BETH BACON: Thanks for sharing your experiences with your new YA novel, Loveboat, Taipei. When did the concept for this novel first come to you?
ABIGAIL WEN: Loveboat is the nickname for an actual program in Taipei that I attended as a teen. Parents have been sending their kids there since the 1960s to learn Mandarin, culture…and find a spouse! The Taiwanese government also went through the lists of high school awards and extended a free trip to everyone with a Chinese last name. That was how I ended up on the program and I showed up to find it was the party of a lifetime — hundreds of kids dropped off in a foreign land with zero supervision. It was such a unique, crazy experience that I wanted to capture.
Event Details
- EVENT: Epic Reads
- DATE: Thursday, January 16, 2020
- TIME: 6 PM – 8 PM
- LOCATION: University Bookstore, 4326 University Way, N.E., Seattle, WA
BETH BACON: Can you give us a short summary of the book?
ABIGAIL WEN: I can’t improve on the flap jacket! A wise man once said, when at Loveboat, party like the prodigies do. When Ever Wong’s parents send her away for the summer, she’s expecting Chen Tan: a strict, educational immersion program in Taiwan. Instead, she finds infamous “Loveboat.” There, Ever is surround by prodigies: like Rick Woo, Chinese American wonder boy and longtime bane of her existence; Ever’s roommate, the confident and clever Sophie Ha, as glamorous as she is sharp; and the intimidatingly cool Xavier Yeh, heir to an international tech empire. But her classmates are more interested in the nonstop Taipei night life than anything to do with the curriculum. Hookups abound, snake-blood sake flows, and adult supervision is nonexistent. For the first time ever, Ever is discovering that freedom tastes like, and it is exhilarating.
But summer will end and Ever will be back to her parents and the future they’ve planned for her. Will she let us glimpse of freedom go–or will Loveboat give her the courage to pursue the future she dreams of, and the Ever Wong she wants to be?
BETH BACON: Tell us about the different drafts you went through as you perfected it? How long did you work on the writing?
ABIGAIL WEN: I have been writing for twelve years, and this novel took me three years. I initially wrote it from all four of the main characters’ points of view, third person past tense, then scrapped it and consolidated it into Ever’s point of view, first person present tense. My earlier drafts had a completely different structure and storyline. But once I restarted with Ever’s POV, on draft #6, the right arc fell into place. I talk more about this process in my blog post on Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations.
BETH BACON: What was your publishing journey?
ABIGAIL WEN: I was also lucky enough to have multiple editors interested in the manuscript, so I held many conversations with them and had a chance to hear different editorial takes on the story. I ended up going with HarperCollins because Kristen Pettit had the biggest vision for my career, encompassing my book as well as my work in artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley.
My agent, Jo Volpe, actually read my very first novel, Foxstone, ten years before I queried her with Loveboat, Taipei. At the time, she was a new agent. She printed out my manuscript, hand-marked it and actually snail-mailed it to me, saying she really believed there was something there. I revised and she ended up turning it down, but it was encouraging and now I feel like I’ve come full circle. When I was interviewing agents, I told Jo my favorite side characters were these group of guys who dubbed themselves the Gang of Five, and appear periodically throughout the story speaking their truths about Asian American male stereotypes. She said, “They’re the Greek chorus,” which was totally out of the blue and so right. That was when I knew she was the One! I really recommend querying and submitting widely, because you never know who will resonate with your work in that special way.
BETH BACON: You’ve been doing a great job with social media marketing. Do you have a marketing plan? Can you share insights for other authors?
ABIGAIL WEN: Lol, I’m glad you think so! I joke that I have had to do remedial training for social media. I’m actually really bad at it — it often takes me an hour to post across all my platforms. My agency and HarperCollins took a look at my feeds and made some great suggestions–like posting regularly, using hashtags and using the same filter to give the page a consistent feel. My sister-in-law, who is a great photographer, also looked at it over the holidays and recommended I try to put heads closer to the 2/3 mark on the page. I try to post around lunchtimes, too, when people are on break and have time to scroll. These are very basic fixes that actually make a big difference!
Another great tip–Jane Lee on my Harper team recommended Planoly and this question reminded me to finish signing up for it!
I don’t have a formal marketing plan. So many things have come up organically — like the special Loveboat, Taipei-themed bubble tea drink “Passion Attraction,” created by Teaspoon. I’ve interviewed for print, podcast and TV, and most everyone wanted to wait until closer to launch to release them, so now they’re coming out.
BETH BACON: You have lots of readings scheduled, including a visit to Seattle Jan 16, 2020. What advice do you have for other authors who want to do readings?
ABIGAIL WEN: I planned my launch party with Sabaa Tahir at Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park. All my author friends in the Bay area have done it this way. My publisher organized the EpicReads tour with Adam Silvera and Farah Naz Rishi. David and Nicola Yoon graciously agreed to do a launch with me in LA and my publisher handled the logistics of venue and travel.
Advice for authors is to group your events by location and let people know early that you’ll be in town so you can make the most of each stop. For example, the Stanford LA alumni association reached out to do a panel discussion and screening of the Loveboat: Taiwan documentary. I asked them to schedule it for when I was slated to be in LA for the book tour. I’m headed to the Midwinter Institute in Baltimore and the American Library Association in Philadelphia, so when I was invited to speak by a group in Long Island, I asked to do it then, and since my former law professor at Columbia had offered to host an event when I was next in town, I let him know and he’s organizing a lunch as well.
BETH BACON: What has surprised you about your publishing journey?
ABIGAIL WEN: I’m most surprised by the opportunity to speak with so many people around the country. I really love hearing from the people I’ve been meeting, about what they’re excited about or struggling with, what they resonate with in Loveboat, Taipei or about their own journeys and aspirations in the arts. It’s a privilege I wasn’t expecting at all and I am humbled and grateful.
The other surprising moment was the first time young adults I didn’t know (as opposed to critique partners or agents or editors) read my synopsis and resonated with the themes and characters. Of course I should have expected that comes with the territory, but it was still a surreal moment of understanding that my book really was going out in the big wide world.
BETH BACON: Thanks, Abigail for sharing your journey with us.
About the author Abigail Hing Wen
Abigail was born in West Virginia to a family of immigrants: Her mother is from the Philippines and her father from Indonesia, and her grandparents emigrated to those countries from Fujian and Shandong provinces in China. Abigail grew up in Ohio and graduated from Harvard University and Columbia Law School. She worked in Washington DC for the Senate, as a law clerk for a federal judge. and now in Silicon Valley in venture capital and artificial intelligence. She also earned her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Visit her website at https://www.abigailhingwen.com/
About the interviewer Beth Bacon
Beth Bacon is the author of books for young readers, including I Hate Reading and and The Book No One Wants To Read. Beth has won the Candlewick Award for Picture Book Writing, the Marion Dane Bauer Award for Middle Grade Writing, and is a PSAMA PULSE Award Finalist for marketing. Contact her at BethBaconAuthor.com or @ebooksandkids.