Author Lydia Kang balances two careers: In addition to writing adult and young adult fiction, as well as nonfiction, she’s also a doctor. Lydia never thought of herself as a writer, though she was intrigued by writing, until she began to use it to deal with some of her experiences on the job, which eventually led her to try fiction. Her novels include The Impossible Girl and Opium and Absinthe, and one of the things we talk about today is how her nonfiction work has influenced her fiction. We also talk about writing about pandemics, her move from the East Coast to Nebraska, and how her writing and her medical practice balance each other out.
You can have multiple facets of yourself; that does not negate your ability as a professional in whatever job that you do.
Lydia Kang
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
02:15 Lydia Kang and Nancy Norbeck on fading public memory of significant events.
05:45 Predicting future remembrance of the COVID-19 pandemic.
09:30 Speculating on the future of pandemic-related publishing.
12:05 Pandemics’ universality vs. 9/11’s localized impact.
16:10 Deciding on a blog focus.
18:45 Lydia’s journey into writing, blogging in late 2000s.
22:30 Combining medical expertise with writing.
25:55 Struggling with professional identity in writing and medicine.
30:40 Family support and balancing careers.
33:15 Writing during COVID-19 and cautious hope for the future.
35:50 Challenges of writing across multiple genres.
40:25 Influence of pharmacology and herbal medicine on her work.
44:10 Working part-time as a doctor, writing the rest of the time.
47:30 Managing overlapping book release dates and schedules.
52:05 Conclusion: Encouragement to leave reviews for authors.
Show links
Lydia’s website
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Transcript
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity, where we explore the inner workings of the creative process. I’m your host, Nancy Norbeck. Author Lydia Kang balances two careers in addition to writing adult and young adult fiction, as well as nonfiction. She’s also a doctor. Lydia never thought of herself as a writer, though she was intrigued by writing until she began to use it to deal with some of her experiences on the job, which eventually led her to try fiction. Her novels include the Impossible Girl and Opium in Absinthe, and one of the things we talk about today is how her nonfiction work has influenced her fiction. We also talk about writing about pandemics, her move from the east coast to Nebraska, and how her writing and her medical practice balance each other out. Here’s my conversation with Lydia Kang.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:55]:
Welcome to the podcast, Lydia.
Lydia Kang [00:00:58]:
Thank you for having me. It’s good to be here.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:00]:
So I am fascinated. Usually my first question for people is, how did you get started with your creative thing? But in your case, I feel like it’s a two pronged question because you are both an author and a doctor, and I’m wondering which one came first. How did all of that, how did it happen?
Lydia Kang [00:01:25]:
Well, it was a very convoluted kind of journey. So when I was a kid, I thought about becoming a writer, but I didn’t know how to do any. I didn’t know how it happened, and so I just sort of assumed it was something way too difficult, not for normal people on earth like me to do. And I wasn’t terribly great at writing. This sort of kind of came out, I think, more towards high school and college, where I realized that there were some people who were just very gifted at writing. Like, they could just, like, snap out an essay the night before it was due and get an a, whereas I would have to, like, struggle for days and, like, maybe eek by with an a if I was doing okay. So I just. But I was really good at science, and I was, I loved biology, so it made a lot of sense for me in college to make the decision to go into medical school.
Lydia Kang [00:02:15]:
My dad’s a psychiatrist, so it’s. It was sort of in the family. My brother’s a doctor, too, so I was like, okay, this is what I’m going to do. I get to help people. I love science. It made a lot of sense, and I didn’t think that hard about ever considering writing as being a part of my life in any substantial way. But I kept trying in these little ways. Like, there would be, I would hear about a short story contest and I’d be like, ooh, I kind of want to try that.
Lydia Kang [00:02:41]:
And then I would submit something, and of course, I wouldn’t win. And then once I went through medical school, and I actually, the first thing I published was a scientific article on the sexual development of tadpoles. Okay, there you go. That’s my first technical, like, you know, publication. And then I went to med school in New York, and I was in residency in New York, and this is all at Bellevue Hospital in NYU. So Bellevue ended up showing up in a couple of my books because I have a sort of. It’s very near and dear to my heart. And then once I became an attending physician and I was a doctor in my own right, and I was sort of in charge of myself and all that, this weird opportunity came up where I just.
Lydia Kang [00:03:32]:
I was really struggling taking care of a patient of mine that was. It was very hard for me to take care of him. He was young, and he was dying of cancer, and I saw a lot of myself in him. And it was. I just woke up one night, and I wrote this essay about what it was like to write about him. And at the time, I was reading a lot of medical articles all the time, a lot of journals. And there was this one journal called the Annals of internal Medicine that I frequently read. And I always noticed that there was this one portion of the journal that had, like, a humanities section where if you were a doctor, you could submit something to the humanities section.
Lydia Kang [00:04:10]:
It was generally an essay reflecting on own experience somehow. And I think I, like, wrote it in one night and at two in the morning in a fit of insomnia and sort of, like, creative. I don’t know what. I just submitted it to the journal, and a couple weeks later, I found out it got accepted and it got published. So that sort of lit a little fire under me, and I was like, ooh, I could try to publish some more nonfiction essays on doctoring, that sort of a thing. And I tried a couple more times, and, like, it didn’t pan out. And then I ended up moving to Omaha, and I was like, all right, well, you know, that would be nice and all, but maybe it’s not gonna happen. I ended up having a third child in Omaha.
Lydia Kang [00:04:47]:
I had two in New York. And when I got out here, there was a writing workshop that paired doctors up with local writers and poets. And I’d heard about it, and I was like, well, this sounds great, but it sounds absolutely terrifying. I’m gonna go there, and everybody’s gonna laugh me out of the room. I took a lot of english classes in college, but I wasn’t an english major. I didn’t get an mfA. I thought everybody in there were going to be serious writers who knew a lot about everything. I was going to go in there.
Lydia Kang [00:05:19]:
They’re going to start quizzing me on just all the books that I haven’t read. It wasn’t like that at all. Everybody was really welcoming. The whole idea was just to get people like us, who are already established in these very scientific careers, to just release and get a little creative. And so I had an essay that I was working on, so I worked on that. I started writing some poetry, and then about a year into this, I just kept going to the workshop again and again. Like, every year that it was open, I was like, I’m coming back. And then about a year into it, I was like, I want to write some young adult fiction for fun because I want to.
Lydia Kang [00:06:02]:
And I enjoy these books. And that’s. And I started writing books at that time. That was, like, in 2009, and then in 2010, I got a book deal and an agent. So that’s. And that was control. That was my first book that I ever published, and I have been going pretty much nonstop since then.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:21]:
That’s amazingly quick, too.
Lydia Kang [00:06:24]:
It was very fast just to. Because I also don’t want people to get the idea that it’s that easy and that fast, generally. But, like, when I started writing books, I went in, like, whole hog. I was writing every second of the day that I had spare time. I was writing deep into the night. I wasn’t watching a shred of tv or anything. People would be like, oh, are you watching this show? And I’m like, I don’t even know what that show is. I spent all my time writing.
Lydia Kang [00:06:53]:
I wrote my first novel in a month. It was like an 80,000 word novel in a month. It wasn’t good. It was my first, obviously. Like, it had, it had issues. And then over the course of the next couple months, I wrote my second novel that was historical, also young adult, didn’t find an agent, but it was getting closer. Like, I started to get agents who were, like, talking back and responding to me and saying, hey, this is great. Maybe you could do a revision.
Lydia Kang [00:07:18]:
Maybe you could do that. And then with my third novel, took me a couple of months to write, a couple of months to revise. It took me about six months to actually sign with my agent. And at that point in time, it was like when Hunger Games was really, really hot. My book was science fiction, and people were snapping up science fiction and young adult like left and right. And so within a month, we got a book deal for that. And it was honestly just really good timing for me. So it was sort of the right book at the right time and an editor who just liked my style.
Lydia Kang [00:07:50]:
And it just, it kind of clicked. So I was pretty lucky. Subsequent books have not sold that fast. Some have never sold and some have taken a year. So it’s, you know, again, that was a really unusual situation, and I learned fairly quickly that that was not the way normally.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:09]:
Yeah, it definitely is not. That’s, that’s phenomenal. So you still practice medicine, right? You basically have two jobs.
Lydia Kang [00:08:18]:
Yes. So I still practice medicine at Nebraska Medicine, which is the University of Nebraska Medical center in Omaha. I am an intern medicine physician, so I do primary care medicine. So I’m people’s general practitioner. I’m the one who sort of needles them about getting their vaccines and their mammograms and all that stuff. I work a couple days a week, and the rest of the time I write. So I kind of juggle both. And it has been a very, it’s been a really good combination.
Lydia Kang [00:08:52]:
Honestly, from the beginning, I was really kind of burned out. Even though I was working part time, I was getting really burned out with medicine. And I kept thinking, God, if I could get a book deal, maybe I’ll quit. And I had friends who were physicians who were like, oh, this book sold. You’re going to quit medicine, right. All my colleagues were all suffering from some level of burnout at some point. And so the idea was sort of like, this must be much better than being a doctor. What I found was that actually, it kind of made me feel a lot better, and it really relieved a lot of the stress I had with being a doctor because the two worlds are extremely different.
Lydia Kang [00:09:36]:
The great thing about being a writer is you get to create. You get to be the God of a world. You can kill off whoever you want. You can bring somebody back to life. You can literally create a world that nobody has ever seen. And the characters in them, it’s just amazing. And I love writing. I love writing the first draft, the rough draft is the best part because you just get to lay it all out there.
Lydia Kang [00:10:02]:
But the hard thing about being an author is the publicity part is really hard on me because in my heart, I am an introvert. So being out there and having to perform and having to do talks and stuff like that, it’s very, very draining for me. And on top of that, there’s never any kind of guarantee that your book career is going to continue. You’re always walking towards this cliff, and you just never know if a little rope bridge is suddenly going to appear and bring you to your next horizon or if that rope bridge is never going to be there. And you’re sitting on the edge of this cliff wondering, where do I go from here? Because you’re just sort of wondering, when is my next book deal going to happen? Or is it going to happen? There’s never a guarantee. And you get rejection. Still, no matter where you are in the game, people don’t like what you wrote, what you published. Your editor is not happy with this.
Lydia Kang [00:10:59]:
They want you to change it. And then when that really gets really overwhelming, I have my doctor job where I can make somebody feel so much better. I can possibly save lives. I can, you know, help people gain control of their health when they need it and, you know, help them diagnose this pesky pain that they’re. That’s really bothering them. It’s just really fulfilling. But the doctor side also gets really frustrating because there’s a lot of paperwork, and it can be a big drain. It can be a big emotional and mental drain to constantly care for people, even though it is a privilege and it is an honor.
Lydia Kang [00:11:39]:
It is hard, tiring sometimes. And so, you know, when that’s too much again, I go to my books. And when my book stuff is too hard, I get very grounded in the reality of, like, hey, you have this other job where people really need you and need your help and appreciate your help in a very different way than they do from books. So, weirdly, they have both, I think, kept me from getting burned out from each other.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:03]:
So it’s worked out well, it sounds like it. And it’s very interesting to me because, you know, we can kind of theorize that doing your creative stuff helps to prevent burnout and stuff like that. And that, you know, obviously, sitting down to write a book is not therapy, but it can be really therapeutic. But you’re in a unique position to kind of evaluate that, especially for yourself, but possibly also for. For others. I don’t. I don’t know. Do you ever prescribe to people, you know, go home and.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:31]:
And start singing or write a poem or anything like that? Or have you not seen anything that’s. That clearly connected between the two?
Lydia Kang [00:12:39]:
I would say not so much like, go home and find something to be creative with because it’ll help you deal with stuff, if anything. For me, I think it’s allowed me to better empathize with people and what they’re going through. And so a lot of people talk about this burnout of people who work in the healthcare industry. Is this, like, it’s just this loss of, like, your morality in some ways, like, your empathy just kind of drains away. Like, you know, somebody’s sick and they’re in pain in front of you and you just kind of don’t care. You just want to get them out and so you can go home and not deal with it anymore. And so to lose that focus is really, is a, is a real crisis. I honestly, I think in medicine.
Lydia Kang [00:13:23]:
And so for me, I feel like writing, when you are creating characters, you have to get in them so deeply to understand what they’re going through, to make it really pop up on the page as feeling like it’s, this is a real person. But I think it also enabled, it’s enabled me to have a lot more empathy for people in frustrating situations where I might be like, okay, why can’t they just do x, y, and z to make x, y, and z better, you know? And I understand a little bit better. I think it’s helped with that aspect, I think. So it never really happened that I’ve said, hey, you should go, right? Or you should go create, be creative or something like that. I generally don’t talk. I don’t talk about my books in my practice at all. So if it does pop up, it’s because, you know, a patient of mine will be like, you know, we’ll be, like, walking out of the clinic door and I’m getting them checked out. They’ll be like, by the way, I saw your name on, like, I saw your name on Amazon.
Lydia Kang [00:14:22]:
Like, this thing popped up and it was your name. And then I googled you, and I realized that was my doctor. And, or they’ll be like, oh, my God, I saw you on tv doing this talk or something like that. And it’s so, that’s been really weird because people realize that I have this secret second life that’s actually not so secret anymore. And so from that perspective, it’s been really fun to share with patients that after we’re finished talking about what’s going on with them, a lot of times they’ll be like, so what are you writing? And I’ll be like, okay, I’ll tell you. And it’s fun because they get a little inside look to my life as well. So it’s kind of neat.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:55]:
Yeah, that’s really cool. It gives you a much more human dimension than a lot of us have when we interact with medical folks.
Lydia Kang [00:15:01]:
Yeah, hopefully, hopefully people have lots of human interaction with their doctors. It just, I guess it depends on style and fit and all that kind of stuff. It’s complicated, but, yeah, I used to be really embarrassed sort of talking about it. I was like, ooh, this is not professional. But I’m kind of okay with it now. But I wasn’t before. It’s kind of funny.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:22]:
Was there something that made it better?
Lydia Kang [00:15:27]:
I think validation helped. So when I was writing, but I hadn’t yet gotten anything published and I didn’t have an agent, it felt very much like the sort of side hobby that I was doing. But once I did get a couple things published, even when I got my 1st, 2nd, 3rd book published, I didn’t like people, my colleagues and other, like, they just didn’t acknowledge it. It’s like it didn’t exist. And part of that was because, you know, nobody knew. It’s not like I was immediately a New York Times bestseller or something like that. Still. I’m not or anything, but like, slowly but surely just I I think that my books started to become a little bit more well known and they were selling reasonably well.
Lydia Kang [00:16:13]:
And so I think that validation helped me feel a little bit better, honestly, about what I was doing. But what probably helped the most was not so much like, oh, I’m a successful author. It was early on when I started writing, before I had any of that stuff done, I got like, an agent or a publishing contract, I was blogging. So, like, in the late aughts, like, everybody who wanted to become an author was blogging because everybody was told, you need to have a platform in order to sell a book, so you need to have a decent follower. You need to sort of get into that community. So I was blogging like a lot of people, and I was like, well, I’m gonna blog. I’m gonna blog about, like, learning how to write and being a better creative writer. But I was like, what can I actually add to this huge, like, field of bloggers out there? Because there were so many of us, we were all trying to get an agent.
Lydia Kang [00:17:05]:
We were all writing books and stuff like that. And I was like, what can I do to give back? Because all these people are teaching me all these wonderful things about creative writing. And I was like, do I have any skills that are special that nobody else has in this community that might be useful? And I was literally racking my brain going, like, what makes me different from other people? And I was like, I had no idea. And then I was like, oh, wait a second, I’m a doctor. I was like, could that be helpful? Would that be helpful? And then I was like, I don’t know. Maybe. It might be an interesting way to get ideas. And so I started blogging about some obscure medical problems and how that might inspire people to get ideas for writing and science fiction or just to have a better understanding of diseases so that if they were going to write about it, they could do it accurately.
Lydia Kang [00:17:53]:
And then next thing I know, I started getting all these requests from fellow writers who were like, hey, I have this scene in my book where so and so, like, I need to poison them with a certain something, but it needs to, they still need to be able to, like, run around a couple hours later. So, like, what would be a good poison for that? Like, and so I started getting these questions about, like, pharmacology and what’s it like to actually be in an emergency room? Or what do they do? Like, what happens? What disease would cause this problem to happen? But I need my character to be able to do something else, like, later.
Lydia Kang [00:18:26]:
On in the book.
Lydia Kang [00:18:26]:
So these really complicated questions. And I was like, oh, I can’t actually answer these. And so being able to help people from a medical perspective really brought two sides of my life together in a way that made me feel like they weren’t at odds with each other. Because for the longest time, I felt like writing and not focusing all of my attention on medicine was somehow inappropriate and unprofessional. I don’t know where I got this idea from, but I just, this is what I thought. And then I realized later that that wasn’t the case. And it took me a while to understand that you can have multiple facets of yourself. That does not negate your ability as a professional in whatever job that you do if you are going to do something in the creative realm as well.
Lydia Kang [00:19:11]:
But that was a hard lesson for me to learn. Like, I did nothing. I really struggled with that in the beginning. I just thought people in my department, I thought people that I work with would look at me and be like, you’re a weirdo. I mean, actually, they might still think that. Let me say that. I mean, they might still think I’m a weirdo, but I think they’re a weirdo. I think they’re like, you’re a weirdo, but, like, you are now an acceptable weirdo, because it’s just, it’s just part of who I am, and it’s, it’s okay now.
Lydia Kang [00:19:38]:
So you know, for me, coming from me, I’m like, okay with it, which is, you know, great.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:47]:
They are such different worlds, though. And I’m wondering, you know, especially when you really sat down and weren’t paying attention to tv and pop culture and whatever else you were ignoring. Even though I have to admit, you know, I’ve kind of wondered, like, when do you sleep? Especially since you have three kids, you know? But I. I mean, did your family think, you know, good Lord, what’s going on? Is she okay? Or were they totally like, yeah, absolutely. You should keep up with this writing thing because you seem to be enjoying it and it’s great. Or were they sort of in between?
Lydia Kang [00:20:20]:
They were actually so my immediate family, they were all cool about it. I mean, they were. My kids were pretty young, but they were, like, in school. And so, you know, early on, I think it was like, I mean, I was able to find a lot more time and sleep once all my kids were in school and, like, in, like, in kindergarten and up because then I had, like, this block of time during the daytime when I could actually focus on writing. Before that, it was sort of like I was literally squeezing it into little spots here and there. And then the kids would go to sleep, and I would, like, write for a couple hours and then go to sleep, and I’d be super tired and. But my immediate family, like, my. My husband was just super supportive.
Lydia Kang [00:21:02]:
He was like, yeah, do it. This is fun. Just go for it. Like, never, never once. So I feel really, really lucky. Like, never once was he like, how much longer are you going to do this? Are you sure you’re, like, not, like, wasting your time? Like, never, not once. And I had some family members who were sort of like, are you sure you’re taking care of your kids? Because, how are you doing this? And I’d be like, they’re fine. Everything’s okay.
Lydia Kang [00:21:28]:
My kids are fairly self sufficient kids, and I think part of that has come from me writing all the time, honestly. Sort of like, mom’s busy. Pick yourself a snack. You can do it. You know how to use a microwave? Go for it. You know, so I’m sure they remember several times where I was just sort of like, breakfast is in the fridge. Get it yourself, you know? But, you know, now, gosh, one’s in college, one’s in high school, one’s in middle school, there, you know, quite a bit older. Time is much looser now because, again, I have that whole day as opposed to having, like, a little baby at home.
Lydia Kang [00:22:04]:
So it was really hard, I think, when my children were younger, but now that they’re older, it’s a lot easier.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:11]:
It’s great that you had that support, though. And I also, I’m just guessing here, so you can tell me if I’m wrong, but I have to think that, you know, having a mom who prioritized her creative stuff, set an example for your kids so that they’re much more, you know, likely to say, hey, I want to paint for a while, and that’s important, and then I’ll get back to, you know, whatever it is that is on my plate otherwise, and not have to deal with that feeling like this is this weird thing that I shouldn’t be doing.
Lydia Kang [00:22:44]:
Yeah, they, I think that they actually look at it in a really practical way because they’ve seen a, the reality of the behind the scenes of what my life is like. So they see me, like, in front of the computer all the time when I have to work. And it’s, you know, and there, there have been times where I’m just, like, I’m working 14 hours days because I have got stuff to do. They also are aware, and I’ve had frank conversations with them about how, you know, the income from a creative field, like, writing is not guaranteed, and that there are some years where I make very little, and there’s some years where I’m doing great, and it’s just, you can’t predict how that’s going to happen and that if you need to provide for yourself, you got to really carefully think about how you do things. And so, interestingly, I don’t think any of my kids are sort of going home and, like, wanting to push a creative field as their first job. It’s just, I think that, like, if anything, you would think they’d kind of go for it because they sort of know how it works and they have an insider to sort of guide them along, but no, they haven’t. They’re sort of, one is very art, like, visually art minded and is going to probably pursue that in school, but not necessarily as their first, not necessarily as a career, sort of as a thing on the side, maybe kind of like what I’m going to do eventually, someday. But, yeah, I don’t know.
Lydia Kang [00:24:08]:
Maybe like, the reality of it has actually scared them away from wanting to do it because they sort of look at it. They’re just like, this isn’t glamorous at all. Mom’s just, like, in her pajamas and she hasn’t showered, like, in three days because she’s on deadline and that’s not sexy at all. Like, you know, so who knows? I don’t know. We’ll have to see. They’re so young still. And I did not come to want to write with this intensity until I was 38. So it happened very late in life for me.
Lydia Kang [00:24:43]:
Why? Don’t want to say late in life. It happened well into my first career, I should say.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:48]:
Right?
Lydia Kang [00:24:49]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:50]:
So how do you balance things like deadlines with your medical work?
Lydia Kang [00:24:57]:
So my medical stuff is sort of like a fixed thing. It’s just, it’s there all the time. And I take off time for vacations and that sort of stuff. But I rarely take off, really rarely take off time for writing purposes. Like, I think maybe once I’ve canceled a day of clinic because I had to travel to go somewhere for a writing related talk or something like that. But most of the time I don’t. And so that just sort of stays a static thing and I work around it. Honestly, what usually happens is that I tend to write.
Lydia Kang [00:25:28]:
So, like, for example, this year, next fall, this coming fall, in November of 2021, my next nonfiction book with Nate Peterson is coming out called Patient Zero. So that’s coming out with workmen, and then there’s going to be a lot of probably virtual events after that date. But I also am in contract for a book with Lake Union. So the publishing company that has printed a beautiful poison and the impossible girl and opium and absinthe. So there’s a fourth book that I owe them, and that one is going to be called the half Life of Ruby Fielding, and it will be coming out in the spring of 2022. But they were originally going to come out, like, right next to each other. And so this was one of those things where I had to have a discussion with both of my editors and said, I can’t do both of these at once. I physically can.
Lydia Kang [00:26:21]:
How can we work with our dates here so that it is best for both books and best for me? And so my hair doesn’t all fall out by the time I’m finished this process. And so I had to really work with them and, you know, work with my agent to get that, those dates. Okay. And they were lovely about, you know, accommodating me because they were like, no, this is all, ultimately, this all helps the books, you know, help each other, you know. So that’s kind of the biggest thing as far as, like, deadlines, interrupting my life or interrupting another part of my life. It’s been book deadlines, interrupting other book deadlines because I write multiple genres and they don’t. They’re all with different publishers, and so sometimes they’re coming out. Like, there was one year in 2017 that was absolutely bananas.
Lydia Kang [00:27:14]:
I had a beautiful poison come out in August. I had quackery come out in October, and then I had, I think, the November girl come out of in, like, November. So I had three books come out, all in the span of, like, three or four months. And while I was doing that, I was writing the rough draft for the impossible girl, and I got the flu that year. I got so sick. I got sick, like, twice that year. It was the most intense year probably of my life, followed by this year, which was also maybe the second most intense writing of this year because I was writing patient zero, let this at the breakneck speed while also writing Ruby, and they were really relentless deadlines. And so it was pretty hard.
Lydia Kang [00:28:05]:
Like, I feel like I might be able to gasp for air in about, like, a month from now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:13]:
So, yeah, yeah, just listening to that, I’m tired, so I can only imagine. And how did the pandemic affect the last year?
Lydia Kang [00:28:25]:
It was very surreal. So the book that we are writing for Workman, which is entitled Patient Zero, focuses on some of the origins of outbreaks and pandemics. So we had gotten the idea for this prior to Covid, and it was, like, in, like, it was sort of October, November, December. We were sort of hashing out the details for the book deal and figuring out what kind of, like, you know, table of contents we’re going to have. And then, like, in December of 2019, I remember emailing, like, Nate and my editor John, and I was just like, hey, there’s, like, a little thing brewing in China. That’s a little outbreak. I was like, this might end up in the book. We’ll see.
Lydia Kang [00:29:08]:
It could be a little outbreak that, like, do an outbreak investigation, but I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. And then, like, January hit, and we were just like, oh, my. Wait a second. And then it was like, by March, we were like, you know, in the throes of writing this book, and we were like, what is going on? This is the most, like, meta thing in the world. It’s us writing about pandemics in the middle of a pandemic. And I think there was one period where I was actually writing the chapter on Covid-19 while my husband had Covid isolated in my basement, while I was getting tested for Covid, while I was treating patients for Covid. And I was constantly getting emails and messages from my patients saying, like, I have Covid and, like, oh, my God, I think I might have gotten Covid, and what do I do? And I was just like, barrage.
Lydia Kang [00:29:56]:
It was like, barrage by Covid on, like, every single aspect of my life. It was unbelievable. And then, you know, luckily, my husband is okay, and. But it was just the strangest experience ever. And I, being an introvert, didn’t mind being home all the time. So for a writer, I was like, that’s fine. I’m just gonna get to work. And I got a lot of writing done at home, and I didn’t mind skipping out on, like, a bunch of different social events that I didn’t have to go to.
Lydia Kang [00:30:25]:
I could stay home in my pajamas. So, yeah, I’m one of those introverts that was, like, posting on Facebook, and they’re sort of like, we don’t mind. We’re okay with staying home all the time. It’s totally fine, so. But, yeah, it was a really, really weird and busy and scary year, for sure.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:46]:
Yeah, I’m sure. Sounds like much more even than for most of the rest of us just because you had it from so many angles that. Yeah, we maybe had it for one or two.
Lydia Kang [00:30:57]:
Yeah, this was, like, four, five angles. It was just so strange. Like, on both of my work, like, for my both jobs, they were both inundated with COVID related stuff, so it was. And, yeah, strange. And we’re here. We are still in a pandemic. It’s still happening.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:16]:
So the sun is starting to come up, though. It is. It seems that way, so.
Lydia Kang [00:31:22]:
It is. It is. I know. Here’s hoping more people get vaccinated and. And this thing gets under control. And I really. I do have a lot of hope that is going to get better, but it’s like, cautious hoping.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:39]:
Yeah, I know how you feel to a degree. I don’t have the medical part with it, but, yeah. So I’m curious, since you mentioned writing in multiple genres and having different publishers. I know publishers tend to want somebody to stay in the same genre. Is multiple publishers how you got around that, or is that just some other kind of fluky situation?
Lydia Kang [00:32:03]:
So the situation is that I can’t control what I’m going to, what idea I’m going to fall in love with, and they happen to be all over the place. My first two books, which were control and Catalyst, which were young adult science fiction, and they were sort of. They’re labeled as dystopian science fiction, you know, interestingly, so it came at this big rush where dystopian was like, super hot, but then, like, dystopian bottomed out really fast. And then all of a sudden, people were like, well, we don’t actually want a lot. Then nobody was buying science fiction because they’re like, yeah, we don’t want to get burned on that. It’s kind of died out. People are more into contemporary. And I was sort of like, well, okay, well, I have this idea for an historical book, and I pitched it to my editor, and my editor was like, this is fantastic, but this reads as an adult book.
Lydia Kang [00:32:58]:
It does not read as ya. And so she was like, you know, you have my blessing, but I think you need to pitch this to a different editor because this isn’t ya. And that was a beautiful poison. And the characters were all like, 17 1819. So it technically was sort of on the cusp of being ya. But the situations that the characters were in were very much adult situations like, you know, are they going to, you know, get a. Are they going to have to go to war? Is this one’s working in a factory? This one’s getting married? So they were more sort of adult shifted issues. So a beautiful poison went out and found a home.
Lydia Kang [00:33:36]:
And then following a beautiful poison, I just kept getting these ideas for historical books that I wanted to keep doing, oftentimes, because the research that I was doing for quackery was all history based. And so I was learning all this interesting stuff about the past, about, like, grave robbing and about opioids being, excuse me, opium and opium products being used in the 18 hundreds that just sort of opened these doors for ideas that I ended up writing about. So that’s how all that stuff kind of ended up happening. And then quackery was just this complete weird left turn where. So April Tuhoki is one of the young adult authors that debuted the same year that I did when we first came out in 2013. And we met up a couple times at, like, Comic Con and some other places, and we became friends. And I got to know her husband, Nate Peterson, who’s a librarian and a journalist. And we were just having lunch one day, breakfast one day.
Lydia Kang [00:34:39]:
We were at San Diego Comic Con, and she was like, hey, you guys should, like, you guys should write something sort of like fun and medical, because, like, Lydia has the medical background, and Nate’s a journalist. And, like, and, you know, April has a really interesting, like, set of, she just loves, like, all things gothic and witchy and sort of dark and macabre. And so, you know, we have a lot of these interests in common. And she was like, yeah, you should, like, you should write something. And I was like, yeah, sure, why not? Not selling anything else right now. And I was having a lot of trouble selling books. Like, a beautiful poison was out on the. On submission for a while.
Lydia Kang [00:35:16]:
And. And so Nate emailed me a couple months later. He’s like, I have an idea. We should write a book about quacks, about, like, quack doctors. And I was like, that sounds great. I was like, oh, my God. This is exactly the kind of thing that I find super fascinating. And I.
Lydia Kang [00:35:33]:
Let’s do it. And so we put together proposals, slapped some chapters together, got an idea of what we wanted the book to be like, and Workman picked it up, and they had the exact same vision for us, like, the drawings and the illustrations and the photographs and the layout and all that stuff. And they just knocked it out of the park. And so, yeah, so I ended up becoming an author of three totally different, like, of areas, and they just kind of kept going.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:01]:
So that’s really cool, though, especially since, as you said, the one starts to inform the other, and then you go from there. I just finished reading the impossible girl a couple days ago. So as I was reading it, one of the things that I kept thinking was, I’m pretty sure you had to be a doctor to write this book. Like, if I had set out to write that book, and no matter how much research I had done, I just don’t think there’s any chance that it would have come together the way that it did. Like, I’m thinking of the scene where Cora dressed as Jacob, you know, shows up the med school students because she knows more anatomy than they do. Yeah, stuff like that. It’s like, I can imagine trying to write something like that, but I can also imagine that it just wouldn’t flow that way because it wouldn’t be so intrinsic to something that I’m familiar with. And, you know, when I don’t want to spoil everything, but the moment where she gets the prescription for all of the different meds and, you know, basically fakes her death.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:13]:
It kind of reminded me of how, like, ever since I read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade, I’ve always been so fascinated by the idea that, wow, is there really this thing that can make you look dead long enough to convince everybody, but then you can come back to life? And so it was kind of like, well, she sort of seems to be answering this question for me, but it seems much more elaborate than what Shakespeare did.
Lydia Kang [00:37:33]:
Yeah, I remember. I remember that from Romeo and Juliet, too. And I remember being kind of fascinated that, and I’ve been. I’ve been fascinated by herbal medicine and the way that it’s been used in folk medicine from time out of mind. Like, I went through a phase in college and just after college where I was, like, making tinctures in my apartment and stuff like that. Like, I just thought it was super, super fascinating. But. But, yeah, I mean, I bring a lot of pharmacology into my.
Lydia Kang [00:38:01]:
Into my books because I do, like, you know, it’s part of my job to know that. But I also have a good friend who’s a pharma, who’s, like, a pharmacist. And so I’ll just, like, I’ll be like, hey, Angie, so I’m gonna kill somebody using this such and such. And she’ll be like, yeah, so it’s very helpful. I have friends in the right places sometimes, but. But I also. I just find that such a absolutely fascinating, just using the world around us as ways of poisoning, as ways of medicating. It’s just really, really interesting to me.
Lydia Kang [00:38:33]:
And I think that kind of fascination comes out in my brain because I just can’t not do that. Even in the book that I’m writing now, the half life of Ruby fielding, I still can’t drop the poison aspect of it. It’s in there, too, because it’s just so interesting to me. So, yeah, I’ve had a deep love and appreciation of chemistry and pharmacology and anatomy and pathology and all that stuff. So it shows up in the books. And I never really set out to be like that quirky historical author that always has this weird medical science bent in it. It’s just because it’s what I find sort of interesting. But there does seem to be a common theme, I guess, that I haven’t realized I was doing, but it’s there for sure.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:21]:
Well, it’s working for you, so, you know, I wouldn’t complain.
Lydia Kang [00:39:26]:
It comes in really handy because then I don’t have to ask anybody to do, like, a medical fiction consultation because I can do it myself because, you know, I, you know, I do get ideas from medicine and from stuff that I learn about, and it’s sort of easy. I think that there’s probably people out there, you know, people who were originally lawyers. Like, I think, isn’t John Grisham, like, originally a lawyer? So he writes, like, these sort of law, you know, thrillers, related thrillers. Like, you know, having knowledge in there really helps. I know that there’s her name. But I know there’s a forensic pathologist who does, like, autopsies, and so she writes these, like, autopsy related thrillers and stuff like that. So it’s fun when you have an insider knowledge. And I honestly, everybody out there is an expert in something, and so you can always use that in your writing to sort of put more of that kind of genuine feeling into your plots.
Lydia Kang [00:40:25]:
It’s useful.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:26]:
Yeah, well, and, you know, I’m wondering where the historical interest came from. I mean, you mentioned, you know, writing and finding out about things like grave robbing, and certainly I had no idea that that went on, certainly to the extent that it did. And for that reason, I would have assumed, oh, they’re looking for jewelry or valuable stuff. But no, that’s not the valuable.
Lydia Kang [00:40:48]:
That’s not the valuable item that was being sought after. No. It’s really hard to wrap your head around it until you realize this actually did happen and it was really rampant. No, I think. Well, I was kind of interested in historical stuff before. Like, I. I was, like, a big fan of, like, when I was a kid of, like, little house on the prairie. I was really fascinated by how things were done way back when, and just, like, the simple things of, like, how did people figure out, like, how to make cheese or how to, you know, like, you know, spin wool and all that kind of stuff.
Lydia Kang [00:41:28]:
I just think that’s really neat. And the second book that I ever wrote, which never got sold or anything like that, was historical. It was like 1829 in sort of pioneer America, and it’s probably good that it never sold. It had a lot of problems. But I think I’ve always been sort of interested in how things used to get done and the ways that we used to survive that we would today be like, wow, we take this all for granted, but they had to do everything from scratch by themselves. And so I just find all that stuff really fascinating, like, just going back in time and. And realizing that a lot of the same problems existed back then, that there were some really interesting characters, you know, the ways that people spoke and the stuff that you read in history books that actually had real consequences for people back then. So all of that stuff is just super interesting to me.
Lydia Kang [00:42:26]:
You can’t. I don’t think you can be a writer without being. Having these little, like, mind blow ups where you’re like, oh, my God, I’m so fascinated and obsessed with this, like, thing. And then that’s the thing that gets you really excited about writing about something. And luckily for me, I find a lot of different things. Fascinating. And I get totally obsessed over, and then next thing they know, they show up in a book.
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:49]:
That’s really cool. It really is. So I’m also curious, since you started out on the east coast, and I know you grew up in Maryland, which is not all that far from where I grew up, in south central Pennsylvania, probably, and then went to New York for school and, and then ended up in Nebraska, which is so far away and different and a different kind of midwestern culture and all of that. And I’m just wondering how that has affected your worldview or how you see the writing and anything like that.
Lydia Kang [00:43:23]:
So I, that’s interesting. So I, like, I think of myself as sort of like an east coast girl because I was, I’m really, you know, born and bred in Baltimore and spent 16 years of my life in New York for college, med school, and then when I was, like, a younger attending, so New York left a really huge imprint on me. Working at Bellevue Hospital was just changed my life in a lot of different ways. And I think that’s why I put it in my books a couple of times, because it was just like this sort of homage to, to that middle part of my life. And then, you know, moving to Omaha. We worked, we moved here for work reasons, and we were actually getting really burned out with the whole New York commuting and the rat race there. And we just couldn’t handle it anymore. We were just like, we need to do a fresh start and try something else.
Lydia Kang [00:44:17]:
And honestly, we were a little nervous about coming here, and we didn’t know if it was going to work out. And it turned out that it’s been absolutely lovely. It’s been very freeing. Just not being in that really intense, like, kind of pressure cooker of the tri state area was a good thing for us. It enabled me to go to part time, which enabled me to write. And so I credit moving to Nebraska and also the support of my husband with enabling me to actually find the second career. So it was a huge leap of faith that worked out in spades. Like, it was just a really great thing.
Lydia Kang [00:45:00]:
The whole time that I’ve been in Nebraska and I’ve been writing books, I’ve been writing books about New York, which is really funny. And, you know, my young adult books don’t take, like, one of my young adult books takes place in Isle Royale and Lake Superior, and the other ones are all science fiction. One of them science fiction that takes place, technically in Omaha and the other one, but you don’t recognize the town at all. And then the other one is science fiction, like on a spaceship. So. But all the, all my historical books, all four of them will have been placed in New York City just at various times. And they all share different family members of the same lineage in the books. So they have that kind of loose connection.
Lydia Kang [00:45:41]:
They’re all standalone books, but if you read through them, at some point in time, you’ll start to notice, like, the certain names and parentage and stuff like that will pop up. But interestingly, like, you know, the book that I have in mind for my next one is going to take place in Nebraska because I feel like, I feel like I had to write New York out of my system, but it took four books to do that, which is kind of funny. Four books. And I think actually one failed book that never sold them, one that took place also in New York that just never sold. But yeah, like, Nebraska has had like a huge effect on my, on my life, on my career. It is honestly the reason why I ended up having a third child because I actually had the time and space and, you know, the finance to actually have another, another kid. And so it’s absolutely changed my life in a positive way. And I owe, I owe Nebraska so much, honestly.
Lydia Kang [00:46:35]:
So I love it here. And it’s really funny because I’ve had some friends on the east coast who, like, when we left, they were like, you’ll be back in a year. Like, there’s no way you’re going to make it there. Like, you’re not going to, you’re going to be so unhappy. How could you possibly believe New York City for like, cow country? And we, yeah, we, we’ve never looked back and we’re so happy and we, honestly, much as we love New York, New York, I love you. Like, I can’t actually imagine living there anymore because I have become very much dependent on having this sky. There’s so much sky out here. I don’t know how to explain it, but, like, on the east coast, there’s so many trees and hills and stuff like that.
Lydia Kang [00:47:11]:
When you drive around, you only get this little spot of sky. Like you’re looking through, like a, like your car’s like little moonroof, but out here it’s just like, it’s everywhere and it’s lovely. And I, if I ever have to move out of here, I will be so sad because I love it. That’s fantastic. Here I am now I’m an Omaha girl.
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:31]:
So that’s great, though. It’s great that it works out like that, and I think it’ll be interesting to see what comes of writing something that’s set there for a change.
Lydia Kang [00:47:41]:
Mm hmm. I think so, too. Luckily, I have, and I think it’s going to take place in, like, a more rural area where there’s a lot of farms that I have friends who have farms here, so I have actually. Yeah. Tosca’s husband, farmer. I’m totally going to be, like, all over. I’m going to be like, I got a lot of questions for you. We have to talk.
Lydia Kang [00:48:05]:
And he will have to say yes because Tosca is my good friend, but, yeah. So we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:14]:
Well, speaking of Tosca, Lee, have you guys shared, like, war stories of writing about a pandemic right before or during one?
Lydia Kang [00:48:22]:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it’s like, it’s funny because when the pandemic started, people were like, super into pandemic books, and they’re just like, hey, beautiful poison takes place during the influenza pandemic of 1918. And I’m like, yeah, yep, it does. And they’re like, interesting. There’s so many, like, similarities. And I’m like, yeah, there are. And then I would see people, like, tweeting or, like, you know, putting, like, Tosca’s book up and be like, Tosca’s book is also about a, like, this sort of, like, crazy pandemic that happens. And I’m just like, yeah, it’s a little too real.
Lydia Kang [00:48:55]:
Like, a little too real. And she was also sort of like, this is so weird. And I’m like, yeah, this is really weird. Like, it’s just strange to think we’re living in what feels like a novel sometimes that you just didn’t wish was actually happening but is happening. It’s kind of. It’s strange. But, you know, the interesting thing about, like, will this pandemic be, like, something that I can use for fodder for another book? Like, maybe. Maybe not.
Lydia Kang [00:49:27]:
One thing that I always like to tell people who are, like, young writers and stuff like that is, like, not to shy away from actually having life experiences. Like, don’t live your life in front of your computer, watching Netflix all the time. Like, you gotta go out and do stuff. And even this bad stuff is all fodder for stuff that you could use for writing. Because, you know, if you’re writing the scene where somebody’s going through the most, you know, horrible separation of their life, somebody that they’re about to lose, you can dig deep inside yourself and find those same emotions in a different situation in your own life and mind them for what that feels like in one way or the other. So the positive, the negative, the neutral, the everyday, all that kind of stuff, super helpful, but you have to sort of live your life in order to do that and try not to be, you know, stuck at home. So I think everybody’s going to be doing that once they’re all vaccinated and things are a little safer and we can get out there again. But, yeah.
Lydia Kang [00:50:22]:
Like, as much as I would like to introvert and hermit myself in my house forever and ever, I also know it’s healthy for me to refill the creative well, so to speak, and get back out there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:36]:
Definitely. And I wonder. I heard an interview sometime in the last year where somebody was saying, is everybody going to start writing about the pandemic now? Good lord, I hope not. Cause it’s bad enough living through it. I don’t want to read about it. And I find myself wondering how long it’ll be before anybody. I can’t imagine having to immerse myself back in it enough to write something about it. I’m not even sure that I’d want to read something yet.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:04]:
So how long would it take before anybody is really up for that? Because, I mean, I’m sure that there will be things just like you wrote a book set during the 1918 influenza, though. The weird thing about that is I had never even heard of the spanish flu until Downton Abbey.
Lydia Kang [00:51:25]:
Oh, really?
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:26]:
Never even heard of it. And now it’s just. It seems so strange to me.
Lydia Kang [00:51:32]:
Like, Cora got really sick from it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:34]:
I think Cora was in, like, 1850, though.
Lydia Kang [00:51:37]:
Oh, no, Cora. Okay. No, no, no.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:41]:
Sorry.
Lydia Kang [00:51:42]:
And Downton Abbey?
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:43]:
Downton. Not impossible girl, of course.
Lydia Kang [00:51:44]:
Yeah, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:45]:
You could tell which one my head was in more recently.
Lydia Kang [00:51:48]:
That’s okay.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:49]:
I can’t remember if it was her or if it Sybil, but, yeah, somebody. Somebody.
Lydia Kang [00:51:54]:
Somebody got really sick. I obviously didn’t watch that far into the seasons to see that part, but I remember that happened to them as well. But, yeah. Like, I think the first time I heard about the spanish influenza or the so called spanish influenza was a children’s book that I read, like, probably 20 times. So there was a book called Rascal by Sterling north, which is a children’s book about this boy who lives in Wisconsin, and he actually adopts this, like, baby raccoon. And it’s the story of his life with that raccoon for a year, but during that year, it’s 1918, and his brother Herschel is fighting in France and he gets spanish influenza and he has to get taken in by his aunt or something like that because his dad doesn’t actually know how to take care of them. A little boy and his mother has died many, many years ago. But I remember hearing about the spanish flu the way that he had described it as a child and being like, because he had described like, oh, it was, it was killing people left and right.
Lydia Kang [00:53:01]:
And like there was story about this like old couple in town and like they were going out to get to the water pump to get water because they were so thirsty and one of them died at the pump and one of them died on the way back to the house. Like it was that deadly. So I knew from a very young age, like from at the time I was like eleven or twelve, like I knew about the spanish flu from this one book. And I feel like that’s just like another, another reason why it’s so important for kids to read like all over the place. Like don’t read just contemporary, read like science fiction and read like historical stuff. But like it was a fascinating like, image. And ever since then, I have always remembered the 1918 flu and I always remember that took place during World War one. And so it had stuck in my brain.
Lydia Kang [00:53:45]:
So when it came time for me to write this, it weirdly felt very close to me. I was like, I’m already familiar with this time period. Like I read this whole book that took place in 1918, not realizing back then that I was actually reading about a true history of what life was like at that time. And it informed how I wrote. So like my childhood, the stuff that I read as a kid absolutely changed what I did as an adult writer. So. Yeah, but there’s so many people who’ve never heard about it because they’re just like, it just, they didn’t get to read Rascal or it just hasn’t, it came up because people forget. They just totally forgot about it, you know?
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:27]:
Well, and I think I read something fairly early last year about how. So they kind of just decided not to talk about it. So it, it just, which blows my mind because you would think something killing that many people, how would you, you know, I mean, there’s not a chance people are not going to talk about COVID ten years from now, you know, and that they’re going to forget. There’s just none. And of course, obviously we have everything documented through the roof on the Internet and all of that which they didn’t have, but, but, and I can’t remember if it was somehow associated with the end of the war. And it was just like, we’re done. We’re not talking about this anymore or if it was something else. But it just astonished me that, you know, it’s like this lost period in history, not as lost now, but, you know, for almost 100 years, it’s like nobody even talked about it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:22]:
It’s so strange.
Lydia Kang [00:55:24]:
Well, I think I feel like things also just kind of disappear from, like, the public consciousness so, so quickly now because we are constantly barraged with news, like at like a mile a minute, just like coming and going and, you know, what’s getting the most tweets and hashtags and what we know what’s sort of being put in front of us at the moment. And we forget fairly quickly about, you know, horrific stuff that happens all the time. I mean, 911 is now quite some time ago, right? It is 19, 2019 years ago now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:57]:
Yeah. It’ll be 20 in September.
Lydia Kang [00:55:59]:
Yeah, it’ll be, it’ll be 20 in September. And so, you know, my kids think of it as a sort of thing that happened in the past doesn’t affect them whatsoever. And we’re all like, it’s just, I think for the, like, the five to seven years after we thought about it all the time. Well, like, if you lived in New York, it was like, you know, the wreckage was there and then they were going to build it. So there’s this constant, you know, and I think that’s going to, the same thing’s going to happen with this pandemic year is that every, it’s going to be in everybody’s consciousness. People aren’t going to want to read about pandemic books, but there will be pandemic books and then it’s going to sort of disappear. And then at some point in time, you and I will be like 20 years older and be like, God, remember when we went through that? And then there will be these young people who will be like, yeah, that must have been weird. What was it like?
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:58]:
And, you know, and we’ll feel really.
Lydia Kang [00:57:00]:
Old, and then we’ll feel really, really old. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s probably going to happen, too. But, yeah, I don’t know. That’s just sort of how time and history works, right? Things just sort of march forward and they get trampled under the concerns of every day, right, until they become history. It’s just weird. I think they’re going to be a lot of books that center around experiences during the pandemic, but they’re not going to be so much pandemic y, they’re going to be about specific human interactions that come to a head because what the pandemic does to them.
Lydia Kang [00:57:35]:
I think there will be a bunch of those books out there because there were a bunch of 911 books that kind of did that as well. So. But we’ll see. People might be like, I am not.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:45]:
Reading that, or at least I’m not reading that now. Maybe in a couple of years I might think about reading that, but I’m not reading it now. I’ve just lived through it. That’s plenty. Yeah.
Lydia Kang [00:57:58]:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. And, yeah. So we’ll have to. We’ll have to wait and see. I’m curious to see what happens in the publishing business as far as this, but I get the feeling right now there’s a lot of fatigue, so much pandemic fatigue. I think they’re probably like, we don’t want to publish anything related to the pandemic. We’re just not interested right now.
Lydia Kang [00:58:17]:
Like, just people don’t want to pick it up.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:20]:
You know, everybody needs a break.
Lydia Kang [00:58:22]:
Yeah, everybody needs a break. Exactly. So. So we’ll see how it goes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:25]:
And it’s not even, like, 911, where, yes, it affected the whole national consciousness, but it affected you in a very different way if you were within a stone’s throw of New York than it did if you were in California. This is hit everybody, you know, relatively equally all over the place.
Lydia Kang [00:58:42]:
Exactly. So, like, nobody could sort of escape it. And it’s not like it was this, like, intense three months, and everybody can look back on it, be like, oh, God, that was a crazy summer. It’s still here, and we’re all still like, I wish this would be over. You know? So it’s different. It’s different.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:01]:
It’s already funny to think back and think. And we thought that it would be maybe a month. We’d all be at home.
Lydia Kang [00:59:08]:
I know, I know, I know. There’s a. There was, like, a YouTube lady who was doing these really funny videos where she was actually visiting herself in the past, and they’re just sort of. She was like, I think her name was Julie, and she was sort of like, it was the beginning of the pandemic. And she was like, oh, you don’t even know about the murder hornets yet. Remember the murder hornets? That was, like, such a long time ago. And they’re like, oh, my God. She’s like, what? What are you talking about? And it’s just like, every month, it was just so different from the month before as this whole thing, like, unfolded.
Lydia Kang [00:59:41]:
So kind of.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:42]:
The murder hornets are gone.
Lydia Kang [00:59:44]:
Yeah, I think. I haven’t heard anything about the murder hornets. I think they’ve been sort of, like. Again, like, I think, like, the machine of our daily consciousness has sort of trampled over them in there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:54]:
Who knows? Maybe they managed to get rid of them.
Lydia Kang [00:59:58]:
I know. Next there will be murder rats. We’ll see. Gotta be something bigger.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:03]:
I’m not sure we need to help the universe out. It’s doing a really good job on its own.
Lydia Kang [01:00:07]:
I know. Absolutely. Oh, my.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:13]:
Well, there is one thing that I am terribly curious about before we go, and it’s this. Is there any chance that you’re a doctor who fan?
Lydia Kang [01:00:26]:
I am not, actually. Okay. I am, like, a little doctor who fan in that. Like, I watched some of it, but I never watched, like, all of it. So I’ve watched enough of it that I sort of, like, I appreciate it, but I just. My. You know, the whole, like, the time period where I should have gotten into it and way into it was very early in my writing career where I was watching nothing, and I was like, like, I know this is something. Everybody’s like, you would love this.
Lydia Kang [01:00:53]:
And I’m like, I know I don’t have time. I am just. I’m, like, writing my heart out right here, and I don’t have time for anything. So there’s, like, all the stuff, like, all interesting stuff that happened between, like, 2009 and, like, 2018. Like, I didn’t watch any of that. Like, I just didn’t watch any of those things.
Nancy Norbeck [01:01:16]:
Well, I just wondered, because you have a book called the Impossible Girl that features a character who has two hearts, and I just kept thinking, what are the odds that that’s coincidence?
Lydia Kang [01:01:26]:
But it is absolutely. It’s coincidence. It had a different title. And actually, it was my editor who came up with the idea for the book because it was a quote that came from that first prologue, impossible girl. And she was like, I think we should call it that. And I didn’t actually know it was associated with Doctor who until I was setting up a Google alert. So that if somebody wrote, like, a review of my book, I would, whatever. And so I would get these Google alerts for Doctor who all the time.
Lydia Kang [01:01:54]:
And I’d be like, I have to turn this off because it’s all about Doctor who, and it’s, like, not about my book at all. So that’s how I ended up finding out. And I think very early on, when I wrote the book, somebody wrote doctor who question mark. And I was like, what? I didn’t understand what they’re talking about. And then I was like, oh, oh. But, yeah, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:12]:
That’s why I just wondered. Couldn’t not wonder.
Lydia Kang [01:02:15]:
Nope.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:16]:
Well, that’s fair. But I really enjoyed the impossible girl. It was a lot of fun. And, you know, pretty quickly gets to the point where you don’t want to put it down. So well done.
Lydia Kang [01:02:27]:
Thank you. Thank you. That is high praise indeed. So much.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:32]:
Well, and I feel like, you know, we’ve done this a couple times recently with authors, but it never hurts to say, once again, I if you liked a book, go leave a review, people. Leave a review. Thank your author. They will love you forever. It will help them immensely.
Lydia Kang [01:02:49]:
So, yes, yes, please. And thank you. If you could do that, I would so appreciate it.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:55]:
So. Well, thank you very much. This has been a lot of fun.
Lydia Kang [01:02:58]:
You’re welcome. Thank you so much, too. I had a lot of fun chatting about everything.
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:03]:
That’s this week’s episode. My thanks to Lydia Kang for joining me and to you for listening. Please do leave a review for an author, musician, or podcast you love. It helps us out more than you can know, and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Thanks. You can find show notes, the six creative beliefs that are screwing you up, and [email protected]. i’d also love for you to join the conversation on Instagram. You’ll find me at.
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:32]:
Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDague. If you like Follow Your Curiosity. Please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners. See you next time.