Happy spring, happy paperback season

Plus some thoughts on writing, life, everything in between

Dear reader,

Happy spring! My latest update: the paperback for PORTRAIT OF A THIEF is now out! You can find it at all bookstores and also at airports (!!), which still doesn’t feel real to me. Paperbacks usually come out one year after hardcover release, and it’s hard to imagine that it’s been one year since my book first came out, one year since becoming a published author, one year since all these dreams have come true. The paperback also comes with some fun bonus content (an author letter, the first chapter of my next book, book club questions…), which is always neat.

Lately, life has been busy with all sorts of non-writing related things. I recently finished six weeks of OBGYN, where I delivered babies and also experienced lots of big emotional highs and lows. I’m now on neurosurgery, which involves a lot of early mornings and those same big emotions. I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to writing, to medicine, to life, especially as I head into my last year of medical school. Balance, as ever, is hard to come by, and one of my biggest lessons of the past few years has been that it never gets easy; all we can do is cultivate balance as habit, as routine, as necessity. Life only gets busier, and many fields will demand everything of you if you let it. And so here I am, doing a little bit of writing every evening, waking up at 5 am to sprint to the hospital, trying to create the life I want to lead.

Whew. Anyway. Some housekeeping: I’m heading to New York at the end of the month for the Edgar Allen Poe Awards (my book was nominated for Best First Novel, eek!), and will be participating in the Edgars Zoom panel on April 19th! I also have an event coming up on May 4th at Santa Clara Library, so if you’re local, definitely come say hi! I’ll have some postcards and yet-to-be-revealed stickers, which I am super excited about. If you’re not local, stay tuned for some social media giveaways! You can also find news, event info, etc. on my website always.

A couple of book recs for the month:

• NATURAL BEAUTY by Ling Ling Huang, a novel that came out this week (and I blurbed!), read it for a searing critique of the beauty industry and also lots of feelings about Asian American identity, parent-child relationships, and what we sacrifice in pursuit of perfection

• EVERY VERSION OF YOU by Grace Chan, a gorgeous sci-fi that asks “What if the Metaverse actually became a thing, and your aging immigrant parent did not want to join but the love of your life does, and also, you may have to die in real life for it?”

• I WANT TO DIE BUT I WANT TO EAT TTEOKBOKKI by Se-hee Bae, a memoir which is exactly as the title says, following a writer and her therapist and the kind of book I found perfect for reading just a chapter or so right before bed

That’s everything! Thanks for reading, and take it easy,

Grace