April Newsletter
Book launch! Many cakes! And thoughts on beta readers
Yesterday was a very special day… the birthday of my fifth book child! Everyone wish Cora a happy birthday because she’s now out in the US! You can find her at:
I feel so grateful to be able to share my fifth novel with the world. I’m even more grateful for the positive reviews and kind reception that this book has already gotten leading up to release week. Any book about racism is going to be polarizing, so I was braced for a lot of backlash. But I’m so touched that many people seem to understand the heart of this book and appreciate its message.
I’m also delighted to see my name in the horror section of a bookstore. As many of you know, horror is what made me love reading as a kid. I remember browsing the shelves of the adult horror section at arguably too young of an age. The idea that I could be the next story that another person picks up is always such a privilege to me.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled monthly programming, aka Kylie Waxes Poetic about the Changing Seasons and Gets Existential:
The happiest day in Boston every year is Marathon Monday.
This year, Marathon Monday was April 21st. Most people have the day off of work or school, and half the city shuts down and turns blue and yellow, collectively cheering on the 30k+ runners. The Boston Marathon is considered one of the toughest as it’s unusually hilly, including an infamously steep hill nicknamed Heartbreak Hill at mile 20. Bostonians are normally rude, so this collective showing of support is touching… Or maybe we just derive joy from watching other people suffer for 26 miles.
I have never run a marathon, nor do I think I ever will. Training for a half marathon already seems to eat up a huge portion of my week and I can’t imagine doubling the training load. But this is all a long-winded simile to say that reaching the end of April feels to me like collapsing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
You might think this is melodramatic, but I did actually run across the real Boston Marathon finish line this month…. after running the Boston 5k.
Despite training to run much longer distances, I think 5ks are always going to be hard because you’re meant to run them as fast as you can, and if you have anything left in the tank when you’re done, you didn’t run hard enough. So as cool as I thought it would be to run a race where I got to cross the actual Boston Marathon finish line, all I could feel at the time was the jaws of death closing around me. My internal monologue as soon as I could see the finish was something like:
You are not going to stop this close to the finish line, Kylie.
I know you wanted to push it the last mile but at this point I will settle for just not stopping.
That lady in front of me has to be at least twenty years older than me. How is she so fast??
There are three lines here and then the big archway overhead… WHICH ONE IS THE REAL FINISH LINE???
Oh, everyone around me has stopped running. I guess that means I’m done. Someone give me a donut, fast.
I then blearily stumbled through tables where volunteers handed me snacks, then sat on the sidewalk eating a 4 pack of Hawaiian rolls. This is how I feel both physically and mentally now that I’m at the end of April: sweaty, tired, and in desperate need of carbs.
I spent the first half of the month on double deadline (line edits for JAPANESE GOTHIC and first draft for NEXT UNTITLED YA BOOK). Once those were both turned in, I filled my days with BAT EATER interviews and podcasts, appointments I’d been putting off, half marathon training, and catching up on reading. I may have also accidentally checked out 10 books from the library in a temporary fit of insanity. So, despite not having any official deadlines for most of this month, I still feel like I’ve been gently steamrolled.
It’s a somewhat satisfying feeling (if saying that doesn’t make me sound like a masochist). What I mean is that, as a freelancer, I know it’s much better to be busy than bored because I don’t get paid for being bored. I’m lucky to have editors giving me feedback on my books. I’m lucky to have podcasters sliding into my DM’s asking to interview me. I’m lucky that people want me on their panels. I’m lucky that I have good news to make Canva graphics about. I remember being a debut author and feeling like I was invisible and unproven in this industry, so to have multiple events every week is truly a blessing.
Next up, I’m running the Brooklyn Half Marathon in a couple of weeks. I’m sure my workload will pick up again soon, but I’m hoping to have at least a few days enjoying the sunshine and flowers before retreating to my writing cave again.
It’s either feast or famine for me. That is, I’m always either on double deadline or have nothing on my plate and am scrambling to find work so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time and actively losing money by the second because my self worth is unhealthily tied to my productivity.
As I said earlier in this newsletter, I’ve just turned in line edits for JAPANESE GOTHIC as well as the first draft of my next YA fantasy. My efforts now are focused on a couple things to tide me over until the next deadline:
a short story for a secret project
planning my next adult book
reading as much as I possibly can.
This includes a lot of YA fantasy (I alternate reading YA and adult books each month, and April was a YA month), literary/speculative crossover books for book club, books about Okinawa (for my own personal research) and a lot of Junji Ito comics for fun.
How beta reading / critique partners work
I was lucky enough to have the help of several amazing authors/beta readers who read BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG for me and offered their feedback before it went on submission. Thank you forever to Yume Kitasei, Van Hoang, Karen Jialu Bao, and Chelsea Catherine for making my book so much better!
In honor of them, I’d like to write about what beta readers are, and how they work in publishing.
What are beta readers?
Beta readers are people who read a (usually) complete draft of a novel and provide critical feedback to help you revise it. This work is usually unpaid because of the expectation that you will return the favor for them at some point. I usually ask beta readers to give feedback on books before I try to sell them to editors. Sometimes I have specific concerns about my book that I ask them to address, and other times I just ask for their general impressions of the book and if there’s anything they found boring, confusing, or problematic.
What qualifies someone to be a beta reader?
Ideally, beta readers will also be writers who are familiar with story beats and structures so they can easily articulate why they think something is or isn’t working in your story. It helps if you also like their writing, though some people are incredible at giving feedback even if their writing isn’t your cup of tea.
Where do you find beta readers?
Three of my beta readers have the same literary agent as me, so our agent connected us. One of my beta readers is an author friend I met through Twitter. If you have an online presence, many people in the writing community are happy to beta read because they also want someone to beta read their work!
How do you choose which beta readers to ask for feedback?
I’m at a point where I’m lucky enough to have many people I can ask to beta read my work, so I try to be strategic about who I ask, since I never want to ask too much of any single person. I usually ask Yume, Van, or both to read all of my books, since we’re all good friends and I am very familiar with (and love!) their writing, so I trust their feedback. For this particular book, it was also very helpful that Yume is from NYC, since this book takes place there.
Jialu is another friend whose writing I love, and she also went to college in NYC and could help fact-check the setting for me.
Chelsea is a fellow horror author, whose book I had recently beta-read. It was important to me to have someone who was familiar with the horror genre read this book, as it’s not really a favorite for the other three beta readers.
How many beta readers do you ask to read your book?
I personally think 2-4 is sufficient. It’s enough to get a sense of patterns or common complaints—if more than one person has the same criticism, it’s usually a good idea to address it. But it’s also not so many that I need to wait around ages for feedback or start to get the feeling that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Usually, by the third or fourth beta reader’s feedback, I start to develop pretty strong feelings about what feedback I agree with and what feedback I don’t agree with, and my revision plan starts to solidify in my mind, making me less receptive to further opinions.
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng was reviewed in the New York Times!! It’s rare for this to happen, so this is a huge honor for me.
I’ll be at YallWest! Not as an author, just walking around supporting my author friends and eating snacks! I’ll have some bookplates on me and am happy to give them out or sign anything you have if you see me around!
What I’m Reading:
My favorite book this month was A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee. After I read and loved A Study in Drowning, I’ve been so into dark academia, fashionably late.
What I’m watching:
Severance. Again, I definitely missed the boat on this one. But I finished season 2 and am praying to every being out there that there will be a season 3. Also, the most recent season of Black Mirror.
That’s all for me this month! I hope everyone has a lovely start to their spring, ideally with no bats.
All my best,
Kylie