Women's Fiction Day

Reflections from Celebrating Mother of Red Mountains

Welcome to the many new subscribers since the last newsletter!

June 8 is Women’s Fiction Day! This is a great day to reflect on recent events in celebrating Mother of Red Mountains. The book is women’s historical fiction.

First of all, I wanted to thank Ann and Sarah, Patrick, and Michael for hosting Meeting the Author events, respectively, at Parthenon Books, Books End, and Doyle’s Books in celebration of National AAPI Heritage Month in May. I deeply appreciate the moderators, Georgia, Wei, and Michael, at these events, who made the meetings so much more interesting and engaging. I am grateful to many friends who showed up on the rainy and cold days, and some even brought their families! Your support means a lot to me.

There were many questions at the meetings. Some of them made me reflect further. Some might be interesting to share with my other readers. This newsletter covers some of them.

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What Chinese People’s Lives were like

My story was based on my mom’s early life from 1946 to 1966. It provides some glimpses of people’s lives then. But it does not represent all or even most Chinese people’s lives back then.

I had an email exchange with a Chinese PhD student at my school, Mia. She finished reading the book and shared with me her family story, which is totally different from my mom’s or my own. Yet, her story is just well worth telling.

Very often, it is easy to blame people for having stereotypes, especially concerning different cultures and backgrounds. However, if no one is telling rich stories, where would people learn about other cultures or different upbringings? Aren’t we all responsible for improving such understanding?

This reflection reassured my creative writing goal, which is to enrich Asian American cultural heritage and history and to enhance cultural understanding and acceptance among all people.

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Behind the Scenes - Part 1

I was asked about the process of writing the novel. This is a loaded question, and I can talk about it for hours. Over time, I will share bits and bytes of behind-the-scenes stories.

Here are snapshots of storyboards at two different iterations. Sharing them with you all also gives me a chance to close down the book project and preserve some visuals.

This reminds me of attending a panel at Doyle’s Books on Floor Burns, a box set of five books by M.C. Antil, a Syracuse native and Chicago-based historian and writer. M.C. mentioned his storyboards, which I could only imagine being more complicated given the scope of his historical story about the 1967 Syracuse All-City Basketball Championship, and a lot more.

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Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing

Georgia asked this question because it is a big question for many aspiring authors. There is also hybrid publishing. There are pros and cons to each of them.

In my case, I decided to go with self-publishing from the very beginning without even giving it a try to reach out to the traditional publishing firms or hybrid publishers. This is because I knew what I wanted to write, and I didn’t want anyone to have control over that. I didn’t want to waste time on searching for and convincing agents, then publishers. I’d rather use the time to write and get the books out. I also knew I would write multiple books, which made learning the publishing process worthwhile.

I established my publishing company, Voices Heard Publishing, LLC, in 2022, one year before I published my debut book, Las Crosses. By now, I have published four books and expect two more this year.

That said, I am aware of the misperception that self-published books have lower quality. Since everyone can self-publish, the chance of encountering garbage books is high. But I wanted to demonstrate that my books are of high quality. One way of finding out is to apply for awards.

My initial attempt with Las Crosses received encouraging results: two finalists, one 2nd place, and two 3rd places.

The results for Mother of Red Mountains are heart-warming. As shown in the image, six organizations awarded the book, some with multiple recognitions.

Two of the organizations are worth mentioning.

The 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) states my book stood out among thousands of entries.

The 2025 International Book Awards (IBA) considered mainstream and independent titles. Notable publishers included HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Wiley, Hachette, Rowman & Littlefield, Wipf and Stock, Routledge, and Hay House. Previous winners included Pope Francis, George Saunders, Vanessa Williams, Kitty Kelley, Anne Geddes, Daymond John, Mark Nepo, and many others.