So What...: if I'm Fat? I'm gonna go to Japan and make it big.

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Ronnie had always known that he was fat.

The girls at school laughed at him, and never in the seventeen years of his life had he had a single date.
A girl he’d secretly had a crush on since kindergarten had described him as ‘gross’ and called him ‘a pig’ at a friend’s birthday party when he was ten years old, and since that day, he had never again gone to another swimming pool. His younger sister Julie teased him all the time and he knew that his mother wanted to convince him to go on a diet, but darned if he was going to listen.
Maybe he was a bit on the heavy side, but so what? Ronnie had always done okay in his studies; maybe he wasn't number one on the track but he used to be on the high school wrestling team, and he was perfectly content with his life--or so he'd thought. Until the evening when he saw a group of big men on the news.

Ronnie had been relaxing on the couch with a bag of chips one evening when a news segment showed a number of sumo wrestlers on tour from Japan. They had to be bigger than he was, but they looked radiant. They were stars. And in that moment, he knew he'd found his life purpose. He was going to go to Japan and become one of them. He would talk his mom into letting him go to Tokyo over the summer break. Little would she know that he had no intention of coming back for the new school year. He was going to stay there, and he was going to make it big. He was going to become a champion.
But first, he needed to get his foot in the door. He also has to convince his sometimes overprotective mother to give him a chance to go after his new dream…

"I’m gonna go to Japan and make it big" is Book 1 in a series of short pieces about Ronnie Jenks, an average teenager who just happens to be a little overweight, and his family members. From the moment that Ronnie has his first encounter with sumo, he sets out to take control of his life.

The "So What…" series offers readers a chance to travel with Ronnie to a sumo stable in Tokyo where he experiences a new culture, tradition, new encounters, and excitement as he overcomes his hangups and builds his confidence.

The series also includes stories about his sisters: Julie, Naomi, and Debbie.
His younger sister Julie is devoted to manga and anime, perhaps in an effort to keep her mind off the dead people she keeps hearing from. Julie travels to Tokyo to visit her brother where she is discovered by a local TV crew. Freelance photographer Naomi, the eldest sibling, stumbles across a major scandal during her coverage of a meeting of political leaders in Tokyo. Meanwhile, back home in Vancouver, Debbie, who has been suspicious of her handsome securities dealer husband for some time, decides to leave him and go the minimalist way. The four children never cease to keep their mother Olivia worried, but she has her own issues that need to be addressed...