

Very cool. Congrats. And don't worry, haven't forgotten that little something you wanted. :)

Thanks and thanks, Linn! :D

Here's the description from Chronicle Books:

EIJI TSUBURAYA was the behind-the-scenes hero to anyone who has thrilled to giant monsters duking it out over Tokyo—the visual effects mastermind behind Godzilla, Ultraman, and numerous Japanese science fiction and fantasy movies and television hits shown around the world.

Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters details the dynamic life and movie career of this legendary film figure, from his early fascination with aviation, motion pictures, and model building to his work in the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema to the ingenious technical innovations that brought miniature worlds and fantastic characters vividly to life.

Collecting hundreds of film stills, posters, character art, and dozens of delightful on-set photos of Tsuburaya instructing his monsters to crush one building after another, this highly visual biography also features rare profiles of the master’s collaborators, detailed information about his key films and shows, and special features on his legacy and the enduring popularity of the characters he helped to create.

The release date for the book has been finalized: November 1st. Mark it on your calendars! :)

Chronicle Books had a sample copy on display at the booth at San Diego Comic Con (I also received my advance copy in the mail last week). I am very pleased with the way the layout and printing turned out -- the paper stock is a thick, glossy bond -- and I am throughly satsified with the finished result. I hope that everyone will as well. Cheers!

Excellent! Congrats August!

Just got an early copy of the book. It seems to do a great job of covering Tsuburaya's life and some of the behind the scenes business side of his art. The book is a real visual treat, not surprising considering the publisher is Chronicle Books and that is pretty much their claim to fame. Many fantastic behind the scenes photos I've never seen before. Although I had imagined that there would be more film-by-film how they did it type stuff (and where I got that I idea I don't really know), it is a great looking book and one I know I'll be getting for some people for Christmas. Great job, August!

Thanks for the kind words. But, please take into account that Chronicle is a publisher of mass-market pop culture books, and as they told me as I went into writing this book, "We're not an academic press; we're producing this book for people who don't know who Eiji Tsuburaya is." So, they didn't want any technical detail on the films themselves -- in fact, I went really into detail about some of the incidents in his life, and what wasn't considered important was either abridged, condensed or dropped. Admittedly, they wanted a 50,000-word manuscript, and I delivered one that was closer to 90,000 (give or take a couple of thousand) -- so, they edited my manuscript to suit the needs of their vision for the project. (I also wanted more behind-the-scenes photographs, and they thought that too many would be redundant.) They are the experts, and this is my first book, so I put my trust and faith in them to do the man justice, and I believe that they did.

Now, if the publisher were McFarland (who allow their authors to get obsessive), then it would be a very different matter altogether. But, with that being said, I was blessed with Chronicle, because no other publisher of their size or statue would have touched the subject matter (and they had the tenacity to keep the project going for four years before writing started, and were patient enough to work with Toho), and because Chronicle will plaster this book around the world -- it has even been picked up by Wal-Mart.com (!?) -- and that's the bottom line; to give maximum exposure to Eiji Tsuburaya outside of the ghetto of the genre press and into the public consciousness. Hopefully, we have both succeeded to this end.

Still, with this book, I was able dispel several myths about Tsuburaya and some of his films in the 208-pages, including the ridiculous claims that Toho didn't have a visual effects infrastructure before they produced GODZILLA -- in fact, they had been producing successful, award-winning films with miniature effects, since 1942), and also I uncovered who was responsible for drawing the original story boards and production sketches for the 1954 film (some previous English-language tomes claimed that it was executive producer Iwao Mori who drew them), etc.

Again, thanks for the kind words!