Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul

The Ripped Bodice bookstore hosted an event panel with three authors, Jennifer Mathieu, Nadia Mikail, and Linda Cheng, with the interviewer Amanda McCrina to talk about their romances that circled the theme of finding love in hopeless times. All three of their books are not just romances but a commentary on the world we all live in.

Linda Cheng wrote Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, an awesome genre blend of sapphic romance, Asian horror, and K-pop. Linda explained that writing it was a cathartic experience that helped her see the light during the dark time of covid. She chose to combine horror and romance because they are two of her favorite genres and both are about deep visceral feelings where one can really get into the core of a character when they are introduced to vulnerability.

Linda set K-pop as the background of this novel because she grew up in Taiwan during the hype and rise of pop. She loved seeing it become a worldwide phenomenon and listened to pop during the pandemic to feel better. She also loves survival shows and said that there is so much stuff underneath the surface of the K-pop industry with so much darkness to be explored, so she thought it was the perfect setting for a horror story.

Nadia Mikail who wrote At the End of the World talked about how her book was a pandemic baby. That she started writing it right before the pandemic because she was studying overseas and really missed her family. Once covid hit, she didn’t know when she would see her family again so she started writing this book where all the scary things flowed into it subconsciously. For example: being estranged from an older sister and the world ending. It is set during an asteroid collision with Earth. She wanted to place it there because she wanted to write an end-of-the-world story because it is during the end of the world when one thinks about what is really important to them. She stated that she knows that survival corrupts some people and that she wanted to dive into what a character would do when it came to thinking about what is important to them and what they are going to keep living for.

In Nadia’s novel, her main driving relationship is between the main character and her sister. The romantic love story was the easiest for her to write but the hardest was between the sisters because she had a sister growing up and knows how complex a relationship can be between siblings.

Jennifer Mathieu who wrote Down Came the Rain said it was dedicated to her friend who wanted her to write a YA about climate change. She went on to tell about how she lived during Hurricane Harvey in Houston where she knew twenty-five people whose houses were flooded. It was very traumatic for her and she wanted to make sense of all of it, so she began writing. During the floods, there was a time when it didn’t look like they were going to go back to the school where she taught and that they were going to have to share space with another high school. That didn’t happen, but it did happen to a different high school in the suburbs. Her book is about finding love when two high schools had to share space and combine during Hurricane Harvey. It dives into climate change because while living in Houston they have had to deal with so many different events involving the climate and things their homes are not set up for. She knows people whose homes have flooded in the span of two years and was there during the Texas Freeze. She feels like Houston is speaking as a character trying to tell people climate change is happening. She loves living there and loves the diversity so this book is her love letter to the city. She hopes that people who don’t have a connection to her part of the world can look at their communities after reading it and that this book can act as a window or a mirror to spark conversation.

This was a very deep interview panel that I am thankful The Ripped Bodice could provide us.