On the Cusp is a regular series I do on this blog, comprising an interview with another writer who’s about to become a debut novelist. I send them the standard list of ten questions and ask them to please pick five, and to also answer the bonus question, since it always leads to unexpectedly interesting answers.
This week we have Keshe Chow, who I met online through an online writing group but is a fellow Melbournian! Her award-winning novel The Girl With No Reflection will be out this August. Pre-order links here!
Why did you pick traditional book publishing? Why not self-pub or even some other art form, to tell this story? Interpretive dance, perhaps? A computer game? A series of sculptures? Why a novel, with a publisher?
After decades away from creative writing, I only re-started in 2020 – when I had two young kids and was running my own business full-time. I have so much admiration for authors who self-publish, but it is a lot of work. Self-publishing essentially involves running your own business and I was already doing one of those! So largely it was a matter of time and money (and my lack thereof).
That being said, I’ve always been goal-oriented, and when I started creative writing my immediate goal was to get published by a “big five” publisher; I never wavered from that singular intent. I guess when I set my mind on something, I can be very stubborn in my refusal to deviate from that.
As for the other things, well … I lack any other skills. Except for sculpture; I once sculpted a vase in the shape of an upside-down baby emerging from a vagina, but someone stole it before I was able to realise my dream of becoming a full-time vagina vase sculptor. I guess it must have been good for someone to steal it?
Why this genre? Why this age group? Why these characters?
I grew up reading Young Adult literature and that age group always resonated with me. It’s such an exciting time, being a teenager/early adult – individuals at that age have such a wondrous sense of idealism that was fun to capture in my main character. Fantasy, too, is so much fun to write, because as an author you wield so much power! Since in real life I feel pretty powerless (beholden to the drudgery of life, family, routines, etc) it’s pretty thrilling to be able to write about dragons, alternate universes, betrothals to crown princes and so on.
For the characters, I was certain that I wanted to write characters based on my own (Chinese) heritage, because growing up I almost never saw people like me in the media unless it was a token ‘nerd’. So I considered it extremely important to write Chinese-coded people doing fun things, as opposed to being mathematical geniuses with a pet calculator.
What’s surprised you the most during this whole pre-publication process? What have you enjoyed the most?
The most fun part so far has been the cover design process and seeing the end result come from the designers/artists/illustrators. For so long the story only existed in my own head, so being able to see an artist’s interpretation of my work was so mind-blowing. Also, I don’t have much skill with art (except for sculpting vagina vases, of course) so I’m constantly in awe of their talent.
The thing that surprised me the most was how much work goes into bringing a book into fruition. The sheer number of editing rounds (developmental edits, line edits, copy edits, sensitivity reads, pass pages/proof reads) … It was a lot.
Was it a long road to get here? Do you have drawers full of previous manuscripts?
I did query one manuscript before this one, and it came close a few times (a couple of publisher R&Rs) but I think that maybe it was a bit too much of a genre mashup to succeed as a debut. I still have high hopes for it for later!
I also wrote a middle grade manuscript between that first book and The Girl With No Reflection but I never queried that one because by the time I had the idea for Girl, I knew it was the one I’d want to debut with.
It wasn’t a long period of time though, only because I went really HARD for the first year and wrote those three books very quickly. By the time I signed with my agent I’d only been writing for around a year, and by the time I got my book deal it was less than a year after that. So ultimately, writing my first book to landing the book deal took less than two years. Which actually makes my mind reel a little.
Was there anything in the journey to publication that you’d built up and then it turned out to be nothing to worry about/an anticlimax?
Probably my relationship with my agent and editor, Tricia Lawrence and Lydia Gregovic respectively. When you’re querying/on submission, agents and editors seem like these inhuman, spectral, god-like beings. They’re very intimidating. But now that I’ve worked so closely with them, I realise that they’re actually very nice, human, and approachable.
Bonus question: What’s next?
My sophomore YA fantasy novel, For No Mortal Creature, comes out with Delacorte Press in 2025. It’s based on the idea that ghosts can die and become ghosts of ghosts, and it’s pitched as Wuthering Heights x Inception (but with lots and lots of ghosts).
Lisa Tirreno 