Episode #150: How did you get into writing books? with Henry Lien
Welcome! On today’s episode of Kids Ask Authors, we welcome Henry Lien! Grace and Henry will answer this great kid question, “How did you get into writing books?” Thanks so much for tuning in!
TRANSCRIPT:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books including the middle grade novel "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon," and the picture book, "A Big Mooncake for Little Star." Today I'm here with Henry Lien, the author of the Peasprout Chen, middle Grade Novels. Welcome, Henry.
Henry Lien: Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I'm a huge fan of Grace, and I'm sure that if you are in contact with Grace, you've got great taste, so I'm glad to be meeting with all of you as well.
Grace Lin: Aw, that's awesome. Well, I'm so happy that you are on the podcast today because we have a question just for you, from one of our kids. Would you like to hear it?
Henry Lien: Absolutely.
Grace Lin: Okay. Today's kid question is from Oren, and Oren asks, how did you get into writing books?
Henry Lien: Okay, well, that's a great question. I get to ask that a lot. You cannot see me right now, but I am a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. And I am in a genre of fiction, children's literature, which I have loved for decades, but did not get into as a writer until fairly recently. And so what happened for me was that I was working as an attorney and then as an art dealer, and I loved those jobs, but they were hard jobs. And as my retreat, I would drive home past the library and I would go into the children's section because I needed something that I thought wasn't going to be pressuring me more to think. That turned out not to be the case, but I discovered these books that were being prominently displayed called Harry Potter, and I had heard of them, and I figured if these American kids are ingesting these books in these mass hysterical quantities, they can't be any good. And the immigrant cynical part of me.
But then I picked up the first book and I laughed and I cried, and I continued on with the books. And by the time I got to the third book Prisoner of Azkaban, I was just blown away by this person's talent. Now, JK Rowling is a very complicated person who has done things that I love and done things that I hate, but for the moment, we can separate the book from the person and hold two conflicting thoughts in mind at once. I adored this book, in part because I didn't know how this author had done this. This incredible adventure was happening, overlaid this incredible puzzle. And I won't spoil it for anybody who has not already read Prisoner of Azkaban, but Hermione is very busy in that book and her academic schedule is very, very full. And you keep watching this plot thread happen again and again, and it's like this recurring joke until you think, oh no, she's trying to solve some mystery with these extra studies.
But then by the time you get to the real reason for Hermione's very busy academic schedule, you realize that all of those other reasons were distractions and that the author had laid down this trap for you as a reader. And I was just astonished by the choreography and the planning required to execute this type of puzzle story. And I said, "I don't know how to do this, but I want to do this." And so it was at that point that I decided to become a children's book author. And I knew that I wanted to write about a couple of things.
Let me tell you about my Peasprout Chen books so that you understand the next comment. The Peasprout Chen books are a middle grade fantasy series about a 14-year-old girl and her little brother who leave their homeland to come to a new country to study at a boarding school that teaches a very unusual sport combining figure skating with kung fu.
And for the adults that might be listening, the New York Times described this as "Hermione Granger meets Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets the Ice Capades meets Mean Girls." And that's very accurate on a plot level. And the reason why I wanted to write this particular unusual story was I was interested in a number of things at the time I was coming up with this idea, I got very sucked into figure skating, especially Olympics figure skating. And I loved kung fu movies, especially what we call art house kung fu movies, especially Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And I had also been to boarding school. I didn't just love boarding schools because of Harry Potter. I went to boarding school and boarding school was a very transformative experience for me. I was ... Let me see, what was I? I was a person of color. I was an immigrant. I was gay, I was a scholarship student. I was transferring into the 11th grade.
So you can imagine how hard boarding school was for me, and it was very hard and lonely at first. But then I found my group, my pack, my Ron and Hermione, and then boarding school became the most magical experience of my life, the happiest experience of my life. To be honest, I don't think I will ever be that happy again, but to have it one time in life is more than a lot of people get. So I call boarding school the most traumatic, the most magical, the most traumagic experience of my life.
So I wanted to take figure skating and kung fu and boarding school and just mash them into one convenient place. And so that's how I came up with the idea for this school that teaches kung fu figure skating. But because I was an attorney, I believed in doing my research and I actually took six months of figure skating and kung fu lessons as my homework for writing these books.
Grace Lin: Wow.
Henry Lien: But it was such an unexpected experience. Grace and listeners, I don't know if any of you have tried figure skating or kung fu, but they are so much harder than they look. And I went into both of those training sessions thinking, okay, I'm a pretty fit guy. How hard can this be? Never say, "How hard can this be?" They will be famous last words that you will regret. I was so appallingly bad at both kung fu and figure skating, and the people in my class around me were all almost half of my size, and I could bench press them with one arm, but they were doing things that I couldn't do, by the second class. By the second class of figure skating class, they were skating around me like fish in water. And in figure skating and kung fu class, I was constantly on my butt in every single class and sliding into the perimeter wall of the rink and the wall of the training mat in the kung fu class.
And I didn't know what was happening. And it was creepy, and it was frustrating until I swallowed my pride and stepped back and realized that this invented sport of kung fu figure skating that I was writing about, that I thought would just be fun to use as a mashup of two sports, was actually about balance and flexibility far more than brute strength.
So I was writing this invented sport that rewarded seeming disadvantages, like being smaller. And then I had to step back and realized that I was writing a book about kid power and specifically girl power. And also I was writing about ability in the idea that what we see as being an advantage, being big and strong or a disadvantage, being small and young, those things are all dependent on context. Here were two things where being small and young and flexible, were huge advantages. And those kids could do things so much more easily than a grown man could. So I realized that this book I was writing was about some very real things. So that's a very long answer to a very innocent, but great question.
Grace Lin: Well, that's awesome though. How good are you a figure skating now and kung fu?
Henry Lien: No, that was just an experiment, a failed experiment. I'm horrible. I remained consistently horrible all throughout those six months. And I have not gone back to it, but I got out of it what I needed, which was an understanding of what my book was really about. My book was really about kid power, girl power, and how seeming disadvantage can be an advantage based on context, which means that heroes come in all shapes and sizes.
Grace Lin: Aw, that's awesome. For a second, because the question was how did you get into writing books? I was going to say, oh, so writing books got in you into kung fu and ice skating if that had turned into your next lifelong passion, and you were like, now I'm a professional figure skater.
Henry Lien: Yeah, how many years after the next Olympics? Four years? Who knows? Maybe in four years I'll be changing my answer.
Grace Lin: Maybe we'll see you on the podium. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. That was such a great and thorough answer. I bet you Oren is going to be thrilled. Oren you probably already are listening to this, and I bet you you're thrilled to hear it. And thank you so much, Henry, for answering Oren's question.
Henry Lien: Thank you, Grace. Thank you Oren. And thank you all listeners.
Grace Lin: Bye
Today’s Kid BOOK REVIEW: Today’s book review comes from Mackenzie. Mackenzie is reviewing, Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword by Henry Lien.
The book I am reviewing is Peasprout Chen by Henry Lien. This book is about how Peasprout Chen and her brother go to Pearl Famous Academy to learn The secret art of “li wu” which is the deadly and beautiful art of martial figure skating. There is pressure on both of them to do well since they are the only 2 people from Shin, whereas everyone else is from the city of Pearl. When the school starts getting vandalized Peasprout Chen is blamed for it by friends and foes. Now Peasprout Chen has to find the true vandal to ensure her name is cleared and there is peace between Pearl and shin. I enjoyed this book because it is full of excitement, and adventure. Peasprout must fight to save all of Pearl Famous Academy when it is threatened by an unknown menace. Anyone who likes adventure and mysteries would enjoy this book.
Thank you so much Mackenzie!
More about today’s authors:
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, Seattle. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which he began writing under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk at Clarion West. His short fiction has appeared in publications like Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF, and he is a four-time Nebula/Norton Award finalist. Henry also teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers Program and won the UCLA Extension Department of the Arts Instructor of the Year award. Henry has previously worked as an attorney and fine art dealer. Born in Taiwan, Henry currently lives in Hollywood. Hobbies include writing and performing campy science fiction/fantasy anthems, and losing Nebula/Norton Awards.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
Grace's new picturebook, "Once Upon a Book" is now out! Get an exclusive art print with the purchase of the book at participating independent bookstores. More info:
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