Osaka Heat Wins Romance and Multicultural Fiction Book Awards
Osaka Heat is the Gold Medal Winner in the Romance category and Silver Medal winner in the Multicultural Fiction category for Independent Publisher's eLit Awards. The eLit Awards celebrate the ever-growing market of electronic publishing; the program is committed to illuminating and honoring the very best of English language digital works. Buy the e-Book!
The printed version of Osaka Heat also won the Silver Medal in Independent Publisher's IPPY Award, Multicultural Fiction category. The IPPY Awards annually recognize the best independently published books across a variety of categories. Buy the Book!
Synopsis
Osaka Heat (AuthorHouse) follows the story of an Irish-American widow who travels to Japan and becomes involved in a forbidden romance with a Japanese man.Osaka Heat’s multicultural aspects include Japanese and American culture woven throughout the novel. Known for doing the right thing, American teacher Ginger O'Neill travels to Osaka to win a prestigious Japanese academy as a sister school for her own. Her three-week mission is being followed not only by her school district but by the Washington Post and the Japanese embassy in Washington, DC. Ginger, sole parent to her teenage daughter, has spent the last twelve years, her widowhood, without romance.
Things don't go smoothly for Ginger in Osaka, as her visit elicits one cultural predicament after another, each crisis taking its toll not only on her personally but on her ability to win the school partnership. Ginger's relationship with her host family, as well as her forbidden romance with a Japanese man, forces her to look at the path her life has taken and ultimately presents her with a moral dilemma that will change her life.
The multicultural aspects of the book are brought out in the literature, music, and Japanese cuisine woven throughout the book, along with the personal, religious, and cultural challenges faced by the protagonist during her travels in Japan. Ms. Mahaney was inspired to write Osaka Heat when she traveled to Japan as the chaperone for her son’s high school student exchange. She saw the cultural setting of a Japanese school as the perfect setting for a novel. Six years later she has an award-winning book.
"I’m honored that Osaka Heat has won Gold and Silver Medals in prestigious competitions and am pleased that the book has been enjoyed by so many readers," said Ms. Mahaney. "One of the best things about having written Osaka Heat is the opportunity it has given me to meet people who love to read and who enjoy hearing about the writing process. "Following Ms. Mahaney’s presentation to the McLean, Virginia, branch of the American Association of University Women, the organizer of the event commented in the organization’s News: "Her talk focused on the process of writing with her own idiosyncratic techniques clearly described to a spellbound audience."
A reviewer for Japan Visitor wrote, "What ensues is a journey of self discovery, or rather of rediscovering who she [the protagonist] is....The book won me over. Mahaney does not speak Japanese, she is not an expert on things Japanese, but she narrated well the inner life of a woman whose moment of truth happens to take place in a Japanese setting. And that is more than enough."
Author Bio
Mary Claire MahaneyMs. Mahaney, a retired lawyer, lives in McLean, Virginia, where she has served on numerous education and community boards. In 1997, she was awarded the McLean Youth, Inc., Citizen of the Year Award for her community work. She has made appearances at conferences, libraries, and bookstores, and has spoken to many groups about the inspiration for her book, the twists and turns the story took as she wrote it and revised it, and her experiences publishing the book. For more information about Ms. Mahaney and Osaka Heat, visit www.maryclairemahaney.com
Osaka Heat
(ISBN: 9781425990824) is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and
from the publisher at www.authorhouse.com/bookstore