March 31, 2025 • 63 mins
Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a podcast about book writing and publishing. Make sure you subscribe to the companion Substack: https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcome
Today’s guest is Carmen Rita Wong, and she has a doozy of a story—it’s memoir meets family mystery, and it’s so freaking good! In this episode, Carmen shares how her magnum opus finally came together after decades in the making, plus writing and publishing wisdom she's gleaned through publishing FIVE books. She also introduces us to the concept of flashbulb memories... There are so many gems in this episode, so grab a pen and some paper because you’re gonna want to take notes! Follow Carmen on Instagram @carmenritawong.
The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.
Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
Today’s guest is Carmen Rita Wong, and she has a doozy of a story—it’s memoir meets family mystery, and it’s so freaking good! In this episode, Carmen shares how her magnum opus finally came together after decades in the making, plus writing and publishing wisdom she's gleaned through publishing FIVE books. She also introduces us to the concept of flashbulb memories... There are so many gems in this episode, so grab a pen and some paper because you’re gonna want to take notes! Follow Carmen on Instagram @carmenritawong.
The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.
Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
- Start a Newsletter to Supercharge Your Platform, Network and Business: https://writingworkshops.com/products/start-a-newsletter-to-supercharge-your-platform-network-business-zoom-seminar
- Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns: https://writingworkshops.com/products/land-big-bylines-by-writing-for-columns-zoom-seminar
- The Multi-Passionate Writer's Life: https://writingworkshops.com/products/the-multi-passionate-writers-life-zoom-seminar-with-courtney-kocak
- How to Build a “Platform” for Writers Who Shudder at the Thought: https://writingworkshops.com/products/how-to-build-a-platform-for-writers-who-shudder-at-the-thought-zoom-seminar
- Podcasting for Writers: How to Start, Sustain & Grow Your Podcast: https://writingworkshops.com/products/podcasting-for-writers-how-to-start-sustain-grow-your-podcast-4-week-zoom-workshop
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
So I was like, I need to write a book
that's a page turner. You cannot put it down. You
get sucked in and you're up all night.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today's guest is Carmen Rita Wong, and oh my goodness,
she has a doozy of a story. It's memoir meets
family mystery, and it is so freaking good. If you
are anything like me, you are going to be up
all night reading. That was her goal, and that is
a promise. So in this episode we are going to
learn how her magnum opus finally came together after decades
(00:41):
in the making.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Look, the book came out to, like, you know whatever,
two hundred something pages. I wrote like a lot. I
wrote hundreds of more pages. But so there was a
lot of like excavating two of those memories that were
echoing around. I had to go in there in my
head and like unpack a few boxes. But the boxes, man,
it was clear as day once they came up, the
(01:03):
feelings and sometimes even the colors and what I was wearing,
like the story, you know, and I'm here, I am
four years old, being in a fur chubby that Maya
Willa made me. I remember that coat.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh god, I.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Remember that quote. I remember the feeling of that coat
so much, and how the seams over the years started
like separating. I remember my little green velvet fur purse
she made me. I've always loved that color. So yeah,
it's flash bulb. And then also just doing the work
of putting yourself back there for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Today, Carmen introduces us to the concept of flashbulb memories,
plus shares writing and publishing wisdom that she has gleaned
through publishing five books. So grab a penance and paper
because you're gonna want to take notes on this one.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down
at a typewriter.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And believe.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Welcome to the Bleeders, a podcast and support group about book.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Writing and publishing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Coosak, and each week I'll
bring you new conversations with authors, agents and publishers about
how to write and sell books.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Hi, I'm carming Me de Wong, and I'm the author
of Why Didn't You Tell Me a Memoir?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So when did you first identify as a writer as
a child.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think I was. I still have it, which is
so wild. I wrote a little story for an English
class in fourth grade and it was about me and
a killer whale. I think I had just gone to
you know, SeaWorld or something, and I wrote this little
story and then I even drew like a cover, like
(02:55):
a cover of a book, and I stapled it together
and I handed that in as my assignment. And let
me tell you, my mother always kept it. I always
kept it. She gave it to me. I still have
it to this day. And I got an A, so
I was like, oh, hey, I'm a writer.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
That is so cute.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, you were a pro.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Oh I loved it.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Did you think it was realistic as like a job.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
It wasn't that so much as it wasn't allowed. So
it took me five decades to get my hardcover because look,
I have immigrant parents. You can't do something like be
a writer or an actor or anything creative or a
musician like I had to be either a doctor, a lawyer,
(03:40):
or an MBA. My brother was the NBA and I
started college in pre med, so you know, I changed
that major real fast, but I still had to go
a roundabout way to get to where I wanted to be.
It's not that I regret it, It's just that this
is the way it had to be. But I'm just
I'm just I'm there.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, what's your all time favorite book?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I don't have one, And I get asked this whether
it's like even in a color. If you ask me
my favorite color, I can't tell you. It all depends
on everything I'm all always about.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
It depends on you don't have to commit. Give me one.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, I'll tell you one that when I was young,
I read re read many times. Was the Count of
Monte Cristo. Oh, I read that and I read Dune
many times?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
What was it about those books?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Just the protagonists? I guess it's funny because the Count
of Monte Cristo, like I so am not a vengeful person.
Like I don't even believe in revenge. The best revenge
is keep your blinders on and keep going, you know
what I mean? Like ignore right. So it wasn't so
much that I think it was just the whole story
arc of how he was able to succeed despite everything.
(04:56):
And in my house, you know, we moved from Harlem
to New Hampshire, where you know, we were not treated well.
I was not treated well, and the house became kind
of like a little prison to me. So I totally
related to him being stuck in prison, was like one day,
one day, I shall emerge victorious.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
What is your dream writing routine?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know?
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I was thinking about this question because I had a
blessed writing routine for this book, because the deal enabled
me to be able to focus on it every day.
But I have to say the best thing is to
just have kind of uninterrupted writing time. Just four hours.
(05:43):
And that's not four hours of writing, that's about three
hours of thinking. Yeah, an hour of really writing. But
I'm so productive that way.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Are you the kind of person that has to, like
when you were working on your book, has to touch
it every day to kind of stay in it.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yes? And I also like was writing it in my
head for decades, so it was there and then I've
been writing. But then I did have to go back.
It was funny because when I was really in it,
putting it down even for the weekends was And I'm
not somebody who's like I now really enjoy downtime. Like
(06:22):
I'm a very tired person. I've led a very busy life,
so I'm like, oh weekends, yes, I'm not even going
to answer email, nothing. But when I was really deep
in writing the book. I kind of missed it. Yeah,
I missed it because it felt like, you know, it
felt like carving marble or building clay or something. It
just it felt kind of magical. And I swear I
(06:45):
will just always work my life to be able to
get that feeling.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Oh that's great.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So outside of this glorious book deal, time like, what's
your real writing routine?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
My real writing routine, Well, I'm a solo parent to
a teenager teenage girl and we have two pups, so
there's a lot on me. It's very busy. My mornings
are very busy, trying to you know, get her up
and out and the dogs and Aaron's and all that stuff.
So really what my routine was was doing like one
hour for email before noon, and you know, doing all
(07:18):
of my household stuff in the morning, and then I
would sit from about one till four or noon to four,
and I would that's where I would be writing. But
I'm very regimented because don't worry. I mean, I come
from doing broadcast in media journalism for decades, so I
definitely know how to write, almost like writing in a
(07:40):
daily newspaper, like sit down, get it done, you know,
and turning off social media and all that stuff and
just focusing so I don't think I'm actually like the
normal writer in that way.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
That's such a good skill.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, I'm trying to foster that a little bit more,
or just like carve out the space where it's like, no,
this block is just for this.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
You don't have to reply to it email right now,
that's okay?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, oh that you know, it's hard. I'm not saying
it's easy. It's actually pretty hard. But you got to
like talk to yourself and be your hardest boss. Yes,
and I've been. You know, I've had my own LLC
now for fifteen seventeen years, so I've always been my
hardest boss. But even with this, it was hard because
it took years to get it done. And so finally
when I'm in it and I have a deadline, I'm like, okay,
(08:25):
I sat down with my calendar, blocked out the hours,
did not schedule anything during that time, and you know,
really made a point to be like that's my job.
That's my job, and I'm not calling in sick today
and I'm not doing this instead today, Like that's my job.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
What's one piece of writing that makes you jealous.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
You didn't write it.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Oh oh my gosh, I'm reading or I have read,
which is just I mean, sometimes you read somebody and
you're just like, god, damn it.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Howho?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
And I posted about her. She's so sweet Ki Ming Chang.
It's called Gods of Want and it's short her short stories,
and let me tell you, you get into these stories and
I read one story and I just have to put
it down because the language you just sit there and
you're like master master how where no rules, no self consciousness,
(09:23):
no rules, pulling together everything from folklore to modern experiences
to there's just no rules and it's just fabulous. And
the language is like a freaking Kashmir but also horrifying
because some of them are kind of scary, so like
really scary, like you're wrapped in Kashmir or being scared.
It's awesome, Oh, just beautiful stuff that just sends your
(09:47):
mind into another place. That's just amazing because not all
books have to do that. I'm not gonna be able
to do that. I will make you feel, I will
make you feel things, I will make you things, but
I'm very based in reality. When she is just magic,
and it's just gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I love a wreck like that, and that's good.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Okay, so let's get into your journey. This was your
first book, correct, No, it's.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
My fifth, your fifth, but it's my first hardcover and
my first memoir. So I have two personal finance advice
books and two novels in novels in a series.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Okay, well fill me in.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Oh there were just you know, listen, I was in
personal finance advice and broadcast and everything from my own
TV show to advice columns and a bunch of magazines,
and I was on contract to all the morning shows
and stuff. This was my life for a long time.
And then I decided to do the novel series as
kind of an exercise, which sounds a little spoiled. It's like, oh,
(11:00):
you decided to publish some novels just for fun to
see if you could do it. Yes, actually, just for
fun to see if I could do it, and also
too because I was trying to sell the memoir and
people would say, your story is so complicated, it's too complicated.
Maybe if you were just Latina, or you were just Chinese,
or you were and I'm like, I just can't. So
what I did is I split myself and my story
(11:23):
into four characters what and then I wrote kind of
like a telenovelish book about them, and funny enough, I
got a lot of pushbacks still then, because this was
before I mean publishing. The tone of publishing has definitely
changed in the past five years. I'm not saying it's better,
I'm just saying tone has changed. Look, I got this
(11:44):
book out, but everyone was like, well, it's Latin, but
there's like there's no gangs or guns or oh god,
or border or it's too like normal professional type of
thing full of drama. But just like everybody else.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Under like the guys of like we don't know how
to sell this or.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Exactly like are there enough professional Latinos who would be interested?
Are you gotta be kidding me, man, I mean this
is something I've dealt with my whole life, so so
I you know, I got a paperback, just small deal,
and I was like, I don't care, I'm just going
to do this. And I had fun writing it. That
was the most important thing. I just had fun writing it.
(12:25):
And I wrote it under just Carmen Rita because again,
I was just kind of playing around, like let me
see how it goes and I still was, you know,
making bringing home the Bacon with the finance and behavioral
economics and all that stuff. So that's what I did.
So this is my first hardcover. It's got pictures in
it and everything I did the audio book. It's my
(12:48):
first big deal.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yes, yeah, I've been listening to you. I've been alternating,
going back and forth. It's been a really fun experience.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
So the personal finance books, obviously you're doing that day
to day.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That's like you're life. How did you approach writing those books?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Well, my first one actually was what launched my TV career.
So I was an editor at Money Magazine and my boss,
who was the first person to give me promotions was
a black woman who is now the godmother to my child.
She really, you know, started me going forward because look,
(13:25):
in media and in journalism, I was told that I
could not be unbiased because I was not a white
woman or white So I ended up in Money magazine.
She came in, she was a black woman, she was
a top editor, she was a boss, and she was like,
why is Carmen an assistant? Like, let's get her up here,
(13:46):
and she gave me the promotions and then she said,
you know what.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Let's do a book.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You should do a book. Let's see And at the
time we were in the same company as Warner Books,
and she talked to them. She's like, look, there's nobody
of color in this person finance advice base. Now they're everywhere,
which I'm kind of sort of happy and upset about
because not everybody's a real expert and they don't know
what to talking about it. But at the same time,
if you're looking for a woman of color to give
you financial advice, they're out there now. But when I started,
(14:13):
that was not the case. And I was like, okay,
so did the first book, and thankfully I had that
because they were mass layoffs. This was in the big
Internet bust of two thousand, you know, mass layoffs at
the magazine, Like half the staff was let go within
a couple of months, and I promoted. I had a
(14:35):
website I put money into. I did not have money,
but I put money into a website, and I started
sending emails to as many people in television as I
could and to my friends and said, put me on TV.
And within a year I had my own TV show.
How that started and after an audition, they were auditioning.
(14:57):
They addutioned one hundred and twenty people and I got it,
so that was crazy, but it wasn't long lasting. But then,
of course I got a book deal out of that
as well, and the books did not go the way
I wanted to go. I mean, I'm glad that this
is a book podcast because this is it's good to
know these things. So the first book, they wanted me
(15:17):
to do it jointly with a columnist at the Village
Voice who had a column called Generation Debt and Anya
and I actually run in similar circles these days, and
they pulled out Village Boy. Her editor pulled her out
to do her own book, which was great. So I said, okay,
well let's come up. I've come up with a different
title for this book. Warner Books refused to allow me
(15:41):
to change the title. Why and it was her title.
Now I'm a first timer, right, and I had been
told I can't do things forever and I can't lose
a book deal because of a title. But I didn't
feel good about it, but they didn't give me a
chance to change it. And then the second book, I
(16:03):
hated the cover. I didn't want to be on the
cover and they were like, yeah, but you're on TV.
I'm like, who cares?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Who cares?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's about like the advice I'll sell it, like, don't
put me on the cover, it's cheesy. And then we
fought over the title again. Look, you don't have a
say all. It's all a power. It's all about how
much power you have, which is why when it comes
to this book, I'm telling you I've been blessed. Blessed
because they gave me two versions of the cover, and
(16:32):
I told them when I got the deal, I said,
I have had the worst experience. Please, I'm asking you,
this is my life story. Please, please be good to me.
With the cover. I sent the mood boards, blah blah.
They gave me two versions. This one came out and
I cried. I saw cried. It is so perfect. I
(16:55):
just couldn't even Yeah, it was just amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So, if you're wondering what the cover of Carmen's book,
why didn't you tell me?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Looks like? It is all read a stunning red.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Color, and the font for the title and her name
are written in what looks like black cran, which is
very appropriate for the subject matter. And there is a
photo in the center, and it is of her parents,
but it is folded over the man's face, and on
(17:28):
the fold it says a memoir.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
All very apt design choices if you ask me.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
So. We will be back with more about Carmen's writing
and publishing journey right after the break.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Okay, So I was.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Listening to you on another podcast and I heard you
say that your brother helped you crack the structure, like
when you were almost like praying to him in like
a moment.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
My brother's ghost, Yes, like help me.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So what led up to that? How many drafts had
you been doing? And then what led you to that point?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Oh, Courtney, many many drafts, years of drafts and actually
a couple of agents that didn't work out, and that
that wasn't easy, and you know, just constantly being told
that this is not gonna work, this is not gonna work.
So yeah, that was about three solid years of that.
But the thing was is that I realized, I was like, Okay, look,
(18:33):
first of all, I need to find an agent who
understands what I'm trying to do, understands my story, and
will let me tell it the way I know it's
best to tell it, right, which is some deep shit, like,
let's make this like deep and real. And so I
found a wonderful agent who's fantastic. She of course she
(18:53):
has to be Latina. So she got it right away
and she sold it in two weeks. Wow, after years
and two other agents, she sold it like this boom
in this amazing deal.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Was it a full or was she selling a book proposal?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Proposal? Yeah, because nonfiction you don't don't have to know,
and they actually usually prefer you don't because they want
to help you shape it and stuff. But I did
it a very particular structure. I wrote it like an
unfolding mystery and like a conversation with my mother's ghost. Right,
so I'm saying, why didn't you tell me? And then
(19:30):
the whole job of the book was to answer that
question and figure it out. So when I got the
book deal, I didn't know who my father was, Like
there was no answer, you know what I'm saying, Like
there's like people will be like, oh, it's about you
finding your father. No, it's about me answering the question
why didn't my mother tell me? And in doing so,
(19:53):
I'm finding out who she was, who I am, and
how this all happened and it's about this country. It's
a very American story. But so yes, I was sitting
there and I was like, Okay, I got to crack
this code. I've got to figure out. And I was
on my second agent at this point with the memoir,
(20:13):
meaning like I've had other agents, but these were the
couple of agents for the memoir particularly, and I was
so frustrated, and I was just like, why would anybody
want to read a memoir if they don't know you,
they don't follow you. You're not a celebrity. But who cares? Right,
Like who.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Cares by your story?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I mean, come on, yeah, But also too people are like, ah,
that's so complicated, like who cares? Right?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So I was like, I need to write a book
that's a page turner. You cannot put it down, you
get sucked in and you're up all night. That's the
kind of book that I want to write, which, considering
the text messages that I got it like two in
the morning that worked out from friends, whore like I
lost sleep because of you. I wanted very much to
(20:58):
do that, but I was sitting there in frustration and
make it myself, like my fifth cup of coffee of
the day, and I just my brother had passed away
several months before, and he was my closest family member,
my best friend. I spoke to him every single day
(21:18):
and got me and we understood each other so much,
and I just was like, you need to do some work.
You better help me figure this out. How am I
going to write this so that people actually want to
pick it up? And then I just heard in my head,
why didn't you tell me make it a question? Why
(21:40):
didn't you tell me make the title a question? Because
what are you trying to do here? That's the thing
with memoir. What I found is that once I really
landed on what am I trying to do, the book
came together. So each chapter is because her answering, because
the stage was set, because why it is right because
(22:00):
of it. And then that gave me, Okay, what am
I addressing? These are her reasons? And that's what I did.
I broke it down into that and it worked. So
it's not a memoir that's like and then this happened,
and then this happened, and then this happened very much
not like that.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No, I know, because like I mean, you're covering different
periods of time obviously, but it's so interesting some of
the early stuff. It's like there aren't huge events. You're
like really making so much out of the day to
day that was happening. So I was very curious how
(22:37):
you got there, because I was like, oh, she did
a really good job of like making these little childhood
moments like the mystery, and there were multiple mysteries that
if you want to just kind of explain, give a
little premise for listeners who haven't aren't familiar.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, so I you know, I was born uptown Manhattan,
Dominican mother, Chinese father. My mother was married off to
a Chinese gangster for the family papers.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I had my older brother first, and then we were wongs.
But they divorced her im as little and then all
of a sudden, I went from a home where I
had family living in the building. I had family across
the street. I had cousins everywhere, Spanish, Chinese, and Chinatown.
I was in Chinatown every week, a very very rich life.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Culturally, she marries an Anglo American second husband and we
get moved to New Hampshire, my brother and I and
New Hampshire, Southern New Hampshire. In the late seventies, was
as white as the snow on whatever the mountain is there.
I've blocked it out. It's painful. But also our new
(23:55):
father required no Spanish, no Latin food, Chinese food, especially
no music. That way, I mean, my mother changed the
way she dressed, she changed the way redressed. So it
was like a hardcore assimilation. Now, the thing is that
in telling, when you tell that, how can you get
the reader to basically understand why am I telling this
(24:19):
story about, you know, us getting pulled over by the
police right up the street, like literally a few doors
away from our new house in New Hampshire because the
neighbors said Puerto Ricans were casing the neighborhood. But putting
you in those scenes because all of us as people
are made up mostly our fears, our personalities, our everything,
(24:46):
from where we hold our shoulders like up or like
down or whatever, from the ages of one to six. Right.
I also love a master's in psychology. So when I
really learned that, you know, when I was in grad
school and I really learned that, I said, oh my god,
my personality makes so like it all makes so much sense.
Why you know to me, even those years in New Hampshire,
(25:08):
like that was not home. It was never home for me.
But these little things that happened to you when your
kid shape you hugely, So it seems like little things.
I mean, getting pulled over to police is a big thing.
But going to the grocery store for the first time,
my mother in what we call rollos with you know,
big hair rollers with a scarf, I'm being stared at
(25:33):
and snickered at. These are the things that communicate to
you where you exist in that world, in this world,
and in this country. So it really was about putting
you in those scenes and making you feel what I
was feeling, and being in the grocery store with me
(25:55):
with little Carmen and seeing people snicker at her mother
and seeing her mother's and the pain in it. So
that partially also answer Okay, why didn't you tell me? Well,
she was told that who she was was bad, who
she was was lesser than we were told that. I
was told that too. These things made up who we
(26:18):
are and why we do the things we do.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
How did you excavate some of those early childhood memories
of like the cop thing or other microaggressions, or just
like some of the early stuff is just you feeling
out of place at home and stuff like that. How
did you kind of like bring back those memories?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Those memories live with me, They aren't alive there all
the time. Those are technically what they're called flush bulb memories.
There are memories from our youth. That really is as
if you just took a picture, and not just a
picture of your surroundings, but a picture of how you
were feeling in that moment. Those kind of memories I've
(27:02):
always kept with me because they echo So they were
always like kind of like echoing in my head. And
it did take some thinking to bring some of them
to the forefront enough to be able to write where
I'm in it. So that happened, and frankly, like look,
the book came out to, like, you know whatever, two
(27:23):
hundred something pages I wrote like a lot. I wrote
hundreds of more pages. But so there was a lot
of like excavating two of those memories that were echoing around.
I had to go in there in my head and
like unpack a few boxes. But the boxes, man, it
was clear as day once they came up, the feelings
and sometimes even the colors and what I was wearing,
(27:46):
Like the story, you know, and I'm here, I am
four years old being in a fur chubby that Miabuela
made me. I remember that coat. Oh god, I remember
that quat. I remember the feeling of that coat so much,
and how the seams over the years started like separating.
I remember my little green velvet fur purse she made me.
I've always loved that color. So yeah, it's flash bulb.
(28:10):
And then also just doing the work of putting yourself
back there for sure.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So the research part of it, and I guess for you,
part of that was like solving the mystery. So how
did you approach that stuff and the family, you know, like,
did you fact check your memories with family members and
how did that work?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
No?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
No, no, because here's the thing, there's no fact checking
right your memories. You can fact check maybe where you
were location wise, what time of day it was, or
what day it was, or what year it was. You
cannot fact check your memory because even your siblings have
grown up up in a different house than you. Your
(29:02):
siblings know different parents than you, even though we were
raised with the same parents. Because think about it, my
brother was six years older. We were both born in
Harlem between you know, latinas and Chinese. We go to
New Hampshire. My sisters are then born five years after me,
all in ducks in a row in New Hampshire. Without
(29:23):
that family, without those cultural connections, then you know, my
stepfather and my mother their marriage starts dissolving. They were
all born in different times. Financially things would change year
to year, so in some ways we've all grown up
in a different family. My brother was the one though
(29:44):
that when I was searching for, you know, who my
real father was, he was helping me dig and kind
of like fact check quote unquote or try to follow
detective wise some cousins and stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You know.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
We went down to go to Miami to see his godmother,
who was close with my mother, and ask her. I
went to something Lamingo with my daughter to ask, you know,
my godmother. We did some of that, and then sitting
at the computer and looking up and know, oh, I
think it was an optometrist on Mulberry Street and blah
blah blah, and who m I have worked there? And
then I hired genealogists that did not turn into anything.
(30:22):
That was a lot of money that didn't go anywhere.
But that was the kind of fact checking I definitely
made a point to make sure to remember time and
place that was important to me. So for example, when
I mentioned like all the shows I was watching, I
just made sure that, like I was in the right
(30:43):
time period, you know, as opposed to so I just
did stuff like that. But that was the extent of
like the fact fact checking, because to me, memoir the
best memoirs. I love the memoirs that are not And
then I went here in this date, and then I
want here in this date. Not about the fact checking.
It's about the story of your life, the story of
(31:05):
who you are that can connect to all of our stories,
you know, that's the most important thing totally.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I interviewed Bessie it be like a month ago or whatever,
and she was like, yeah, it's like your emotional memory.
You can't sometimes the facts are like kind of irrelevant
to that situation, or like you'll find out it happened
and you were in a different grade, but it doesn't
change the like, yes, feeling of it exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
And I think that that's one of the things that
I remember. Back in maybe the two thousands, there was
this very successful kind of journalist who did a memoir
and it was all about fact checking his life. And
he went back and fact checked his life, and I
just was like, I don't want to read that. I mean,
I mean, brilliant for him, right, But I think that
(31:53):
there was this idea of research. And I do have
to say, since you were a woman, I'm going to
say this, that is a very very masculine tendency. No,
it really is, because I just did it. I just
did an event, a corporate event where I spoke to
their affinity group, their black affinity group. Right, I'm Afro Latina,
so that we spoke to the black affinity group during
(32:15):
Hispanic Corritage Month. And of course it was a guy
who was like, so, what kind of research did you did?
How do you know that you were you know, you
had the right dates in the right times, and and
I was just like what, like what so? But I
do feel like that is a very masculine tendency. I
(32:35):
think that we are socialized a bit more to our
memories are about how we felt, and I think, you know,
and I'm being general I'm generalizing, of course, but that
ability to tap into that, I think is a really
great gift because that's what unites us. If your stories
about you being here at this time and here at
(32:57):
this time. Guess what, none of us were there? Yeah,
so how is I supposed to connect with me?
Speaker 3 (33:01):
And it's meaningless, like just the time.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
A story that's not a story?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Did you worry about any of the sensitivities? But I
guess you know, well, like some people had passed, So.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, Courtney, the ones who remain here's the thing. I
definitely grappled with that, right. My sisters are around, My
stepfather's still around. Poppy Wong passed away in June, but
he wasn't going to read it anyway, and I wasn't
going to tell him about it, and he doesn't use
social media or nothing, so of course not. But my
(33:36):
mother was gone and my brother was gone. But it
wouldn't have been for him. He was my biggest cheerleader.
He would have loved to have read it. But I
think that for my family is probably very painful. So
you know, their choice to not read it and not
engage with it is fine. But I've had cousins come
(33:58):
out of the woodwork who I haven't talked to or
seen since I was a little kid, uptown kid playing
with them, you know, in the street or whatever. Like dancing,
and they love it and they're reading it and they're
just loving it. They're like, oh my god, you sent
me back and like I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
He said you sound white, but well.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
And we always we always wanted to know why, you know,
and how it happened. And of course with that whole
thing about like teasing me about oh my god, you
sound white, like why you sound so white? Why you
dressed like that? D d they get it now because
what happened was we moved away and it was like,
what happened to my cousins, Oh, they moved to New Ympshire,
(34:41):
Like why I don't know, and they had no idea
of like as kids, like how does that change you?
And why does that because that world was completely foreign
to them, moves foreign to us. We might as well
have been dropped off on Mars. But explained to my cousins,
you know, they were like, now we know what happened
and how it went. And then of course I've had
(35:01):
some be like oh your mother, my mother has some stories.
You got to come over listen to these stories. So
I've learned some new stuff, which is like incredible.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Were you working on the book when at the end
of one of the chapters, Pepy Wang handed a paper
to you that you were actively working on the book.
Did you feel like that was a present to help
you or did you already know all that information?
Speaker 1 (35:28):
No, I didn't. I ended up finding out one of
my sisters gave me a couple of boxes where I
found that photo which opens the prologue.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I had already been writing a memoir before I even
got that photo. And then I got the photo and
I was like, oh my god, so things have been
coming at me. And then Popy Wong he knew he
was dying, and he had cancer very for many years,
and he was cleaning out his little apartment and then
he's like, you know, take this, don't take that. Oh,
don't take that one, you know. And I'm like why
(36:00):
and he's like, okay, fine, ticket And it's his paperwork
from his arrest for trafficking heroin. I didn't know it
was heroin. I knew he went to jail, but I
didn't know what he exactly he was doing up to.
And you know what he kind of was probably like
I'm dying, what the hell, you know, kind of cares
(36:23):
And for me, I got a like kind of a
treasure trove of stuff. For some reason, he had like
paperwork of my Dominican grandmother coming in. I got paperwork
from my mother's brother from another family. My grandfather had
a couple families, as one does in the Republica Dominicana
(36:45):
in those days. Her brother, she told me he had
died in a surfing accident. He had hung himself, and
I have the paperwork about the crime scene, and then
crime scene wasn't a crime, but you know what I
mean about the scene and his death certificate and all that.
So I just discovered a lot of stuff in old papers.
All of you with parents, go get those papers. Get
(37:08):
your hands on those old papers, have them willed to you.
They are a treasure trove.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
So even some of the research was like just happening
to you. It wasn't necessarily like you on a stakeout
or like going to the library for the information. It
was like kind of just happening to you as you
were writing the book.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Partially, so writers and authors are going to love this one.
So I hand in the book right the first draft,
right before my birthday last year, and I was like, okay,
now I can just like relax for a minute, right,
And the book ended it was again, it wasn't about me,
It wasn't all about Oh I got to find him.
(37:53):
That wasn't the point of the book, right, And my
editor and publisher were very very fine with that. I mean,
shout out to Madalikua Madlica is. She's Indian, British American,
so she also really got my story. She knows what
it's like. And she came from broadcast, so she snatched
up right away. But she was like, that's not what
the story's about. So it's okay. I didn't find him,
(38:14):
and then I had resigned myself after two years of
searching after genealogists. I mean, it became like a part time,
full time job nothing because all I could find was
third cousins, and they could they weren't able to trace
it back. I'm sitting two weeks after I hand in
the book and I refreshed my DNA sites twenty three
(38:37):
and meters an ancestry. I just hit refresh, and I
had hit refresh every day for a year plus and
then I went to like once a week, and then
once I wrote the book, I just stopped. So it
probably had been like two months, I hit refresh.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Boop, Oh there's my niece.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Just there you go, there you go, so like, oh
my god. So I emailed, you know, I DM through
the site this lovely girl, and I'm like, honey, I
think your mom's my sister, you know. And thank god.
I was ready for I don't want to talk to you.
I was ready for silence. I was ready for I
(39:20):
don't want to talk to you. She doesn't want to
talk to you. I was ready. And I got a
message the next day from my.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Sister that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
And I called up Monelico, my editor, and I was like, Sue,
add an epilogue, and I wrote the epilogue after I
met her. I met up with her and I saw
pictures of him and I heard the stories, and then
a memory came up. A memory came up, and it
(39:53):
was like, oh my god, I've met him.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
How much?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Is it just the epilogue that changed, because I feel
like just the other isn't she a little earlier?
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Or no?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Nope, nope, Like that's how recent everything is, and that's insane.
Oh yeah, but you know, there there goes the universe
for you.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Is there like a whole nother book now or it
didn't change so.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Much, Corney Darling, the next one's going to be a novel.
I'm sorry, I this was a feat for me. This
was you know, don't forget. Also, my brother passed away,
and then the day after his service, we locked down
for COVID, and then my daughter got long COVID in
which she's had for two years. Then you know, find
(40:40):
my father. Then my own father passes away then and
then I have to call my the person that my
mother said was my father and tell him he's not,
and tell him I found the real one. And enough, like,
I love this. This is I say, this is my
magnum opis people. This is it? However, Yes, a novel
for sure, because I've got stories of the wazoo and
(41:02):
I have a novel and half already written. But I
think I'm going in a different direction. But I'm excited
for it. I'm in research now.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
So how does your process differ when you're writing, like
when you're working on this or doing you know, nonfiction
about finance versus a novel, Like is your process different
for all those things?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh my gosh, my internal process is completely different. This
was look I couldn't have done this without fifteen years
of weekly therapy, which is what I've had. Like that's
how you know, it took a tremendous amount of internal
work to write this. So it basically took all of
my faculties writing, storytelling, you know, my own you know,
(41:52):
emotional health, all those sort of things together. But how
I approached it, like I mentioned, like being my own boss,
blocking out the time. I followed the same structure that
I had for my novels, which is the same structure
I had for my personal finance books, which was, you
(42:13):
break it down in the calendar, how many months you
have to hand it in. You always, of course the
hand in date, you always pull that back two weeks
and you make the due date two weeks before that,
and then you plot out how many words, how many
pages when can you write realistically, and then you block
(42:34):
it out in your calendar, day by day by day
by day. For nine months, I think it was eight,
I had eight And that's what I did. I said,
I got to do ten pages a week. And that
doesn't sound either that sounds like a lot to you
or it sounds like a little. It depends on who
you are. But I could sit down and write eight
pages in an hour and a half. But what it
(42:57):
takes for you to sit down and do that take days, Yeah,
days of processing and thinking, and then you'll write i
don't know, paragraph two paragraphs, and then you'll have to
put it down because my daughter needs dinner, you know,
so you just keep going. But that's what I did,
and without that structure, I don't know how I would
(43:18):
have done it. So like right now, I'm researching the novel.
Now I'm in the research phase, and I block out
two hours every day. What am I researching today, blah
blah blah, and then what date I want the outline
to start? And it's like a little business. Yeah, I know,
it's not very romantic. I'm not, you know, I'm not
like one of those leg And then I sit down
(43:39):
and smoke a cigar and have some roome and type.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
You know, I've been doing this thing. It's this website.
It's called seven hundred and fifty words dot com. And
it's so simple. It's just really basic. You can't even
format anything. You can just type in the space. It'll
count your words and if you get seven hundred and fifty,
it'll give you a check mark. And the whole thing
is like, you know, if you're competitive with yourself, you
(44:05):
like don't want to lose your street.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I am girls, so that it's very useful as a
writer to be competitive with yourself. And yeah, if you
like like playing games and winning, that really helps as
a writer. I'm like, god, damn.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
It, totally.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
That helps me stay in even though I'm working on
a memoir right now too. But even if I'm not
doing that, even if I'm you know, it's an off
day and I'm allowing myself to like I did a
newsletter and then I'm in a diary or something, it
just kind of keeps me in the like looseness of it,
Like sitting down to write is not a big deal,
(44:42):
you know what I mean. So I think the regimented
thing is just so helpful.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
It's helpful for me. Once I do that and I
have the structure in place, it just kind of and
then it happens. It happens, and it's a first draft.
You guys, sit yourself down. That's the other thing is
I had a psychological sit myself down, and I was like,
to me, this was probably the most important thing I've
ever done. And I've hosted a TV show, like I mean,
(45:08):
but this book was the most important thing, and that
could some days had me in like freeze mode. I
couldn't do anything. All I did was churn in my
head and I was like, I can't, I can't do
anything so good, I stink. I can't. This is you know,
I must be Michaelangelo or nothing at all. And then
I'd have to send myself down and be like, God,
damn it, girl, you're gonna write those words. It can
(45:30):
be absolute crap. You just better sit down and start writing.
And then once you just start writing, it starts, and
then something would get unlocked and next thing you know,
you're like and you just keep going and you've got pages.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Like, oh yeah, I like this, I love it.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Anything else that you learned about your process over the
course of all your books, Like anything else that you're like,
I need this to succeed.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
And how many drafts do you usually do?
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Oh gosh, amazingly enough. I only well because I had
been right and working on this book. So it's a
total of five years from the first proposal to publish date.
Oh five years. Yeah, So it was a long time,
many many, many drafts if you're working on like something
like at that level, that makes total sense. However, for
(46:16):
my advice books and such, I was writing advice columns
for magazines, like I knew exactly what I was doing, right,
I had been a magazine editor like that, you know,
that to me was easy.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Like you write them and they're kind of done, like
you might do a pass and punch up.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
But yeah, and once in a while you'll talk with
the editor and he'll be like, you know, he'll she'll
be like, oh, we want to have this in there,
make sure you say them whatever. But with this one
with my editor, with Matalika, she was magical. She was
very good about being like, remember your mission. Does this story?
(46:54):
You know she would highlight and be like, does this
address the mission? It's a great scene, but does it
do what you wanted to do? And that really helped me.
They say you kill your babies. That really helped me
to do that. And I did also hire a dear
friend to be my first reader because I was a
(47:14):
little insecure about my own like this being so personal
and I needed it to be the best thing that
I could do. And I knew even though she was
a friend and she was also former magazine editor from
our timing days. I knew she'd tell me the truth.
And she's also a woman of color from New York City,
like she just got it and my generation. And I
(47:35):
was like, please just read this, and she would get
I'd give her a chapter, she would go through and
she would just top note it, this is great. The
language is great. And she was really good about encouraging,
because I think really great editors are wonderful about making
sure you have that positive sandwich, like positive positive, you know,
three positives for everyone negative or the thing, because that's
(47:59):
what keeps you going as a writer. Right, you're already
self flagellating. You don't need really somebody else to tell
you that was stupid. So she was great. She kept
and she kept me on course. And she was also
another person that I felt like was watching and waiting,
so that also kept me on schedule, and that helped
me to put I put it all together after she
(48:19):
had done the first readA beach chapter, and then that's
what I sent, you know, as a first draft, but
it was it was in good, pretty good shape.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
So by the time you sent the whole like the
fold to your publisher or editor, over there, like the
next editing pass was not like a heavy lift.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
It was not a heavy lift. I did send her, No,
I did send her. Let me, oh, let me correct myself.
I did send Monelika chunks of chapters. I didn't send
her the whole manuscript, especially in the beginning. In the beginning,
she did want to see the first couple of chapters,
just so that we knew that, like, you know, we're
(48:57):
on the right track. After I got prob about halfway through,
she was like, just give me the rest. Then the
epilogue of Corns after. But it was a couple of rounds.
It was a couple rounds of it. It's been nothing
very dramatic. Mostly it was the hardest one was when
she came back and she was like, girl, you wrote
one hundred thousand words. You handed me one hundred thousand words.
(49:21):
I need seventy. I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
I was like, can't you like it's really good And
she's like, look, honey, if we do that, we got
to change the way the book is made. Also because
I have eight pages of pictures in there. Then it's
a different cost level. It's a business decision, and she's
like also too with sales. It's a memoir, like we
can't give them, you know, freaking what's his name? Like
(49:47):
the Robert Moses memoir. But yeah, that was the hardest.
But again, all I kept saying to myself was what
serves Why didn't you tell me?
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Like what's on the spine of this story?
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Does this serves that?
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:01):
And also to be careful to be very balanced in
my depiction of my mother and my parents, all of
them right, to not villainize them.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I thought you really were.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Oh, thank you so much, Thank you so much, because
that was one thing that I really worked as mado
Leak on because I was like, you don't want to
write a memoir, even if you come from abusive parents
and lots of trauma. It just answering the question of
why don't you tell me? Wasn't about what she did
to me? It wasn't. It wasn't meaning it was that's
not the whole story. So the whole story camp. Even
(50:36):
though I have many, many memories of horrible scenes, I
had to include only the stuff that really addressed why
I turned out the way I did, or why I
made choices later in life, or my role with my
sisters for example, like the birthday party or the birthday
cake scene, or she smashed the birthday cake. We made
her on the floor and made us clean it up
(50:59):
those kind of things. Is how do we balance that
she was not the best mom with the fact that
she was a human being who came from credible trauma
and was doing probably the best she could.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
That's I think that's what you get, which is fair.
It's like these things don't just come out of nowhere,
Like there's like a reason why those qualities get passed
down and what you know, like it's like a whole
that's the story.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, and you can't you know, there's lots of talk
about generational trauma, thank god finally and epigenetics, but like
you can't break these cycles without understanding where they came from. Yes,
And so for me, it wasn't about saying, look at me,
I came from this terrible background, my mother was so
evil and blah blah blah blah. No, it was really like,
you know what, here's what she came from. Here's what happened.
(51:50):
She was suffocating and dying in New Hampshire, like she
she took it out on all of us. She resented
the hell out of me in my life and my freedom.
She you know, she treated my brother differently, all this
sort of sort of stuff, but it all speaks to
why she did what she did.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
So on the publishing end of things and the agent,
and it's not I mean, this is not your only experience.
So I guess kind of broadly, like what have you
learned about those processes getting an agent, maintaining that relationship,
and working with a publisher That might be helpful for listeners.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
So I think getting an agent, just like getting a job,
A lot of it depends on where you're at in
life and how much experience you have, because agents, you know,
getting to one, getting one to actually read it, and
getting to actually give you feedback, you know a lot
of that just like everything else. Yes, it's your hard work,
(52:52):
but it's also who can connect you to this person.
I got my first couple of agents because my first
one because I was at the magazine and they were
the company owned both right then I was. I got
my other agent because I was on TV and that
firm had a relationship with the book agent firm, the
firm that represented me on television, So I was in
(53:15):
the business so to speak. But when I realized that
I needed an agent who fit what I wanted out
of this business period and life. Right, you know, if
you look at my bio and my resume, I mean,
I am just like this is a guy's phrase, but
like balls to the wall, like I shoot for the
(53:37):
goddamn stars and I will get it. Like That's how
I've always been is very much nothing. You know, I'm
a freight train. So I had to be with someone
who understood that. But then I realized it was another
piece missing. I had to be with someone who understood
what I was trying to do and my life as
(54:00):
someone of color, which for some people was difficult. For
some people, it was very difficult to read about the
racism I experienced when we moved to New Hampshire, and
some of them write it as I was being angrier,
I was being bitter. Well, God's of course I'm going
to angry Jesus Christ. But guess what women of color
(54:23):
who read it, or people of color in general who
read it are just like, how were you not more angry?
Like they didn't see anger at all. So it's all
that point of view you don't necessarily need to have
someone who completely replicates you, but you have to have
somebody who understands you. So that was the second part
that I had to figure out. And then I asked
(54:43):
my friends who I admired and who got me who
their agent was, and that's how I got to who
I have now. But it is a process, and one
of the things is that I feel it is unfortunately
a little bit of a power thing. Right. It's like
when you you haven't had a book out, when you
don't have a lot of people following, when you don't
have a lot of you kind of go with who
(55:06):
you've got, keep going, keep writing, keep living, keep working,
keep building yourself, and if it doesn't work out, then
you will be in a different position to approach someone else.
So I just kept going. And look, I wrote those
novels just to like because I could, because I was like,
(55:27):
I was frustrated, I was churning, and I was like,
I just need to get this out somehow. But it
took years.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
So you're working on this novel, new novel now, right?
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah? Is it kind of a nebulous thing or do
you know exactly which one you're like going with?
Speaker 1 (55:44):
I kind of do. And it's so funny because I
just had a meeting with my film agent, my adaptation agent,
who I just love to pieces, and I'm just like, girl,
I haven't made you any money yet. She's like, oh,
you will, you will, because she's like, you don't stop.
Because we got really close with the novel series to
selling to a major network and it fell through. But
(56:06):
that was fine, but we'll get there. But I told her,
of course, every agent frankly right now, I mean we're women, right,
You're like, oh, what sells? Right, And they're like romance.
I'm like, people, I am twice divorced and was in
the closet until my forties. Like, I am not the
person to write romance. I am like, I'm not there, people.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
But maybe that's the romance we need, grumpy MoMA romance,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
I mean, actually, look what once I get out there,
just a little slam, it's gonna be interesting. I'm waiting
till this virus is over. But here's the thing that
we agree on that do not go after what is
popular at the moment unless you want to. I do
believe the thing. Look, it's a business. If you want
(56:55):
to write to the industry, like I so admire and
you're gonna laugh. Jackie Collins same. I admired her so much,
and when I wrote those novels, that's what I was thinking.
I was like, Man, I'm gonna write this like Jackie Collins. Man,
I didn't even read her books. I never even read
her books. But what I loved was she just kept
(57:17):
pumping them out.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
She's a hustler.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
She was a hustler. She was unapologetic about what she
was doing. And of course the other one who we
all probably admire, who I definitely have always admired, Stephen King.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Yeah, so I told her.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
I was like, look, yant getting rumors for me? My
dark side is well, first of all, huge sci fi fan,
huge morri COMI fan like very much magical, supernatural, sci fi,
anything that's like another level but also grounded. So the
next one is a cultural thriller, supernatural horror.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
Hey maybe Jordan Peele.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
Well that's the other thing, man, I went, man went, oh,
his when I say something, I'm like, see that's the
way my mind works. And those are the books I love.
And you know who I love. Who I was really
inspiring to me, which was inspiring to him was Ira eleven.
Speaker 4 (58:14):
Oh, I don't know Ira eleven.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
When I saw Rosemary's Baby, he wrote Rosemary's Baby stuff.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
I love Rosemary's Baby.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
And it's very New York, right. And when I was
young and I saw Rosemary's Baby at Myaboela's apartment during
one visit, and it was like on picks, like Channel
eleven whatever New Yorkers will remember that, and I was just.
Speaker 3 (58:32):
Like, what is this?
Speaker 1 (58:34):
And my mind was blown? And then I was like,
is based on a novel? I read all Ira eleven?
I love that. And I decided like, if I really
do a serious novel, it's gonna be like that. It's
gonna be some kind of psychological horror and cultural horror
because Rosemary's Baby was about being a woman and about
(58:54):
reproductive organs and about power and about so that's stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (59:00):
I love that. I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
Okay, what are do you have any bucket list writing goals?
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Or was this kind of it?
Speaker 2 (59:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (59:06):
Han, this this was like I said, magnum opus over here,
like there's nothing, there's nothing satisfying.
Speaker 4 (59:13):
Thank you very much, congratulations.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
Thank you, well, this has been amazing. I have a
couple wrap up questions. Is there anything else you want
to say about the book or.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh, my goodness, here's what I'll say. Some of the
best advice I'd love to share about books. First, write
what only you can write, which really makes will make
it special. And the other is the books become successful
when it's very specific. Again, a book that only you
can write, but it's full of universal yes. And so
(59:49):
my book is yes, I'm you know, Dominic and Chinese
and this and that and the other thing, and whiteness
and America. It's a basic American story, coming of age,
American story, story about my mom mysteries, family mysteries. But
it really just is about being a human being and
all that comes with it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Amen. What's one piece of writing advice you wish you
could give your former self?
Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Well, now that I'm on the other side of it,
I'm like, don't stress so much, Mama, It's gonna be fine.
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
One tip for writers trying to get a book published.
Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Keep going at it. One thing I'm known for, and
the reason why I'm talking to you right now, Courtney,
is because I just did not stop. I am relentless.
You just keep going, and it's about shooting for where
you are at that time, So please do not think
you're just gonna get a deal like right away and
you're like five years out of school, maybe you can.
(01:00:49):
Don't let anybody say you can't, but just adjust to
where you're at and just keep pushing, always push.
Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
That's good advice.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Time. Favorite piece of your own writing this book?
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Why didn't you tell me? A memoir from Crown Penguin.
Random hos like.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Beautiful and how can listeners connect with you online? Ah?
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
I'm mostly on Instagram at Carmen Rita Wong dm me.
I love hearing what people think about the book. I
love it so much because when you birth baby, it's
always nice when people are like, oh my god, it's
so cute or oh my god, what happened to her?
I love hearing all of it through my website at
Carmritawong dot com. If you want to find out more
about me or see me in my talks. My many
talks are in my former life. It's there.
Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
Amazing. Thank you so much, Thank.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
You, Courtney, Thank you so much for having me. This
is great.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Bleaders.
Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Writing is so much better with friends. I'm your host,
Courtney Kosack and hey, let's connect on social media.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
I am at Courtney Kosak last name is Kocak on
Twitter and Instagram. And make sure you signed up for
the Bleeders Companion substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives.
There's so much good stuff that I send out to
my free list, and I actually just launched a paid
subscription with some extra.
Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Goodies where I take you behind the scenes of all
my best buylines. I published a post about my return
to stand up comedy and how I got ready to
crush my showcase. I wrote about MFAs and whether or
not I think it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Is worth it.
Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
I also did one of my favorite workshops I've ever
taught at a Manifestation workshop that I did for the
New Year, but it's really good anytime of the year.
So there's so much good stuff for free subscribers and
even more for paid subscribers.
Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
And there is a link in the description for that.
Speaker 5 (01:02:43):
And join me again next time for another all new episode.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
In the meantime, Happy Bleeding
So I was like, I need to write a book
that's a page turner. You cannot put it down. You
get sucked in and you're up all night.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today's guest is Carmen Rita Wong, and oh my goodness,
she has a doozy of a story. It's memoir meets
family mystery, and it is so freaking good. If you
are anything like me, you are going to be up
all night reading. That was her goal, and that is
a promise. So in this episode we are going to
learn how her magnum opus finally came together after decades
(00:41):
in the making.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Look, the book came out to, like, you know whatever,
two hundred something pages. I wrote like a lot. I
wrote hundreds of more pages. But so there was a
lot of like excavating two of those memories that were
echoing around. I had to go in there in my
head and like unpack a few boxes. But the boxes, man,
it was clear as day once they came up, the
(01:03):
feelings and sometimes even the colors and what I was wearing,
like the story, you know, and I'm here, I am
four years old, being in a fur chubby that Maya
Willa made me. I remember that coat.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh god, I.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Remember that quote. I remember the feeling of that coat
so much, and how the seams over the years started
like separating. I remember my little green velvet fur purse
she made me. I've always loved that color. So yeah,
it's flash bulb. And then also just doing the work
of putting yourself back there for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Today, Carmen introduces us to the concept of flashbulb memories,
plus shares writing and publishing wisdom that she has gleaned
through publishing five books. So grab a penance and paper
because you're gonna want to take notes on this one.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down
at a typewriter.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And believe.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Welcome to the Bleeders, a podcast and support group about book.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Writing and publishing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Coosak, and each week I'll
bring you new conversations with authors, agents and publishers about
how to write and sell books.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Hi, I'm carming Me de Wong, and I'm the author
of Why Didn't You Tell Me a Memoir?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So when did you first identify as a writer as
a child.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think I was. I still have it, which is
so wild. I wrote a little story for an English
class in fourth grade and it was about me and
a killer whale. I think I had just gone to
you know, SeaWorld or something, and I wrote this little
story and then I even drew like a cover, like
(02:55):
a cover of a book, and I stapled it together
and I handed that in as my assignment. And let
me tell you, my mother always kept it. I always
kept it. She gave it to me. I still have
it to this day. And I got an A, so
I was like, oh, hey, I'm a writer.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
That is so cute.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, you were a pro.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Oh I loved it.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Did you think it was realistic as like a job.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
It wasn't that so much as it wasn't allowed. So
it took me five decades to get my hardcover because look,
I have immigrant parents. You can't do something like be
a writer or an actor or anything creative or a
musician like I had to be either a doctor, a lawyer,
(03:40):
or an MBA. My brother was the NBA and I
started college in pre med, so you know, I changed
that major real fast, but I still had to go
a roundabout way to get to where I wanted to be.
It's not that I regret it, It's just that this
is the way it had to be. But I'm just
I'm just I'm there.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, what's your all time favorite book?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I don't have one, And I get asked this whether
it's like even in a color. If you ask me
my favorite color, I can't tell you. It all depends
on everything I'm all always about.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
It depends on you don't have to commit. Give me one.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, I'll tell you one that when I was young,
I read re read many times. Was the Count of
Monte Cristo. Oh, I read that and I read Dune
many times?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
What was it about those books?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Just the protagonists? I guess it's funny because the Count
of Monte Cristo, like I so am not a vengeful person.
Like I don't even believe in revenge. The best revenge
is keep your blinders on and keep going, you know
what I mean? Like ignore right. So it wasn't so
much that I think it was just the whole story
arc of how he was able to succeed despite everything.
(04:56):
And in my house, you know, we moved from Harlem
to New Hampshire, where you know, we were not treated well.
I was not treated well, and the house became kind
of like a little prison to me. So I totally
related to him being stuck in prison, was like one day,
one day, I shall emerge victorious.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
What is your dream writing routine?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know?
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I was thinking about this question because I had a
blessed writing routine for this book, because the deal enabled
me to be able to focus on it every day.
But I have to say the best thing is to
just have kind of uninterrupted writing time. Just four hours.
(05:43):
And that's not four hours of writing, that's about three
hours of thinking. Yeah, an hour of really writing. But
I'm so productive that way.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Are you the kind of person that has to, like
when you were working on your book, has to touch
it every day to kind of stay in it.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yes? And I also like was writing it in my
head for decades, so it was there and then I've
been writing. But then I did have to go back.
It was funny because when I was really in it,
putting it down even for the weekends was And I'm
not somebody who's like I now really enjoy downtime. Like
(06:22):
I'm a very tired person. I've led a very busy life,
so I'm like, oh weekends, yes, I'm not even going
to answer email, nothing. But when I was really deep
in writing the book. I kind of missed it. Yeah,
I missed it because it felt like, you know, it
felt like carving marble or building clay or something. It
just it felt kind of magical. And I swear I
(06:45):
will just always work my life to be able to
get that feeling.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Oh that's great.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So outside of this glorious book deal, time like, what's
your real writing routine?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
My real writing routine, Well, I'm a solo parent to
a teenager teenage girl and we have two pups, so
there's a lot on me. It's very busy. My mornings
are very busy, trying to you know, get her up
and out and the dogs and Aaron's and all that stuff.
So really what my routine was was doing like one
hour for email before noon, and you know, doing all
(07:18):
of my household stuff in the morning, and then I
would sit from about one till four or noon to four,
and I would that's where I would be writing. But
I'm very regimented because don't worry. I mean, I come
from doing broadcast in media journalism for decades, so I
definitely know how to write, almost like writing in a
(07:40):
daily newspaper, like sit down, get it done, you know,
and turning off social media and all that stuff and
just focusing so I don't think I'm actually like the
normal writer in that way.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
That's such a good skill.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, I'm trying to foster that a little bit more,
or just like carve out the space where it's like, no,
this block is just for this.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
You don't have to reply to it email right now,
that's okay?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, oh that you know, it's hard. I'm not saying
it's easy. It's actually pretty hard. But you got to
like talk to yourself and be your hardest boss. Yes,
and I've been. You know, I've had my own LLC
now for fifteen seventeen years, so I've always been my
hardest boss. But even with this, it was hard because
it took years to get it done. And so finally
when I'm in it and I have a deadline, I'm like, okay,
(08:25):
I sat down with my calendar, blocked out the hours,
did not schedule anything during that time, and you know,
really made a point to be like that's my job.
That's my job, and I'm not calling in sick today
and I'm not doing this instead today, Like that's my job.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
What's one piece of writing that makes you jealous.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
You didn't write it.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Oh oh my gosh, I'm reading or I have read,
which is just I mean, sometimes you read somebody and
you're just like, god, damn it.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Howho?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
And I posted about her. She's so sweet Ki Ming Chang.
It's called Gods of Want and it's short her short stories,
and let me tell you, you get into these stories and
I read one story and I just have to put
it down because the language you just sit there and
you're like master master how where no rules, no self consciousness,
(09:23):
no rules, pulling together everything from folklore to modern experiences
to there's just no rules and it's just fabulous. And
the language is like a freaking Kashmir but also horrifying
because some of them are kind of scary, so like
really scary, like you're wrapped in Kashmir or being scared.
It's awesome, Oh, just beautiful stuff that just sends your
(09:47):
mind into another place. That's just amazing because not all
books have to do that. I'm not gonna be able
to do that. I will make you feel, I will
make you feel things, I will make you things, but
I'm very based in reality. When she is just magic,
and it's just gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I love a wreck like that, and that's good.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Okay, so let's get into your journey. This was your
first book, correct, No, it's.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
My fifth, your fifth, but it's my first hardcover and
my first memoir. So I have two personal finance advice
books and two novels in novels in a series.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Okay, well fill me in.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Oh there were just you know, listen, I was in
personal finance advice and broadcast and everything from my own
TV show to advice columns and a bunch of magazines,
and I was on contract to all the morning shows
and stuff. This was my life for a long time.
And then I decided to do the novel series as
kind of an exercise, which sounds a little spoiled. It's like, oh,
(11:00):
you decided to publish some novels just for fun to
see if you could do it. Yes, actually, just for
fun to see if I could do it, and also
too because I was trying to sell the memoir and
people would say, your story is so complicated, it's too complicated.
Maybe if you were just Latina, or you were just Chinese,
or you were and I'm like, I just can't. So
what I did is I split myself and my story
(11:23):
into four characters what and then I wrote kind of
like a telenovelish book about them, and funny enough, I
got a lot of pushbacks still then, because this was
before I mean publishing. The tone of publishing has definitely
changed in the past five years. I'm not saying it's better,
I'm just saying tone has changed. Look, I got this
(11:44):
book out, but everyone was like, well, it's Latin, but
there's like there's no gangs or guns or oh god,
or border or it's too like normal professional type of
thing full of drama. But just like everybody else.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Under like the guys of like we don't know how
to sell this or.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Exactly like are there enough professional Latinos who would be interested?
Are you gotta be kidding me, man, I mean this
is something I've dealt with my whole life, so so
I you know, I got a paperback, just small deal,
and I was like, I don't care, I'm just going
to do this. And I had fun writing it. That
was the most important thing. I just had fun writing it.
(12:25):
And I wrote it under just Carmen Rita because again,
I was just kind of playing around, like let me
see how it goes and I still was, you know,
making bringing home the Bacon with the finance and behavioral
economics and all that stuff. So that's what I did.
So this is my first hardcover. It's got pictures in
it and everything I did the audio book. It's my
(12:48):
first big deal.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yes, yeah, I've been listening to you. I've been alternating,
going back and forth. It's been a really fun experience.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
So the personal finance books, obviously you're doing that day
to day.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That's like you're life. How did you approach writing those books?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Well, my first one actually was what launched my TV career.
So I was an editor at Money Magazine and my boss,
who was the first person to give me promotions was
a black woman who is now the godmother to my child.
She really, you know, started me going forward because look,
(13:25):
in media and in journalism, I was told that I
could not be unbiased because I was not a white
woman or white So I ended up in Money magazine.
She came in, she was a black woman, she was
a top editor, she was a boss, and she was like,
why is Carmen an assistant? Like, let's get her up here,
(13:46):
and she gave me the promotions and then she said,
you know what.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Let's do a book.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You should do a book. Let's see And at the
time we were in the same company as Warner Books,
and she talked to them. She's like, look, there's nobody
of color in this person finance advice base. Now they're everywhere,
which I'm kind of sort of happy and upset about
because not everybody's a real expert and they don't know
what to talking about it. But at the same time,
if you're looking for a woman of color to give
you financial advice, they're out there now. But when I started,
(14:13):
that was not the case. And I was like, okay,
so did the first book, and thankfully I had that
because they were mass layoffs. This was in the big
Internet bust of two thousand, you know, mass layoffs at
the magazine, Like half the staff was let go within
a couple of months, and I promoted. I had a
(14:35):
website I put money into. I did not have money,
but I put money into a website, and I started
sending emails to as many people in television as I
could and to my friends and said, put me on TV.
And within a year I had my own TV show.
How that started and after an audition, they were auditioning.
(14:57):
They addutioned one hundred and twenty people and I got it,
so that was crazy, but it wasn't long lasting. But then,
of course I got a book deal out of that
as well, and the books did not go the way
I wanted to go. I mean, I'm glad that this
is a book podcast because this is it's good to
know these things. So the first book, they wanted me
(15:17):
to do it jointly with a columnist at the Village
Voice who had a column called Generation Debt and Anya
and I actually run in similar circles these days, and
they pulled out Village Boy. Her editor pulled her out
to do her own book, which was great. So I said, okay,
well let's come up. I've come up with a different
title for this book. Warner Books refused to allow me
(15:41):
to change the title. Why and it was her title.
Now I'm a first timer, right, and I had been
told I can't do things forever and I can't lose
a book deal because of a title. But I didn't
feel good about it, but they didn't give me a
chance to change it. And then the second book, I
(16:03):
hated the cover. I didn't want to be on the
cover and they were like, yeah, but you're on TV.
I'm like, who cares?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Who cares?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's about like the advice I'll sell it, like, don't
put me on the cover, it's cheesy. And then we
fought over the title again. Look, you don't have a
say all. It's all a power. It's all about how
much power you have, which is why when it comes
to this book, I'm telling you I've been blessed. Blessed
because they gave me two versions of the cover, and
(16:32):
I told them when I got the deal, I said,
I have had the worst experience. Please, I'm asking you,
this is my life story. Please, please be good to me.
With the cover. I sent the mood boards, blah blah.
They gave me two versions. This one came out and
I cried. I saw cried. It is so perfect. I
(16:55):
just couldn't even Yeah, it was just amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So, if you're wondering what the cover of Carmen's book,
why didn't you tell me?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Looks like? It is all read a stunning red.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Color, and the font for the title and her name
are written in what looks like black cran, which is
very appropriate for the subject matter. And there is a
photo in the center, and it is of her parents,
but it is folded over the man's face, and on
(17:28):
the fold it says a memoir.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
All very apt design choices if you ask me.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
So. We will be back with more about Carmen's writing
and publishing journey right after the break.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Okay, So I was.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Listening to you on another podcast and I heard you
say that your brother helped you crack the structure, like
when you were almost like praying to him in like
a moment.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
My brother's ghost, Yes, like help me.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So what led up to that? How many drafts had
you been doing? And then what led you to that point?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Oh, Courtney, many many drafts, years of drafts and actually
a couple of agents that didn't work out, and that
that wasn't easy, and you know, just constantly being told
that this is not gonna work, this is not gonna work.
So yeah, that was about three solid years of that.
But the thing was is that I realized, I was like, Okay, look,
(18:33):
first of all, I need to find an agent who
understands what I'm trying to do, understands my story, and
will let me tell it the way I know it's
best to tell it, right, which is some deep shit, like,
let's make this like deep and real. And so I
found a wonderful agent who's fantastic. She of course she
(18:53):
has to be Latina. So she got it right away
and she sold it in two weeks. Wow, after years
and two other agents, she sold it like this boom
in this amazing deal.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Was it a full or was she selling a book proposal?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Proposal? Yeah, because nonfiction you don't don't have to know,
and they actually usually prefer you don't because they want
to help you shape it and stuff. But I did
it a very particular structure. I wrote it like an
unfolding mystery and like a conversation with my mother's ghost. Right,
so I'm saying, why didn't you tell me? And then
(19:30):
the whole job of the book was to answer that
question and figure it out. So when I got the
book deal, I didn't know who my father was, Like
there was no answer, you know what I'm saying, Like
there's like people will be like, oh, it's about you
finding your father. No, it's about me answering the question
why didn't my mother tell me? And in doing so,
(19:53):
I'm finding out who she was, who I am, and
how this all happened and it's about this country. It's
a very American story. But so yes, I was sitting
there and I was like, Okay, I got to crack
this code. I've got to figure out. And I was
on my second agent at this point with the memoir,
(20:13):
meaning like I've had other agents, but these were the
couple of agents for the memoir particularly, and I was
so frustrated, and I was just like, why would anybody
want to read a memoir if they don't know you,
they don't follow you. You're not a celebrity. But who cares? Right,
Like who.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Cares by your story?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I mean, come on, yeah, But also too people are like, ah,
that's so complicated, like who cares? Right?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So I was like, I need to write a book
that's a page turner. You cannot put it down, you
get sucked in and you're up all night. That's the
kind of book that I want to write, which, considering
the text messages that I got it like two in
the morning that worked out from friends, whore like I
lost sleep because of you. I wanted very much to
(20:58):
do that, but I was sitting there in frustration and
make it myself, like my fifth cup of coffee of
the day, and I just my brother had passed away
several months before, and he was my closest family member,
my best friend. I spoke to him every single day
(21:18):
and got me and we understood each other so much,
and I just was like, you need to do some work.
You better help me figure this out. How am I
going to write this so that people actually want to
pick it up? And then I just heard in my head,
why didn't you tell me make it a question? Why
(21:40):
didn't you tell me make the title a question? Because
what are you trying to do here? That's the thing
with memoir. What I found is that once I really
landed on what am I trying to do, the book
came together. So each chapter is because her answering, because
the stage was set, because why it is right because
(22:00):
of it. And then that gave me, Okay, what am
I addressing? These are her reasons? And that's what I did.
I broke it down into that and it worked. So
it's not a memoir that's like and then this happened,
and then this happened, and then this happened very much
not like that.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No, I know, because like I mean, you're covering different
periods of time obviously, but it's so interesting some of
the early stuff. It's like there aren't huge events. You're
like really making so much out of the day to
day that was happening. So I was very curious how
(22:37):
you got there, because I was like, oh, she did
a really good job of like making these little childhood
moments like the mystery, and there were multiple mysteries that
if you want to just kind of explain, give a
little premise for listeners who haven't aren't familiar.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, so I you know, I was born uptown Manhattan,
Dominican mother, Chinese father. My mother was married off to
a Chinese gangster for the family papers.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I had my older brother first, and then we were wongs.
But they divorced her im as little and then all
of a sudden, I went from a home where I
had family living in the building. I had family across
the street. I had cousins everywhere, Spanish, Chinese, and Chinatown.
I was in Chinatown every week, a very very rich life.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Culturally, she marries an Anglo American second husband and we
get moved to New Hampshire, my brother and I and
New Hampshire, Southern New Hampshire. In the late seventies, was
as white as the snow on whatever the mountain is there.
I've blocked it out. It's painful. But also our new
(23:55):
father required no Spanish, no Latin food, Chinese food, especially
no music. That way, I mean, my mother changed the
way she dressed, she changed the way redressed. So it
was like a hardcore assimilation. Now, the thing is that
in telling, when you tell that, how can you get
the reader to basically understand why am I telling this
(24:19):
story about, you know, us getting pulled over by the
police right up the street, like literally a few doors
away from our new house in New Hampshire because the
neighbors said Puerto Ricans were casing the neighborhood. But putting
you in those scenes because all of us as people
are made up mostly our fears, our personalities, our everything,
(24:46):
from where we hold our shoulders like up or like
down or whatever, from the ages of one to six. Right.
I also love a master's in psychology. So when I
really learned that, you know, when I was in grad
school and I really learned that, I said, oh my god,
my personality makes so like it all makes so much sense.
Why you know to me, even those years in New Hampshire,
(25:08):
like that was not home. It was never home for me.
But these little things that happened to you when your
kid shape you hugely, So it seems like little things.
I mean, getting pulled over to police is a big thing.
But going to the grocery store for the first time,
my mother in what we call rollos with you know,
big hair rollers with a scarf, I'm being stared at
(25:33):
and snickered at. These are the things that communicate to
you where you exist in that world, in this world,
and in this country. So it really was about putting
you in those scenes and making you feel what I
was feeling, and being in the grocery store with me
(25:55):
with little Carmen and seeing people snicker at her mother
and seeing her mother's and the pain in it. So
that partially also answer Okay, why didn't you tell me? Well,
she was told that who she was was bad, who
she was was lesser than we were told that. I
was told that too. These things made up who we
(26:18):
are and why we do the things we do.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
How did you excavate some of those early childhood memories
of like the cop thing or other microaggressions, or just
like some of the early stuff is just you feeling
out of place at home and stuff like that. How
did you kind of like bring back those memories?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Those memories live with me, They aren't alive there all
the time. Those are technically what they're called flush bulb memories.
There are memories from our youth. That really is as
if you just took a picture, and not just a
picture of your surroundings, but a picture of how you
were feeling in that moment. Those kind of memories I've
(27:02):
always kept with me because they echo So they were
always like kind of like echoing in my head. And
it did take some thinking to bring some of them
to the forefront enough to be able to write where
I'm in it. So that happened, and frankly, like look,
the book came out to, like, you know whatever, two
(27:23):
hundred something pages I wrote like a lot. I wrote
hundreds of more pages. But so there was a lot
of like excavating two of those memories that were echoing around.
I had to go in there in my head and
like unpack a few boxes. But the boxes, man, it
was clear as day once they came up, the feelings
and sometimes even the colors and what I was wearing,
(27:46):
Like the story, you know, and I'm here, I am
four years old being in a fur chubby that Miabuela
made me. I remember that coat. Oh god, I remember
that quat. I remember the feeling of that coat so much,
and how the seams over the years started like separating.
I remember my little green velvet fur purse she made me.
I've always loved that color. So yeah, it's flash bulb.
(28:10):
And then also just doing the work of putting yourself
back there for sure.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So the research part of it, and I guess for you,
part of that was like solving the mystery. So how
did you approach that stuff and the family, you know, like,
did you fact check your memories with family members and
how did that work?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
No?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
No, no, because here's the thing, there's no fact checking
right your memories. You can fact check maybe where you
were location wise, what time of day it was, or
what day it was, or what year it was. You
cannot fact check your memory because even your siblings have
grown up up in a different house than you. Your
(29:02):
siblings know different parents than you, even though we were
raised with the same parents. Because think about it, my
brother was six years older. We were both born in
Harlem between you know, latinas and Chinese. We go to
New Hampshire. My sisters are then born five years after me,
all in ducks in a row in New Hampshire. Without
(29:23):
that family, without those cultural connections, then you know, my
stepfather and my mother their marriage starts dissolving. They were
all born in different times. Financially things would change year
to year, so in some ways we've all grown up
in a different family. My brother was the one though
(29:44):
that when I was searching for, you know, who my
real father was, he was helping me dig and kind
of like fact check quote unquote or try to follow
detective wise some cousins and stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You know.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
We went down to go to Miami to see his godmother,
who was close with my mother, and ask her. I
went to something Lamingo with my daughter to ask, you know,
my godmother. We did some of that, and then sitting
at the computer and looking up and know, oh, I
think it was an optometrist on Mulberry Street and blah
blah blah, and who m I have worked there? And
then I hired genealogists that did not turn into anything.
(30:22):
That was a lot of money that didn't go anywhere.
But that was the kind of fact checking I definitely
made a point to make sure to remember time and
place that was important to me. So for example, when
I mentioned like all the shows I was watching, I
just made sure that, like I was in the right
(30:43):
time period, you know, as opposed to so I just
did stuff like that. But that was the extent of
like the fact fact checking, because to me, memoir the
best memoirs. I love the memoirs that are not And
then I went here in this date, and then I
want here in this date. Not about the fact checking.
It's about the story of your life, the story of
(31:05):
who you are that can connect to all of our stories,
you know, that's the most important thing totally.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I interviewed Bessie it be like a month ago or whatever,
and she was like, yeah, it's like your emotional memory.
You can't sometimes the facts are like kind of irrelevant
to that situation, or like you'll find out it happened
and you were in a different grade, but it doesn't
change the like, yes, feeling of it exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
And I think that that's one of the things that
I remember. Back in maybe the two thousands, there was
this very successful kind of journalist who did a memoir
and it was all about fact checking his life. And
he went back and fact checked his life, and I
just was like, I don't want to read that. I mean,
I mean, brilliant for him, right, But I think that
(31:53):
there was this idea of research. And I do have
to say, since you were a woman, I'm going to
say this, that is a very very masculine tendency. No,
it really is, because I just did it. I just
did an event, a corporate event where I spoke to
their affinity group, their black affinity group. Right, I'm Afro Latina,
so that we spoke to the black affinity group during
(32:15):
Hispanic Corritage Month. And of course it was a guy
who was like, so, what kind of research did you did?
How do you know that you were you know, you
had the right dates in the right times, and and
I was just like what, like what so? But I
do feel like that is a very masculine tendency. I
(32:35):
think that we are socialized a bit more to our
memories are about how we felt, and I think, you know,
and I'm being general I'm generalizing, of course, but that
ability to tap into that, I think is a really
great gift because that's what unites us. If your stories
about you being here at this time and here at
(32:57):
this time. Guess what, none of us were there? Yeah,
so how is I supposed to connect with me?
Speaker 3 (33:01):
And it's meaningless, like just the time.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
A story that's not a story?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Did you worry about any of the sensitivities? But I
guess you know, well, like some people had passed, So.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, Courtney, the ones who remain here's the thing. I
definitely grappled with that, right. My sisters are around, My
stepfather's still around. Poppy Wong passed away in June, but
he wasn't going to read it anyway, and I wasn't
going to tell him about it, and he doesn't use
social media or nothing, so of course not. But my
(33:36):
mother was gone and my brother was gone. But it
wouldn't have been for him. He was my biggest cheerleader.
He would have loved to have read it. But I
think that for my family is probably very painful. So
you know, their choice to not read it and not
engage with it is fine. But I've had cousins come
(33:58):
out of the woodwork who I haven't talked to or
seen since I was a little kid, uptown kid playing
with them, you know, in the street or whatever. Like dancing,
and they love it and they're reading it and they're
just loving it. They're like, oh my god, you sent
me back and like I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
He said you sound white, but well.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
And we always we always wanted to know why, you know,
and how it happened. And of course with that whole
thing about like teasing me about oh my god, you
sound white, like why you sound so white? Why you
dressed like that? D d they get it now because
what happened was we moved away and it was like,
what happened to my cousins, Oh, they moved to New Ympshire,
(34:41):
Like why I don't know, and they had no idea
of like as kids, like how does that change you?
And why does that because that world was completely foreign
to them, moves foreign to us. We might as well
have been dropped off on Mars. But explained to my cousins,
you know, they were like, now we know what happened
and how it went. And then of course I've had
(35:01):
some be like oh your mother, my mother has some stories.
You got to come over listen to these stories. So
I've learned some new stuff, which is like incredible.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Were you working on the book when at the end
of one of the chapters, Pepy Wang handed a paper
to you that you were actively working on the book.
Did you feel like that was a present to help
you or did you already know all that information?
Speaker 1 (35:28):
No, I didn't. I ended up finding out one of
my sisters gave me a couple of boxes where I
found that photo which opens the prologue.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I had already been writing a memoir before I even
got that photo. And then I got the photo and
I was like, oh my god, so things have been
coming at me. And then Popy Wong he knew he
was dying, and he had cancer very for many years,
and he was cleaning out his little apartment and then
he's like, you know, take this, don't take that. Oh,
don't take that one, you know. And I'm like why
(36:00):
and he's like, okay, fine, ticket And it's his paperwork
from his arrest for trafficking heroin. I didn't know it
was heroin. I knew he went to jail, but I
didn't know what he exactly he was doing up to.
And you know what he kind of was probably like
I'm dying, what the hell, you know, kind of cares
(36:23):
And for me, I got a like kind of a
treasure trove of stuff. For some reason, he had like
paperwork of my Dominican grandmother coming in. I got paperwork
from my mother's brother from another family. My grandfather had
a couple families, as one does in the Republica Dominicana
(36:45):
in those days. Her brother, she told me he had
died in a surfing accident. He had hung himself, and
I have the paperwork about the crime scene, and then
crime scene wasn't a crime, but you know what I
mean about the scene and his death certificate and all that.
So I just discovered a lot of stuff in old papers.
All of you with parents, go get those papers. Get
(37:08):
your hands on those old papers, have them willed to you.
They are a treasure trove.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
So even some of the research was like just happening
to you. It wasn't necessarily like you on a stakeout
or like going to the library for the information. It
was like kind of just happening to you as you
were writing the book.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Partially, so writers and authors are going to love this one.
So I hand in the book right the first draft,
right before my birthday last year, and I was like, okay,
now I can just like relax for a minute, right,
And the book ended it was again, it wasn't about me,
It wasn't all about Oh I got to find him.
(37:53):
That wasn't the point of the book, right, And my
editor and publisher were very very fine with that. I mean,
shout out to Madalikua Madlica is. She's Indian, British American,
so she also really got my story. She knows what
it's like. And she came from broadcast, so she snatched
up right away. But she was like, that's not what
the story's about. So it's okay. I didn't find him,
(38:14):
and then I had resigned myself after two years of
searching after genealogists. I mean, it became like a part time,
full time job nothing because all I could find was
third cousins, and they could they weren't able to trace
it back. I'm sitting two weeks after I hand in
the book and I refreshed my DNA sites twenty three
(38:37):
and meters an ancestry. I just hit refresh, and I
had hit refresh every day for a year plus and
then I went to like once a week, and then
once I wrote the book, I just stopped. So it
probably had been like two months, I hit refresh.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Boop, Oh there's my niece.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Just there you go, there you go, so like, oh
my god. So I emailed, you know, I DM through
the site this lovely girl, and I'm like, honey, I
think your mom's my sister, you know. And thank god.
I was ready for I don't want to talk to you.
I was ready for silence. I was ready for I
(39:20):
don't want to talk to you. She doesn't want to
talk to you. I was ready. And I got a
message the next day from my.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Sister that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
And I called up Monelico, my editor, and I was like, Sue,
add an epilogue, and I wrote the epilogue after I
met her. I met up with her and I saw
pictures of him and I heard the stories, and then
a memory came up. A memory came up, and it
(39:53):
was like, oh my god, I've met him.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
How much?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Is it just the epilogue that changed, because I feel
like just the other isn't she a little earlier?
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Or no?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Nope, nope, Like that's how recent everything is, and that's insane.
Oh yeah, but you know, there there goes the universe
for you.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Is there like a whole nother book now or it
didn't change so.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Much, Corney Darling, the next one's going to be a novel.
I'm sorry, I this was a feat for me. This
was you know, don't forget. Also, my brother passed away,
and then the day after his service, we locked down
for COVID, and then my daughter got long COVID in
which she's had for two years. Then you know, find
(40:40):
my father. Then my own father passes away then and
then I have to call my the person that my
mother said was my father and tell him he's not,
and tell him I found the real one. And enough, like,
I love this. This is I say, this is my
magnum opis people. This is it? However, Yes, a novel
for sure, because I've got stories of the wazoo and
(41:02):
I have a novel and half already written. But I
think I'm going in a different direction. But I'm excited
for it. I'm in research now.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
So how does your process differ when you're writing, like
when you're working on this or doing you know, nonfiction
about finance versus a novel, Like is your process different
for all those things?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh my gosh, my internal process is completely different. This
was look I couldn't have done this without fifteen years
of weekly therapy, which is what I've had. Like that's
how you know, it took a tremendous amount of internal
work to write this. So it basically took all of
my faculties writing, storytelling, you know, my own you know,
(41:52):
emotional health, all those sort of things together. But how
I approached it, like I mentioned, like being my own boss,
blocking out the time. I followed the same structure that
I had for my novels, which is the same structure
I had for my personal finance books, which was, you
(42:13):
break it down in the calendar, how many months you
have to hand it in. You always, of course the
hand in date, you always pull that back two weeks
and you make the due date two weeks before that,
and then you plot out how many words, how many
pages when can you write realistically, and then you block
(42:34):
it out in your calendar, day by day by day
by day. For nine months, I think it was eight,
I had eight And that's what I did. I said,
I got to do ten pages a week. And that
doesn't sound either that sounds like a lot to you
or it sounds like a little. It depends on who
you are. But I could sit down and write eight
pages in an hour and a half. But what it
(42:57):
takes for you to sit down and do that take days, Yeah,
days of processing and thinking, and then you'll write i
don't know, paragraph two paragraphs, and then you'll have to
put it down because my daughter needs dinner, you know,
so you just keep going. But that's what I did,
and without that structure, I don't know how I would
(43:18):
have done it. So like right now, I'm researching the novel.
Now I'm in the research phase, and I block out
two hours every day. What am I researching today, blah
blah blah, and then what date I want the outline
to start? And it's like a little business. Yeah, I know,
it's not very romantic. I'm not, you know, I'm not
like one of those leg And then I sit down
(43:39):
and smoke a cigar and have some roome and type.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
You know, I've been doing this thing. It's this website.
It's called seven hundred and fifty words dot com. And
it's so simple. It's just really basic. You can't even
format anything. You can just type in the space. It'll
count your words and if you get seven hundred and fifty,
it'll give you a check mark. And the whole thing
is like, you know, if you're competitive with yourself, you
(44:05):
like don't want to lose your street.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I am girls, so that it's very useful as a
writer to be competitive with yourself. And yeah, if you
like like playing games and winning, that really helps as
a writer. I'm like, god, damn.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
It, totally.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
That helps me stay in even though I'm working on
a memoir right now too. But even if I'm not
doing that, even if I'm you know, it's an off
day and I'm allowing myself to like I did a
newsletter and then I'm in a diary or something, it
just kind of keeps me in the like looseness of it,
Like sitting down to write is not a big deal,
(44:42):
you know what I mean. So I think the regimented
thing is just so helpful.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
It's helpful for me. Once I do that and I
have the structure in place, it just kind of and
then it happens. It happens, and it's a first draft.
You guys, sit yourself down. That's the other thing is
I had a psychological sit myself down, and I was like,
to me, this was probably the most important thing I've
ever done. And I've hosted a TV show, like I mean,
(45:08):
but this book was the most important thing, and that
could some days had me in like freeze mode. I
couldn't do anything. All I did was churn in my
head and I was like, I can't, I can't do
anything so good, I stink. I can't. This is you know,
I must be Michaelangelo or nothing at all. And then
I'd have to send myself down and be like, God,
damn it, girl, you're gonna write those words. It can
(45:30):
be absolute crap. You just better sit down and start writing.
And then once you just start writing, it starts, and
then something would get unlocked and next thing you know,
you're like and you just keep going and you've got pages.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Like, oh yeah, I like this, I love it.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Anything else that you learned about your process over the
course of all your books, Like anything else that you're like,
I need this to succeed.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
And how many drafts do you usually do?
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Oh gosh, amazingly enough. I only well because I had
been right and working on this book. So it's a
total of five years from the first proposal to publish date.
Oh five years. Yeah, So it was a long time,
many many, many drafts if you're working on like something
like at that level, that makes total sense. However, for
(46:16):
my advice books and such, I was writing advice columns
for magazines, like I knew exactly what I was doing, right,
I had been a magazine editor like that, you know,
that to me was easy.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Like you write them and they're kind of done, like
you might do a pass and punch up.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
But yeah, and once in a while you'll talk with
the editor and he'll be like, you know, he'll she'll
be like, oh, we want to have this in there,
make sure you say them whatever. But with this one
with my editor, with Matalika, she was magical. She was
very good about being like, remember your mission. Does this story?
(46:54):
You know she would highlight and be like, does this
address the mission? It's a great scene, but does it
do what you wanted to do? And that really helped me.
They say you kill your babies. That really helped me
to do that. And I did also hire a dear
friend to be my first reader because I was a
(47:14):
little insecure about my own like this being so personal
and I needed it to be the best thing that
I could do. And I knew even though she was
a friend and she was also former magazine editor from
our timing days. I knew she'd tell me the truth.
And she's also a woman of color from New York City,
like she just got it and my generation. And I
(47:35):
was like, please just read this, and she would get
I'd give her a chapter, she would go through and
she would just top note it, this is great. The
language is great. And she was really good about encouraging,
because I think really great editors are wonderful about making
sure you have that positive sandwich, like positive positive, you know,
three positives for everyone negative or the thing, because that's
(47:59):
what keeps you going as a writer. Right, you're already
self flagellating. You don't need really somebody else to tell
you that was stupid. So she was great. She kept
and she kept me on course. And she was also
another person that I felt like was watching and waiting,
so that also kept me on schedule, and that helped
me to put I put it all together after she
(48:19):
had done the first readA beach chapter, and then that's
what I sent, you know, as a first draft, but
it was it was in good, pretty good shape.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
So by the time you sent the whole like the
fold to your publisher or editor, over there, like the
next editing pass was not like a heavy lift.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
It was not a heavy lift. I did send her, No,
I did send her. Let me, oh, let me correct myself.
I did send Monelika chunks of chapters. I didn't send
her the whole manuscript, especially in the beginning. In the beginning,
she did want to see the first couple of chapters,
just so that we knew that, like, you know, we're
(48:57):
on the right track. After I got prob about halfway through,
she was like, just give me the rest. Then the
epilogue of Corns after. But it was a couple of rounds.
It was a couple rounds of it. It's been nothing
very dramatic. Mostly it was the hardest one was when
she came back and she was like, girl, you wrote
one hundred thousand words. You handed me one hundred thousand words.
(49:21):
I need seventy. I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
I was like, can't you like it's really good And
she's like, look, honey, if we do that, we got
to change the way the book is made. Also because
I have eight pages of pictures in there. Then it's
a different cost level. It's a business decision, and she's
like also too with sales. It's a memoir, like we
can't give them, you know, freaking what's his name? Like
(49:47):
the Robert Moses memoir. But yeah, that was the hardest.
But again, all I kept saying to myself was what
serves Why didn't you tell me?
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Like what's on the spine of this story?
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Does this serves that?
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:01):
And also to be careful to be very balanced in
my depiction of my mother and my parents, all of
them right, to not villainize them.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I thought you really were.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Oh, thank you so much, Thank you so much, because
that was one thing that I really worked as mado
Leak on because I was like, you don't want to
write a memoir, even if you come from abusive parents
and lots of trauma. It just answering the question of
why don't you tell me? Wasn't about what she did
to me? It wasn't. It wasn't meaning it was that's
not the whole story. So the whole story camp. Even
(50:36):
though I have many, many memories of horrible scenes, I
had to include only the stuff that really addressed why
I turned out the way I did, or why I
made choices later in life, or my role with my
sisters for example, like the birthday party or the birthday
cake scene, or she smashed the birthday cake. We made
her on the floor and made us clean it up
(50:59):
those kind of things. Is how do we balance that
she was not the best mom with the fact that
she was a human being who came from credible trauma
and was doing probably the best she could.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
That's I think that's what you get, which is fair.
It's like these things don't just come out of nowhere,
Like there's like a reason why those qualities get passed
down and what you know, like it's like a whole
that's the story.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, and you can't you know, there's lots of talk
about generational trauma, thank god finally and epigenetics, but like
you can't break these cycles without understanding where they came from. Yes,
And so for me, it wasn't about saying, look at me,
I came from this terrible background, my mother was so
evil and blah blah blah blah. No, it was really like,
you know what, here's what she came from. Here's what happened.
(51:50):
She was suffocating and dying in New Hampshire, like she
she took it out on all of us. She resented
the hell out of me in my life and my freedom.
She you know, she treated my brother differently, all this
sort of sort of stuff, but it all speaks to
why she did what she did.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
So on the publishing end of things and the agent,
and it's not I mean, this is not your only experience.
So I guess kind of broadly, like what have you
learned about those processes getting an agent, maintaining that relationship,
and working with a publisher That might be helpful for listeners.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
So I think getting an agent, just like getting a job,
A lot of it depends on where you're at in
life and how much experience you have, because agents, you know,
getting to one, getting one to actually read it, and
getting to actually give you feedback, you know a lot
of that just like everything else. Yes, it's your hard work,
(52:52):
but it's also who can connect you to this person.
I got my first couple of agents because my first
one because I was at the magazine and they were
the company owned both right then I was. I got
my other agent because I was on TV and that
firm had a relationship with the book agent firm, the
firm that represented me on television, So I was in
(53:15):
the business so to speak. But when I realized that
I needed an agent who fit what I wanted out
of this business period and life. Right, you know, if
you look at my bio and my resume, I mean,
I am just like this is a guy's phrase, but
like balls to the wall, like I shoot for the
(53:37):
goddamn stars and I will get it. Like That's how
I've always been is very much nothing. You know, I'm
a freight train. So I had to be with someone
who understood that. But then I realized it was another
piece missing. I had to be with someone who understood
what I was trying to do and my life as
(54:00):
someone of color, which for some people was difficult. For
some people, it was very difficult to read about the
racism I experienced when we moved to New Hampshire, and
some of them write it as I was being angrier,
I was being bitter. Well, God's of course I'm going
to angry Jesus Christ. But guess what women of color
(54:23):
who read it, or people of color in general who
read it are just like, how were you not more angry?
Like they didn't see anger at all. So it's all
that point of view you don't necessarily need to have
someone who completely replicates you, but you have to have
somebody who understands you. So that was the second part
that I had to figure out. And then I asked
(54:43):
my friends who I admired and who got me who
their agent was, and that's how I got to who
I have now. But it is a process, and one
of the things is that I feel it is unfortunately
a little bit of a power thing. Right. It's like
when you you haven't had a book out, when you
don't have a lot of people following, when you don't
have a lot of you kind of go with who
(55:06):
you've got, keep going, keep writing, keep living, keep working,
keep building yourself, and if it doesn't work out, then
you will be in a different position to approach someone else.
So I just kept going. And look, I wrote those
novels just to like because I could, because I was like,
(55:27):
I was frustrated, I was churning, and I was like,
I just need to get this out somehow. But it
took years.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
So you're working on this novel, new novel now, right?
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah? Is it kind of a nebulous thing or do
you know exactly which one you're like going with?
Speaker 1 (55:44):
I kind of do. And it's so funny because I
just had a meeting with my film agent, my adaptation agent,
who I just love to pieces, and I'm just like, girl,
I haven't made you any money yet. She's like, oh,
you will, you will, because she's like, you don't stop.
Because we got really close with the novel series to
selling to a major network and it fell through. But
(56:06):
that was fine, but we'll get there. But I told her,
of course, every agent frankly right now, I mean we're women, right,
You're like, oh, what sells? Right, And they're like romance.
I'm like, people, I am twice divorced and was in
the closet until my forties. Like, I am not the
person to write romance. I am like, I'm not there, people.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
But maybe that's the romance we need, grumpy MoMA romance,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
I mean, actually, look what once I get out there,
just a little slam, it's gonna be interesting. I'm waiting
till this virus is over. But here's the thing that
we agree on that do not go after what is
popular at the moment unless you want to. I do
believe the thing. Look, it's a business. If you want
(56:55):
to write to the industry, like I so admire and
you're gonna laugh. Jackie Collins same. I admired her so much,
and when I wrote those novels, that's what I was thinking.
I was like, Man, I'm gonna write this like Jackie Collins. Man,
I didn't even read her books. I never even read
her books. But what I loved was she just kept
(57:17):
pumping them out.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
She's a hustler.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
She was a hustler. She was unapologetic about what she
was doing. And of course the other one who we
all probably admire, who I definitely have always admired, Stephen King.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Yeah, so I told her.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
I was like, look, yant getting rumors for me? My
dark side is well, first of all, huge sci fi fan,
huge morri COMI fan like very much magical, supernatural, sci fi,
anything that's like another level but also grounded. So the
next one is a cultural thriller, supernatural horror.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
Hey maybe Jordan Peele.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
Well that's the other thing, man, I went, man went, oh,
his when I say something, I'm like, see that's the
way my mind works. And those are the books I love.
And you know who I love. Who I was really
inspiring to me, which was inspiring to him was Ira eleven.
Speaker 4 (58:14):
Oh, I don't know Ira eleven.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
When I saw Rosemary's Baby, he wrote Rosemary's Baby stuff.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
I love Rosemary's Baby.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
And it's very New York, right. And when I was
young and I saw Rosemary's Baby at Myaboela's apartment during
one visit, and it was like on picks, like Channel
eleven whatever New Yorkers will remember that, and I was just.
Speaker 3 (58:32):
Like, what is this?
Speaker 1 (58:34):
And my mind was blown? And then I was like,
is based on a novel? I read all Ira eleven?
I love that. And I decided like, if I really
do a serious novel, it's gonna be like that. It's
gonna be some kind of psychological horror and cultural horror
because Rosemary's Baby was about being a woman and about
(58:54):
reproductive organs and about power and about so that's stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (59:00):
I love that. I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
Okay, what are do you have any bucket list writing goals?
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Or was this kind of it?
Speaker 2 (59:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (59:06):
Han, this this was like I said, magnum opus over here,
like there's nothing, there's nothing satisfying.
Speaker 4 (59:13):
Thank you very much, congratulations.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
Thank you, well, this has been amazing. I have a
couple wrap up questions. Is there anything else you want
to say about the book or.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh, my goodness, here's what I'll say. Some of the
best advice I'd love to share about books. First, write
what only you can write, which really makes will make
it special. And the other is the books become successful
when it's very specific. Again, a book that only you
can write, but it's full of universal yes. And so
(59:49):
my book is yes, I'm you know, Dominic and Chinese
and this and that and the other thing, and whiteness
and America. It's a basic American story, coming of age,
American story, story about my mom mysteries, family mysteries. But
it really just is about being a human being and
all that comes with it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Amen. What's one piece of writing advice you wish you
could give your former self?
Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Well, now that I'm on the other side of it,
I'm like, don't stress so much, Mama, It's gonna be fine.
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
One tip for writers trying to get a book published.
Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Keep going at it. One thing I'm known for, and
the reason why I'm talking to you right now, Courtney,
is because I just did not stop. I am relentless.
You just keep going, and it's about shooting for where
you are at that time, So please do not think
you're just gonna get a deal like right away and
you're like five years out of school, maybe you can.
(01:00:49):
Don't let anybody say you can't, but just adjust to
where you're at and just keep pushing, always push.
Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
That's good advice.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Time. Favorite piece of your own writing this book?
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Why didn't you tell me? A memoir from Crown Penguin.
Random hos like.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Beautiful and how can listeners connect with you online? Ah?
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
I'm mostly on Instagram at Carmen Rita Wong dm me.
I love hearing what people think about the book. I
love it so much because when you birth baby, it's
always nice when people are like, oh my god, it's
so cute or oh my god, what happened to her?
I love hearing all of it through my website at
Carmritawong dot com. If you want to find out more
about me or see me in my talks. My many
talks are in my former life. It's there.
Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
Amazing. Thank you so much, Thank.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
You, Courtney, Thank you so much for having me. This
is great.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Bleaders.
Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Writing is so much better with friends. I'm your host,
Courtney Kosack and hey, let's connect on social media.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
I am at Courtney Kosak last name is Kocak on
Twitter and Instagram. And make sure you signed up for
the Bleeders Companion substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives.
There's so much good stuff that I send out to
my free list, and I actually just launched a paid
subscription with some extra.
Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Goodies where I take you behind the scenes of all
my best buylines. I published a post about my return
to stand up comedy and how I got ready to
crush my showcase. I wrote about MFAs and whether or
not I think it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Is worth it.
Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
I also did one of my favorite workshops I've ever
taught at a Manifestation workshop that I did for the
New Year, but it's really good anytime of the year.
So there's so much good stuff for free subscribers and
even more for paid subscribers.
Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
And there is a link in the description for that.
Speaker 5 (01:02:43):
And join me again next time for another all new episode.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
In the meantime, Happy Bleeding
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