Hi friends 🍵🌸
I hope you’ve all been hanging in there! Before we get into the newsletter proper, there were two things I wanted to share upfront.
(1) I’m aware of the recent conversation surrounding Substack, and like many others, I’m debating how to handle this newsletter going forward. Here’s a summary from Malinda Lo. I also appreciated these thoughts from Emily VanDerWerff and Anne Trubek. This is an important community and space for me, so I’m thinking carefully about this. I don’t have a paid option, which makes things simpler, but I need some time to research alternatives. For now, I’m paying attention and weighing things.
(2) The rising incidence of hate crimes against Asian Americans in the US is truly awful. If you can, consider donating in support of Asian communities and/or registering for free bystander intervention training. The orgs that I supported today were Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Filipino Community Center, and NQAPIA—but there are a lot of them. Looking at your local communities is a great place to start.
Like many, my initial emotional response to this week’s tragedy was feeling helpless—but I took the small actions above, and I’m going to continue doing what I can.
Since my last newsletter, my book, Never Have I Ever, has come out into the world and into the hands of many readers—including several of you, I know! Wow! What a thing to have happened.
I knew in a distant way that I should probably send out an email day-of, but I got slightly overwhelmed, and then I mostly just wanted to feel my gratitude and eat cake. Also, there were some shipping difficulties that meant if you hadn’t preordered it, you were probably met with the notice that it was out of stock that day.
I am glad to report that it is now very much in stock! If you have yet to pick up a copy, here is how you might obtain it, in order of What Would Be Most Pleasing To Me (but really, you can get it however is most convenient for you):
Order at your local indie! Some of my favorites: Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, The Booksmith in San Francisco, Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Porter Square Books in Cambridge, and Harvard Book Store, also in Cambridge. In many places it will need to be special ordered, but I would absolutely love it if you could get my book and support local businesses at the same time. ❤️
Get a copy from Bookshop.org, which supports local bookstores.
Order directly from my publisher, Small Beer Press.
You can also get it from Amazon or Bookdepository.
If you are in the Philippines, you can place a special order with Fully Booked by emailing orders@fullybookedonline.com.
And if you prefer ebooks, you can get in your preferred format from Weightless Books.
I am obviously completely biased but my cover is so lovely that whenever someone shares a post of my book I just go UGH!! That cover is SO PRETTY!! (I think I would feel this way even if the book wasn’t mine, but we’ll never know. Certainly that’s how I felt when I first saw Alexa Sharpe’s illustration!) Anyway, please find below a picture of me posing with the first author copies I received. It really did make me very happy to hold it, though in my usual way I was also slightly dazed.
I wanted to share a couple of neat things that have come out since:
(1) Over at Tor.com, Maya Gittelman wrote a really generous and beautifully worded review of the book:
Then there are the stories that don’t so much as sink their teeth in you, but make you look down and realize there have always, in fact, been teeth in you. There in the meat of your thigh, perhaps, digging. Insatiable. […] Vicious, vindicating, and visceral at once, Never Have I Ever balances compulsively readable humor with the good, transformative sort of devastation. This is a truly powerful, propulsive collection, exploring the makings and reshapings of myth, and the myriad ways we might save each other.
(2) I published an essay at Lithub about what it was like to be a fictionist while at Harvard Business School; it’s also about my split life, trying to succeed in business and writing at the same time. It was challenging to write, not least because I am so nervous about attempting nonfiction. Also I had to cut about half of what I wanted to say, but I am proud of this piece.
That I loved writing so much, then, posed a challenge. I wanted to write, but I could not imagine writing consistently enough to put food on the table. There would be no audience to sustain it. My writing was too niche, too weird, too Filipino.
There were one or two snarky comments about this essay that made me realize people are going to have a kneejerk reaction regardless of the content of the piece because I studied at Harvard. Which—I get why people think that way, and it brought back all the complex feelings I had when I was first accepted into my program, and how I never wanted to mention it.
But I’ve also received some kind feedback from people saying the piece resonated. In particular, I heard from folks who’ve succeeded in other fields or careers, who haven’t been given (or haven’t given themselves) the space and time to write. How can you, when you’re doing well at something else that the world more readily understands and more easily rewards? The piece is really for anyone who feels that way, and I’m grateful for those who read it with that spirit, and who took the time to let me know.
(3) I’ve had some really fun conversations with folks on different platforms, and I am collecting them all on my website. Here are two to start:
Why Isabel Yap keeps coming back to fanfiction, a chat with Oliver Emocling over at CNN Philippines Life. (Warning: there are lots of spoilers for one particular story in the collection!) We talked about Haikyuu, writing outside one’s identity, italics (because in the Philippines if you write in English, the convention is actually to italicize Tagalog words!), and which fanfic trope inspired A Spell for Foolish Hearts.
The thing that I've tried to do after that is to hold on to the belief that yes, publication and other things are great but I always have to remember that it's always about the writing in the end.
At the Bar with Arley Sorg, where we chatted about butt chairs in San Francisco, my favorite ramen, and how I feel about my writing career.
My desperation to write a novel has been through cycles–sometimes I’m wild for it, and sometimes it’s the farthest thing from my mind. A lot of that is down to what else is going on in my life at the moment.
Does it feel weird to quote myself like that? Yeah, it does...but welp. That’s how I preview content for you. 🤷♀️
A friend recently asked me what it’s like to have the book be out. Have things changed? they asked. How do you feel?
Things haven’t changed too much—which is what I expected! I took two days off work, which I really needed, but afterwards life resumed in earnest. I am working, and I am writing. I am making it a point to rest when I can, too. In my everyday life I am surrounded by people who do not make a big deal of my writing career, which has kept me grounded. But I also get to feel the support of my writing community online, and that has been gratifying.
I do feel a slight pang that I haven’t physically seen my book on any bookstore shelves yet. Part of that is the pandemic, because I don’t go out, and it’s not in any of the stores near me. But part of it is also just distribution and whether a bookstore chooses to carry this particular indie press title. I know I’ll get to see it on a shelf someday in more normal times, and I am very looking forward to that. I think that’s the one moment I’m still waiting for.
The biggest change also relates to how I feel, which is mostly a profound gratitude to everyone who has picked up or ordered a copy, or simply congratulated me on publishing it. I feel lucky, and warmed by people’s kindness. That support has meant a lot. People’s selfies with or snapshots of my book mean a lot. This includes people I know, from different stages of my life, all over the world. Among them: my cousins, my compatriots at family holidays and vacations; my friends, from start-up life and college and high school and B-school; folks I know from RL professional settings (did I credibly generate some sales via LinkedIn? I think so!); and my writing community, that I’ve built up through workshop and cons and moving cities the last few years.
There are also, extraordinarily, people who don’t know me in-person at all, who are reading and sharing their thoughts and taking stylish photos of my book. People are reading my words. I had always hoped the book would let these stories find a new audience. I believe it has started to do that, and that has been so damn heartening. I’ve heard now directly from some readers who have felt the words were for them, and I said it in my acknowledgements, but I’ll say it again: that means the world to me.
I want the book to do what it can. I continue to be very proud of it, and I am hopeful that it will continue to find its readers. 💪
Events and things
(1) I’m participating in the virtual ICFA Conference this weekend, and will be on a live panel about Decolonizing the Fantastic, this Saturday, 8-9pm ET (5-6pm PT). If you’ll be at ICFA, do say hi! o/
(2) I am doing an IG Live with @book.sh3lf next Tuesday! We’ll chat about the book, writing, and things I’ve been enjoying recently. This is the first event I’m doing since the book came out, so I’m pretty excited! Would love to see some of you there.
(3) On April 13, I am doing a reading with Rebecca Roanhorse for Book Moon’s Strange Light Reading Series. Details here, though the sign-up link is not yet available. I’ll send another newsletter once it is!
Thanks as always for reading! Stay safe out there. Look after those around you, but don’t forget your own needs, too. If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others, or sign up if you haven’t yet.