The Joys of Binge Reading

Lily Chu is leading the way in a new approach to publishing, launching her bestselling books in audio format first, and then following up with print a few months later, and it’s certainly working for her. Her whip smart, funny romcoms have been top of both Audible and Apple best sellers lists in 2021 and 2022.

Hi there. I’m Jenny Wheeler, your host, and today Toronto based romcom author, Lily talks about her latest book, The Comeback. It introduces readers to the global phenomenon of K-Pop music. And I can tell you the book is certainly a delight. The introduction to K-Pop fascinating

When Ari comes home from a long day at her law firm to find an unfamiliar, gorgeous man camped out in her living room, life as she knows it begins to change, especially when she discovers the man in question is South Korea’s hottest K-Pop star.

Links for Items discussed in the show

Lily’s K-Pop bands list: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IMuxkuRKGKJtzSlosJ6XG?si=07081c9daca34678

BTS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTS

Ateez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateez

Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series: https://www.amazon.com/Guild-Hunter-15-book-series/dp/B07W4K2C9N

Amy Lea Exes and Oh’s: https://www.amyleabooks.com/exes-and-o-s

Roselle Lim: Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54019924

Where to find Lily Chu online

Website: www.lilychuauthor.com

Instagram: @lilychuauthor

This week’s Giveaways -free books and win a library

That’s coming up next, but first to the all important matter of free books, which we have every episode. And as usual today, two book offers. First, the chance to go into a draw to win a library of wine and dine reads, plus an e-reader to go along with them $550 in value.

That’s more than 50 books, plus an E-reader to the lucky winner. Brother Betrayed, Book # 2 in the Of Gold & Blood series, is included

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I am including the full link in case the button doesn’t work – they seem to have become temperamental lately!

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And just a reminder – if you enjoy the show, leave us a recommendation on your favorite podcast site so others will find us too. There’s nothing like a Word of Mouth recommendation!

But now here’s Lily. Hello there, Lily, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Lily Chu: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Introducing Romcom author Lily Chu Lily Chu – ‘hidden

Jenny Wheeler: The Comeback, which is the book we’re particularly talking about today, is your second romcom and it follows closely on the first, which was called The Stand-in, and that was really a tremendous success for a debut novel.

Did you suffer that nerve thing of having a major success for your first book and feeling inadequate about getting grips with the second? How did that go for you?

Lily Chu: I generally feel inadequate, so that wouldn’t be a new feeling. Thank you for calling it success. I’m so happy people are enjoying The

Stand-In. I hope they enjoy The Comeback just as much. But you know, it’s interesting you should say that because I was actually writing a lot of The Comeback as I was editing The Stand-In, so it hadn’t really hit because the way publishing’s a weird world in the way that it does its timing.

By the time The Stand-In came out, I think I was probably well into edits on The Comeback. So I was still in that same mindset.

Jenny Wheeler: Actually, I thought to myself that might have been the case. So you didn’t have that burden of having a first success and, oh heck, how am I going to do it again? And the two books have quite a few similarities in their subject matter, so we’ll get onto that a little bit later.

But in The Comeback, Ariadne or Ari, as she’s called, meets a famous K-Pop, Korean pop star. But he’s incognito. She doesn’t actually understand at the beginning who he is. She just meets this guy who’s her cousin’s friend. And they form a very close friendship before she realizes who he is.

I hope we’re not producing too many spoilers here, but you have to go into it a little bit to get the story. Tell us where the whole nub of the story came from.

Falling in love with a kind of different guy

Lily Chu: Yeah, I don’t think it is a spoiler to I think it’s actually right in the blurb.

The reason that I had to give them some time together is because I wanted the funniness and the drama of the realization. So it’s a totally different experience if she had known who Jihoon was right from the get-go, versus getting to know this guy, falling in love with this guy, and then finding that this guy is actually a very different kind of guy.

So I wanted set that up, but I didn’t want them to get so far down the relationship path that the reveal is whoa, ‘she really should have said something earlier.’ Cuz that to me is not I don’t like books necessarily where relationships are founded on cheating or lies or anything that builds mistrust.

Those aren’t my favorite kinds of books. So I wanted to make sure that they knew each other as people and enjoyed each other as people before she found out who he was.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, and the development of their relationship in the early days is very sweet. It’s like a close friendship. They’re very much circling around one another. You can sense that the interest they have in one another is very deep. But as you say, they don’t actually express any of that at all. And although she does feel a bit betrayed when she discovers who he really is, she’s still got a real opportunity to pull back and not feel that she’s committed to anything under false pretenses, doesn’t she?

Lily Chu: Yes. I don’t wanna get into spoilers, but, I feel the scene where they talk it out, it’s one of my favorite scenes. and now I do wanna talk about it, but I’m not going to. I think when you find out everyone’s role, it becomes much more understandable of what went on.

A dedicated career woman having second thoughts

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, exactly. Now she is a dedicated lawyer and at the beginning you feel really quite sorry for her because she’s totally in the clutches of her father’s ambition on her behalf, and she is just working her butt off to keep her parents happy. Well, particularly her father, happy and meet his expectations.

She hardly has a life of her own at all. Is this a fairly typical pattern in Korean or Chinese or even Asian families? I’m thinking of the Tiger Mother thing, that often this generation feels they have to live up to parent expectations, don’t they?

Lily Chu: It wasn’t like that in my family. And I would hate to put a generalization on families based on, you know, where their parents or grandparents came from. I will say in Ari’s specific family, she herself at the beginning wants to be a lawyer. Like she feels also that those are her dreams.

It’s not that she is completely under her father’s thrall that her only goal is to make him happy. That’s part of it for sure. But she herself is the one who made the choices to go to law school and become a lawyer. And she wants to be the best, like she wants to be the best lawyer she can be also for herself.

And it’s only as she’s learning more about herself that she starts to wonder, hold on, everyone in this field does these kind of hours and has this kind of dedication, but is that really what I want as an individual?

Jenny Wheeler: Yeah, that’s great. And Jhoon is a pop star. Very different. The Korean model is very different from what we might consider the Mick Jagger kind of pop star, isn’t he? Tell us a bit about the K-pop model and how they train up to be this great star.

A passion for the entertainment values of Korean Pop

Lily Chu: Yeah. So, K-Pop or Korean pop music is a genre that’s been around for about 30 years or so. it’s very recognizable. And what really sets it apart is unbelievably incredible stage values. The production values are just extraordinary. Like when you watch a K-Pop performance, it’s mind-blowing the amount of work and effort that goes into it. It’s just truly overwhelming.

There’s a lot of synchronized singing and dancing. and there’s in-house studio production and the K-Pop idols, so where we would say Rock star, the term there is Idol.

They are trained up with their agencies and they’re taught how to sing, how to dance, comport themselves, languages sometimes, like all sorts of things that I think wouldn’t even cross our radar in North America to train a pop star.

I think we come from a much more organic, I guess, mindset when it comes to music, but this is much more of a finding talent and training up that talent, situation.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, the rock music scene in the West has been one which was bedded in revolt against standard values, I suppose, and this is a completely different. In the sense that they are really being trained, almost like opera stars to fulfill an expected role, aren’t they?

Lily Chu: Yeah, I think it’s absolutely fascinating and I also, people who can do that kind of training and stick with it are, – well I’m not that kind of person. I of give up things, when they get hard and that people are so dedicated I think is really awe-inspiring.

And then when you see the results on stage, and that’s not to say that the K-Pop industry is flawless or without its issues Of course it, it has problems.

But when you see the results, it’s just so awe-inspiring.

Lily Chu became a K-Pop fan during the pandemic

Jenny Wheeler: Yeah. Were you a fan of K-Pop before you wrote this book?

Lily Chu: I was, I’ve been into it not very long, actually, probably about three years or so. And I wrote it in part because I love it so much and it’s so fun and it really got me through the pandemic. So I really wanted to share that love with people. But it’s a huge industry. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry.

And I started getting into it, and then I was just so boggled at the knowledge that this thing existed, and I had no idea. I had no idea at all. A K-Pop idol could have passed me on the street before I was into K-Pop. Totally wouldn’t have known. In the same way that like, I’m not super into a lot of sports like a soccer player could pass me on the street.

I wouldn’t know. So I always think it’s interesting that there’s these huge areas of the world that I am so ignorant of and so many people are thrilled with and obsessed by. And when you start to discover that, it’s just a fun, great feeling.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Did you say just then that it got her through the pandemic? Tell us a little bit about that. Did you have it on your headphones when you were writing?

Lily Chu: Oh yeah. All the time. So I have specific music that I do specific writing tasks too. And K-Pop in itself, it’s not a monolith, right? So there’s more ballad-y music, there’s more R and B styles. There’s more rap styles. There’s harder and softer, all like poppy or dancier, whatever you want.

Whatever you’re in the mood for, it’s there. I do not speak Korean. And of course a lot of the lyrics were in Korean, so, for me I don’t get distracted by the lyrics and stuff.

I can just enjoy the beat and the music as I’m writing. But, also because we couldn’t go anywhere during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time with me and my laptop.

So it was great to, watch performances or watch the reality shows. It really helped give a mental break.

A Starter K-Pop list on Lily Chu’s website

Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting, because my anticipation would be that it was all that rather synchronized sort of dance music. So to discover that it’s quite a broad. Series of genres that are followed as well as news to me. Can you name a couple of bands that you really enjoyed? people might like to just have a listen.

Lily Chu: Of course, yeah. In fact, if you go to my website, I have a kind of a starter boy band playlist.

Jenny Wheeler: Oh, great.

Lily Chu: to be a little more into the boy bands than the girl bands. Of course BTS. I think probably everybody’s heard of BTS by this point. they are fantastic. Other bands? There’s Ateez, a band that I recently saw in concert, and 17, I recently saw in concert. too

I think they’re great. there’s Exo and Shiny , there’s just big bands, so many bands,

Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. I haven’t seen it on your website, so we will point to that in the show notes for this episode. That’s great. The standin, this is very much a story about the meeting of normal life and. Fame and what happens when somebody gets that kind of elevated status in a community.

And the standin tackles that, same topic from a slightly different angle in that one, Gracie is lured into acting as a standin for a famous Chinese movie star so that the icon can have some private life and a break from public appearances. And she discovers both the advantages and the pitfalls of fame.

Has this general theme of fame been something that fascinates you?

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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Hidden identity fame books

Lily Chu: Yes. I think, all the books in this series I’ve mentally categorized as hidden identity fame books, which are both things I really enjoy. I do think fame and celebrity and how people react to it, how they, institutionalize it, how we lift people up because they’re famous, is just fascinating.

Like what makes someone famous and what doesn’t, and what makes someone drop from fame or lose fame or gain fame. and what is fame? Fame versus infamy? I just think it’s all very interesting, like how we as society look to that level. And the reason I wrote the books, as, I think you said, like regular person meeting a famous person.

I am not famous. I don’t know what it’s like to be a famous movie star. so I wanted my characters to explore that, as an outsider looking into the fame, rather than the famous person looking out.

Jenny Wheeler: Right. They look at identity in other ways too, because Ari is also realizing that she might be being treated differently because of her ethnicity. She has this horrible moment, really, where she’s challenged by the idea when somebody accuses her almost of being picked as a diversity choice.

That she wouldn’t have got the job unless she had the background that she had. And you get into that rather more in The Comeback than The Stand-In. In The Comeback you seem to dig deeper. Did you feel a little bit more confident about looking into that angle as you continued writing.

Curiosity about the different ways we define identity

Lily Chu: I don’t know if confidence is the word. I think more curious about it and the different ways we define identity and what it means in how we’re perceived. When I was growing up, it wasn’t something you really talked about. I suppose maybe other people did. I don’t know. But for me, it just wasn’t something that people discussed.

And again, I would hate to make a blanket statement. ‘All Canadians didn’t talk about those in the 1980s, whatever.’ But it hasn’t really been until the last few years, I’ve really seen the vocabulary for these discussions change and increase and people’s comfort levels and talking about it change and increase.

I think that could be partly reflected in the books is that I feel able to explore it more and articulate what I’m feeling and ideas that maybe I hadn’t thought of more completely when I was younger.

Jenny Wheeler: What do you think might have contributed to that opening up and that relaxing of some of the taboos?

Lily Chu: I think maybe people are more aware of it. And that could also be the media I consume. But it seems to me that. people are more aware of identity and how it can impact a person’s experiences or reality. And again, I’m not saying that these discussions didn’t happen when I was younger. I’m sure they did, but it wasn’t something I was really involved in.

So maybe part of it is me changing and me being more open to those discussions where I might not have been before. I don’t even know really. Is it society? Is it you? Is it a blend of the two? I don’t really know. Probably both. And it just plays off each other.

Jenny Wheeler: It might have been more of an academic thing years ago, and it’s migrated down more into popular media now perhaps.

The ‘light bulb’ moment when Lily decided she could write

Lily Chu: That’s actually really interesting idea. I think that has a lot to it. And also social media didn’t exist back then. I think even just now that I’m saying that, I think having social media available means that we have more opportunities to talk about it. or to hear people talk about it sometimes even if you don’t want to be part of the conversation, but you’re learning from what other people are thinking.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. How did you get started in writing fiction? Was there a “light bulb” moment, an epiphany when you thought, I really must write a book, or I won’t have met my purpose in life, sort of thing? Was there any moment like that?

Lily Chu: In fact there was. So here in Toronto we have a big book festival. It’s called Word on the Street. and it’s for authors and publishers and just people who love books. and there’s all these different stalls with people walking around, looking at books, buying books, talking about books.

It’s great. and in my twenties I was walking around looking at books and I was thinking, wow, you know, this would be a cool idea, to write this book, this particular book I was thinking. And then honestly, it just hit me. I can write that book, I could write that book. Like I’d always loved reading.

Somehow it had connected with me that people write those books and I could be one of those people. , I think just in my head, writing was a totally different mental category than reading.

And so when I had that realization, I went home and started writing. And it was a terrible book. It’s not very good, it was a bad book. My next book was a bad book. The book after that was like a bad book. like the next 10 were like slightly better books. but each book had a little something that made me think. ‘Oh, you know what?’ hat bit like, I like how I did that little bit or that scene or that bit of dialogue or that word choice.

I think I could try to do better on the next one, and the next one would have like another piece that I liked. So I’d keep trying until hopefully more of the book was bits I liked rather than bits I didn’t like.

Many cyberpunk romances later. . .

Jenny Wheeler: Can you remember what that book was?

Lily Chu: N0. You know what? I remember the book I wrote, but it wasn’t even one book. I was looking at these books and thinking about this book idea.

Jenny Wheeler: Oh.

Lily Chu: Yeah. So the book I wrote, it was cyberpunk sci-fi. and it’s about an assassin. I still really love the concept, but I didn’t know anything about plotting or anything. I just dove it and wrote it. but that character, I still like her. I still think she’s cool.

Jenny Wheeler: What were you reading yourself in those days?

Lily Chu: Cyberpunk sci-fi,

Jenny Wheeler: So why aren’t you writing cyberpunk sci-fi now?

Lily Chu: I actually did do a lot of paranormal writing and I read a lot of sci-fi. I still think it’s an amazing genre. It’s just, I’m not super sciencey unfortunately. And. . I think … I actually, I don’t think… I pretty much know that the book I wrote was really derivative of a book I was reading at the time.

And so I think I fear if I, if I went back and tried another one, it would be, uh, be like, oh, that’s like, that’s like this author, and be like, yeah, it kind of is. But yeah. I don’t know. Maybe I should, maybe I’ll, I will do another one. I do really like the idea.

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Lily Chu – Hilarious Romcoms