Emiko Jean: Before You Were Anne

Welcome And Narrative Exchange Updates

Hi, I'm Mandy Jackson Beverly, founder of the Narrative Exchange. Featuring the Bookshop Podcast, the Lunch with an Author literary series in Southern California, writing workshops, and the Narrative Exchange Book Club. Here at the Bookshop Podcast, I explore the world of books through conversations with authors, independent bookshop owners, booksellers, and publishing professionals who keep literature alive. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, share it, and leave a review wherever you listen. You're listening to episode 329. Before I get into this week's interview with one of my favorite authors, Emiko Jean, I'd like to share a few things that are happening with the Narrative Exchange. On October 24th, here in OHI, we have a memoir writing class with the wonderful poet and author and memoirist Diana Rabb, PhD. You can find out more about this workshop on the NarrativeExchange.com forward slash events. And I'll make sure to put the link to purchase tickets for this workshop in the show notes. But it's from 9 a.m. till 11am on Saturday, October 24th, and you can meet us there at 8.30 for coffee and baked goods before we start the class. Then in November we have a crazy week. Starting on November 10th, I have Lucy Caldwell and Jan Carson, two fabulous Belfast-born authors. Both Jan and Lucy have been on the show previously, and they are two of my favorite writers. So I hope you can join me at some stage that week in November. On Tuesday, November 10th, from 11:30 till 2 p.m., we will have Entree Nouve, which is the kind of Lunch with an author literary series, but at VIFA Gallery in Torrance. They will both be there, and I'm super excited to introduce them to anyone in Los Angeles or around that area. And on Wednesday, November the 11th, between 2 and 4 p.m., Jan and Lucy and myself will be at the Ohio Valley Women's Club. And that's going to be fun. That's an afternoon tea with an author. So I'm looking forward to sharing that event with you. And then on Thursday, the 12th of November, we will be at the University Club in Santa Barbara. And Jan and Lucy are both going to be giving workshops. Jan's is in the morning. It is a short story workshop. And that's from 9 till 11 at the University Club. And then Lucy will teach her Anatomy of a Story class. So two fabulous writing workshops that morning, followed by the Lunch with an Author Literary Series luncheon at the University Club from 1 pm till 3 p.m. If you'd like to purchase tickets for any of these events, you can go to theniarrativeexchange.com forward slash events. The only tickets that you need to buy away from theniarrativeexchange.com are the tickets for Entre Nou, which is the Lunch with an Author literary series at VIFA Gallery in Torrance. Just go to the FIFA Gallery website and you can click on events and purchase the tickets there. But

Meet Emiko Jean And The New Novel

for now, let's get on with this week's episode with one of my favourite authors, Emmy Cojean. Emmy Cojean is a New York Times best-selling author of adult and young adult fiction. Her books have been published in over 30 languages. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America as a GMA Book Club Pick by Wraith Witherspoon as a young adult book club pick, and in publications such as Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Cosmopolitan, Chondeland, and Bustle. She lives in Washington with her husband and two kids. Hi, Amiko. It's great to have you back here at the Bookshop Podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I loved your latest novel, Before You Are Anne. It's definitely a page turner. It's fabulous. And seeing Detective Chelsea Calhoun return was really fun as

Why Chelsea Calhoun Returns

well. But for anyone who hasn't read The Return of Ellie Black, can you tell us about Chelsea and why you brought her back?

Yes, so uh Chelsea Calhoun is a detective, so she's the through line uh with Ellie Black and uh Before You Are Anne. And so originally we met her in The Return of Ellie Black, uh, which is about a teen who goes who's wit missing, and then she mysteriously returns, but she won't say where she's been or what she's been doing. And it's up to Chelsea to to figure it all out, to unravel what happened to Ellie Black. Um, and at the end of that book, I always knew that Chelsea's story wasn't finished. I mean, you've read it, so you know that she's she has a hopeful ending, but it's not completely closed. She still has some, I would say she has some emotional work to do at the end of at the end of Ellie Black. Um Yeah, I would agree with you there.

Yeah.

And so I always knew that she wasn't, I wasn't done with her yet. Um, and her story wasn't finished. Um, and you know, all that said too, I just find her to be such a compelling character. She's so compulsive in what drives her, and she just can't let go of these women that fall through the cracks and these women that you know society's given up on. And so when we get into Before You're Anne, she's further along in her life. So we skip a couple years ahead, and she's still married, but now she's pregnant, and uh, she's moved to this the city to Seattle with a bigger city where there's this bigger crime that she's about to uncover.

Yeah, and in this book, Chelsea is desperate to find a missing young girl, but she feels a shiver of fear and protectiveness she hasn't felt before, and it's that of an expectant mother. I don't think we're giving away a lot there. Um, this emotion first rises in her on page 79 when she and Montoya break into a hotel room in search of Akiyama. Quote, inside her abdomen quivers, the baby, moving for the first time, slippery as a fish. Her breath catches, the gun wavers, the world narrows to that flutter, that impossible aliveness inside her. Akiyama is close, too close. End quote. Did you always know Chelsea would feel the baby move during a moment of danger?

Yeah,

Crafting Stakes With Pregnancy On Page

so I am a compulsive outliner, and so I had planned it this way. And you know, so much is happening in this scene externally, and I wanted Chelsea to have like this interior moment at the absolute worst time. I think it really amplifies how much she has to lose and like what's at stake. And it also kind of starts this ticking clock for her personally. So she knows that the pregnancy is bearing down upon her. She has this open case, and she only has a certain amount of time to solve it.

There are a couple of things I found about that uh paragraph that were really unique, and that was the sentence structure. You did it in short, sharp sentences, and that kind of reflects that first time that a baby kicks in your in your belly. So I really love that. I thought it was wonderful. Thank you. Now let's talk about your choice to write the book in three voices. What could

Writing Three Voices Without Losing Clarity

each of the three voices reveal that the others couldn't? And did you write each voice in sequence and then play with arranging them in the story sequence or write scene by scene?

Yeah, so I learned this from Ellie Black, uh, because I did try to write kind of straight through scene by scene and switching Ellie Black is multiple point of view. It's more point of views than uh before you or Anne. And I found that getting into the head spaces of each individual character, like you know, Monday and then Tuesday switching to a different headspace on Wednesday was a little bit maddening. So I um I learned this from Ellie Black and I started with what I I thought was the heart of the story, which is kind of what I landed with with Ellie Black eventually when I went into revisions, was you start with the heart of the story. So in Ellie Black, that was Ellie herself. Um and uh and before you were Anne, I started with Rika's. So I drafted her whole point of view straight through in one, in one go. And then I went to Chelsea's and then I went to Naomi. So they were kind of braided that way um between each other because I knew that that Rika's story was the most important. And it was also what I was looking forward the most to write, that I felt like I kind of had this fire under me. Like I could just, I could hear her from the beginning. So I knew um she's kind of what I needed to get out first, exercise first, I suppose I might say. Yeah.

Yeah. While I was reading the book, it felt to me as if you had done it that way, purely because I felt as a reader that I really understood all the motivation behind each woman's story and their the tenderness about each one of them. Uh so yeah, I I I figured that's I wondered if you'd broken your little outline rule. Well, not your outline rule, but you know, uh tried something new.

Yeah, I was just gonna say again, another thing, because you're always learning from, you know, the last book, whatever what to do in the in the in the next book. But I um I kind of realized like I I needed each each woman's point of view to have like her own complete arc. And so when you go back and you read through it, it could read almost as a standalone story.

Yeah, you did it really, really well.

Building Rika And The Farm Backstory

Um, I want to talk about Rika's backstory. When you wrote the scenes on the farm, they felt especially intimate to me. And I was wondering what experiences, research, or family stories helped you bring that setting to life because they felt so real. And I don't know if it's because I've been to Japan and I kind of felt it, it came alive to me as I was reading it, but it felt l like something more.

It's yeah, it's always so interesting. You know, I always think I don't see the connections until after the story is drafted, sometimes to my own life and where those seeds grew from. And then people will point out later on, like, oh, this like sounds like you, or this relates to, you know, your own family history. And for me, I have immigration in my family. So my great-great-grandmother was a picture bride. And so I think that's and she immigrated from Japan from a farm in Japan. So I think that's where that that little nugget came from. Of course, they took it to a more extreme place with the story. But um I for me, it was in my own journey as a you know, a fourth generation Japanese American, it was putting into this, into this book, like um about what it means to go home again and to miss your home and to wonder about it and for that place to be closed off to you. So, you know, Rika, I did a lot of research for her in Japan because I'm not as familiar. So I had a consultant that I was working with, but for Naomi's point of view, kind of that hunger for her to know her mother and where she comes from was came directly from me. And so the farm became that tangible place that she could reach for.

Well, you did it beautifully. It it touched my heart. Another thing that came up for me in the book was the experiences of women who were promised one life in America and found another when they arrived. And

Picture Brides Expectations And Control

quite often the story that happened when they came to this country was not as good as they had hoped for. How did you research those experiences of these women? How did you research the experiences of these women so that you could write about it?

Yeah, I think that any, I think the grass is always greener on the other side. So we can we could almost say that about any country, like, you know, that we're gonna have these really marvelous lives on, you know, somewhere else. And again, I this is something that's inside of me. So I, my great-great-grandmother was a picture bride and she immigrated here. Um, she married a man like through letters, so she hadn't even met him, and so she married him when she got here. Um, and they moved very quickly to a farm and and made a farm in Colorado, and it was not the life that she expected. We have journal entries from her about uh the living conditions and the dust storms and crops dying. She lived in a one-bedroom house with and she had 11 children. Uh and so I, yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible. And um I, you know, and so of course, I mean, why I mirrored that exactly kind of in Rika's story where she came to the United States, you know, and she Rika is a smart woman. She's calculated, she wants a better life. Um, but those expectations, you know, were controlled by someone else. And I think that's kind of what I explore in this book is um whose story we believe and things like that.

Now, was it your great-grandmother that came in the 18 late 1800s? Yes, that sounds about right. Don't pin me down on that date. It's a rough estimate. Not my strong soon. Yeah, I'm just trying to work out because then her children would have had to suffer through the internment camps, right? Correct.

Internment Legacy And Lost Roots

Yes. So my grandmother and grandfather were World War II. So my um grandfather was part of the um 492nd, I believe it was, the all-Japanese American unit that fought in the war. And then um my grandmother was a social worker in one of the internment camps. And so she worked with families that had been interned. Yeah. And so that's kind of also, I think, I after that, my family kind of deliberately turned away from a lot of their Japanese roots. They stopped speaking Japanese in the home because I think they wanted to become and be very American and and this kind of to never happen again. Um and and so much I feel like was lost. And so I think that's me kind of when I reach back to Japan and I'm writing about it. That's kind of me searching for for what had been lost, what has been lost.

Such a wonderful gift that you get to reflect on this through your writing. Yeah.

When Characters Surprise Their Author

Okay, I'm gonna get back to Chelsea again because after writing two books with her as a character, and this one is a main character. Was there anything she did or said or reacted to that surprised you?

Yes. Um, I'm smiling as there's so I mean, she's so she's so far removed from me, I think, in her, in all the ways that she acts, in her temperament, or like how compulsive she is. And um, you know, I I outlined the book. So I knew that this moment was gonna come. It's a moment where Chelsea she decides to enter a house that she sees something in, but she's it's late at night, she's unarmed, she's you know, she hasn't really, she doesn't, I don't think even she has a cell phone with her, she hasn't told anyone where she's going. And um I, you know, I'm writing the she scene, but I'm shaking my head at the same time because it's like I don't want you to do this. Um, but you know, again, it's very this is her character. She takes these risks that uh I I would not.

Oh my goodness. Um

Identity Erasure Name Changes And Memory

now the title, let's talk about the title because it asks us to think about who Anne was before she became the person others knew. When did that idea become the center of the novel for you?

That was always there, and I think it grew from this seed of when I had kids, I and you know, and as they've grown, because they're nine years old now, I've kind of realized that uh they have no idea of my experiences before they came. And isn't that such a kid? I mean, that's what all kids. I remember thinking that when I was little, that my life started, my mom's life started with me. And now, uh, and it kind of gave me, once I had kids, I kind of had this like new universal understanding that like my mom too had a whole other life before me. And I think that's again where we see Naomi, who's um the missing girl in this book, Enrica is her mom who's who's died, who's uh searching for you know who her mom was before she had her. And so that's kind of the whole crux of the novel. Um, and then of course I I stretched it. So you kind of start, I start with a little like nugget of myself, and then you kind of stretch it into you know, into different avenues. And for um Rika, um, who renamed herself Anne when she came to the United States, I should mention that, uh, it's really a story about a erasure too. So she um lost a lot of her identity when she came to the United States, both, you know, through, you know, it's multi-layered, so it's through assimilation, but it's also through, you know, this this crime, you know, because we have it's a thriller. So there's something that happened to her where she felt like she had to erase her identity too.

I'm just thinking back to the return of Ellie Black. Didn't something happen in that book too about memory, that that was a topic of the book? Good question.

I there oh yeah, there were there were name changes in Ellie Black. So um I I don't want to go into no more any spoilers, but there are um yes, that's so real great memory. Because I didn't even, isn't that funny?

Well, you know what? When you were talking about memory, I just thought, hang on a minute, name changes. That was in The Return of Ellie Black. So there you go.

I didn't make that connection. Um so maybe I need to dig into that and see how that is kind of a reflection of of me. But um uh yeah, there are name changes in the books where kind of these girls' I identities are purposely erased by the perpetrators.

So uh yeah, interesting. Yeah, see you've got something to think about now.

YA Rom-Coms Versus Dark Thrillers

Um let's talk about the different uh age groups that you write for because you also write young adult.

Yeah, and those are much lighter. So I write like these kind of rom-coms in the young adult category, uh, which is kind of nice because I can write something really dark and then I can write something really light and fun.

Yeah, and what draws you to writing mysteries and thrillers? What excites you about writing in that genre?

I love how challenging they are. I think that mystery and thriller audiences are like some of the smartest people out there. And um I love how challenging they are, and I love how deep you can go with one because you can write there are, you know, there's kind of these popcorn thrillers that you can write, but I really love digging into the characters and their lives and uh studying what brings them to this point. I I think that's always the most fascinating. It's not necessarily the crime itself, but what led up to it. Uh, and I think that, you know, that's kind of what I impact in before you were in. It's definitely what I impact, you know, in the return of LA Black. I also really love, I think, uh, survival stories, that when people are kind of pressed up against the odds, like how they survive. Uh, and that very much came through in LA Black and in Before You Are Anne, it, you know, comes through with Naomi, our character, uh, who's missing, who's who Chelsea is searching for.

Now, you know, I find that interesting too, because if I think about the survival stories that you're talking about and that you write about, that brings me back to your great-grandmother because hers was somewhat of a survival story too, coming to this new country, right?

Reading Influences And Favorite Thriller Writers

Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about inspiration a bit more because is there a book and author who stand out as inspiring you to write? There's like there's so many.

It's hard. I think most recently I've been reading a lot of um, or I've read all of her books. Charlotte, and I might put her last name, McConaughey McConaughey. She wrote Once There Were Wolves. Yeah, and uh McConaughey, is that right? Charlotte McConaughey. I'm not sure. Um so she wrote Once There Were Were Wolves and Uh Migrations, and she also wrote it was a Reese book club pick, and now I'm Wild Dark Shore. And she has these, they're kind of these eco thrillers, but she has really wonderful dark atmospheric prose um and these kind of like slow unraveling mysteries. Uh so I love her books. I love to read them slowly and like, you know, kind of each sentence like is like a little bit of a malicious morsel. But um, and then I love, I've been reading Riley Sager too for his kind of pacing and plot, and he kind of has these really unhinged twists that you never see coming. Uh, so I really admire him for for kind of these out-of-the-box plots that he comes up with.

I've been reading and listening to uh a lot of Tess Gerritson books lately, and I was lucky enough to uh interview her for the Lunch with an Author series last month. But man, she can write a good medical crime thriller. Oh my goodness. I was listening to her book, The Surgeon, one evening while I was driving back from LA, and when I got home, I thought, I don't want to get out of the car.

She has a she has does she have a background in medicine, doesn't she?

Yes, she's an MD. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I find her to be an incredible writer. Um, now, how many books have you written this year? Because

Deadlines Blank Space And A New Novella

I know you're the last time we spoke, you had quite a few books you had to write by a deadline.

I, you know, I've just finished up a young adult novel that's in production now and it'll come out next year. And I kind of have this nice little gap where um I don't have another project lined up just yet. I mean, I have things that are in development, but it's it's kind of it's strangely wonderful to have a lot of blank space and I find myself, you know, drawn in different directions. I have been working on a little bit of a novella, uh, which is kind of fun. I've never written a novella before, and having to compress a whole plot into 35,000 words has been an interesting experience. And so that's what I've kind of I did over the summer while my kids were, you know, home and running around. So that felt a novella felt doable. But now that they're back in school, I think I'll probably turn towards what my next book is gonna be.

Yeah. I mean, those breaks are really important because it gives our brain time to kind of filter through everything, and that's when the ideas come to us.

Hey, yeah, I mean, it's nice to open yourself up to the universe and and see what comes in.

Yeah, perfectly said.

Final Thoughts And Where To Learn More

Amiko, Emmy, it's been great chatting with you. As always, I love your latest novel, Before You Are Anne, just as much as I loved The Return of Ellie Black. You are a wonderfully talented writer.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me, as always.

You've been listening to my conversation with Amiko Jean about her latest novel, Before You Were Anne. Thank you for joining me on the Bookshop Podcast. This show is written and produced by me, Mandy Jackson Beverly, with music by Brian Beverly. My graphic designer is Alexandra Mooney, and my marketing and social media manager is Sarah Laizama. If you enjoyed the episode, please follow, share, and leave a review wherever you listen. For more information, go to www.thenarrativeexchange.com. Until next time, here's to the books that shape us and the bookshops that bring us together!