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Can you tell us about Danny Chung’s story and where the idea for the book came from?

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Can you tell us about Danny Chung’s story and where the idea for the book came from?

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Well, it all started with a little old woman who had flown from China to Birmingham when she was 92 years old. I thought straight away that she would be an amazing character for a story because she was so unique.

Sometimes I begin a story or a book by thinking about the character, other times I want to explore a theme. With Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths I wanted to look at how a British Chinese boy would deal with his Chinese grandmother not only coming to stay, but how she moves into his bedroom and takes the top bunk. To make matters worse, she is a maths champion, and Danny is not keen on maths.

The book is about friendship, family and finding your own voice. It’s one of the few books with multiple British Chinese characters in it and it’s a humorous tale.

I do use elements I am familiar with from my own experiences or life (I know a lot of women who are a bit like Nai Nai!). I wanted Nai Nai to be larger-than-life character even though she hardly speaks in the book. Danny is a regular kid, and I wanted him to be relatable to any upper primary school pupil who was reading the book. The issue for me with Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths was making it both universal (relatable to anyone), but also specific (to have some British Chinese culture and signifiers in there).

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In Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu, I knew I wanted to write about a young carer who is doing her best to look after her grandad after she notices he’s acting really strange. They both love Strictly Come Dancing, the reality TV show, and she gets some tickets to Blackpool Tower Ballroom, which is the home of ballroom dancing.

The story is essentially a road trip from Glasgow to Blackpool, and I’ve woven in elements of Chinese myth and legends as the grandfather, Wai Gong, tells Lizzie stories of his favourite Chinese deity Guan Yin. She is someone who I have dressed up as when I was a Chinese storyteller. I thought she was the perfect Chinese deity for children to learn about because she is the goddess of compassion and mercy.

I wrote the book during the pandemic when I was watching a lot of TV! Strictly was one of the shows which gave me joy and hope during those dark times. I wanted to bottle up those feelings and put them into a book which was also about grief and loss. I was keen to explore dressing up and how it made you feel different, sometimes bolder and more confident, sometimes kinder, sometimes it makes you feel braver being someone else for a while. The characters in the book meet a host of interesting people along the way who help them get to them where they need to go, such as a Muslim hiker group, a set of bikers and, of course, there are dancers in the book too.

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You’re brilliant at depicting children who experience challenges but who survive and thrive through creativity. What draws you to these characters?

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You’re brilliant at depicting children who experience challenges but who survive and thrive through creativity. What draws you to these characters?

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Thank you for saying so! I loved drawing as a child, and I noticed during the pandemic how one of my children coped with anxiety by drawing and doodling. I do believe the arts can be healing. Music, dancing, writing, drawing, and making things can be like a way of focussing your mind on something else when you are feeling down or stressed.

Drawing for Danny Chung was a way to express himself. He’s also a little rebellious as he’s purposely pushing against the person his parents want him to be, someone good at academic subjects. Drawing is what he likes and it’s what he’s good at. It allows him to work out what he’s feeling about someone, whether that is anger or jealousy, etc. He also uses it as a tool for communication with his best friend Ravi, who helps him write the speech bubbles. They spend time together working on various comic projects and make each other laugh. I think laughter is a good medicine!

With Lizzie, dancing makes her feel good and she has gotten this love of watching Strictly Come Dancing from her grandparents. It’s not only a tv show, but it’s a shorthand way for them to show how much they care about each other. They have set up a ritual of watching Strictly Come Dancing every Saturday night. It’s time for the family to be together and to have a single focus. She wants to be part of the journey that her grandfather and her grandmother had been on, so she learns to do the cha cha cha. The dance itself, makes her physically feel alive but it’s more symbolic than that. It’s connecting her to her family’s past.

Young children love to draw and dance but it seems like those activities get less and less as people get older which is a shame. I would encourage everyone, children and adults alike, to draw for fun, or write a story, or dance in their bedrooms when no-one is watching. I am sure they would feel much better for doing those fun and creative things.

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Both books portray loving and playful relationships between grandchildren and their grandparents. What makes you interested in these intergenerational connections?

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Both books portray loving and playful relationships between grandchildren and their grandparents. What makes you interested in these intergenerational connections?

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I never knew my grandparents growing up as I was adopted. My adopted parents were older parents so when I was in my teens or twenties, they were fairly old by then. My dad was in sheltered flats or care homes, so I had experience of being around old people who played bingo and were funny or cantankerous!

I also watched my kids with their grandparents who would not speak English and noticed how love can still be given and received even with a language barrier. From my experience, people find ways to communicate how they feel or to welcome others without having the same language. Often you can use different methods like pointing or pictures to get by. I used to live in Taipei, and I couldn’t speak Mandarin Chinese so there was a lot of pointing in restaurants or in shops.

Both Danny and Lizzie have grandparents who love them fiercely and the children both want to protect their grandparents, and they want to make their grandparents happy. Well, Danny does take some time to warm up to Nai Nai, but he gets there in the end! He’s very protective of her by the end of the book.

I did discover my Chinese family as an adult: I met my Chinese grandmother in my late twenties, so I have some experience of not being able to communicate fluidly with my close relatives. I really like intergenerational relationships in stories. I find there some similarities between children and old people too – my dad was really a playful old man. He would tease and make jokes. He would also eat a lot of chocolate and sweets as he went further into his old age. Many of his memories were from boyhood which seemed like a happier time for him, even World War Two was raging at the time. I think have been exploring my own relationships with older people in my first two novels.

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How do your books explore your Chinese heritage?

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How do your books explore your Chinese heritage?

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What you see in my two novels around Chinese heritage and culture is ‘stuff’ I’ve learned along the way. I grew up with a white family and so felt very much out of place and not a ‘real’ Chinese person. I’m going to be exploring that theme in my new novel. As a storyteller of Chinese myths and as a writer, I’ve been able to explore my own Chinese heritage and learn about myths and legends, festivals, and customs.

I wanted to draw a parallel between Lizzie’s physical journey to Blackpool and the celebrated Chinese story – The Journey to the West which features the famous Monkey King. It’s one of China’s best known novels, written in the 1500s and inspired by a real monk making the journey to India to bring back Buddhist scriptures. The theme is about overcoming life’s obstacles and recognising that we can best do so with the help of friends but with the kindness also of strangers.

Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths has a lot of Chinese customs or traits in it such as taking your shoes off inside, and I asked people who had grown up in Chinese takeaways about things they remembered. I wanted the book to feel authentic to them, and I wanted those who knew nothing about Chinese families to learn something. I’ll drop little details into my stories that I think Chinese heritage readers might recognise.

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In Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu you seem to treasure the idea of passing stories from one generation to the next. Why is this process important to you?  

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In Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu you seem to treasure the idea of passing stories from one generation to the next. Why is this process important to you?  

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As a diasporic adopted person, I didn’t know any Chinese stories as a child. I think in general if a child is part of a diaspora, then they might not feel as connected to their roots as people living in those countries do. Having stories being passed down to the next generation is a way for people to feel connected to a culture, nation or simply their family – the tales can feel like an anchor of belonging.

I grew up with stories my dad told me, they were of his time as a child in the war when bombs were dropping all over the Midlands. He loved collecting shrapnel and had a keen interest in the various types of planes used by both sides. Even though he was only a child, he seemed to love talking about it. I think oral history is important as it focuses history on people rather than dates and names.

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Lizzie Chu features brilliant details of British landscapes and pop culture. How do you gather ideas for these parts of your books?

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Lizzie Chu features brilliant details of British landscapes and pop culture. How do you gather ideas for these parts of your books?

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I do research before and during the writing of a new novel. Lizzie Chu is half set in Blackpool which is one of the seaside towns on my childhood. My parents would take me there on coaches that would leave at 4am. I add British landscapes and pop culture into my books because I want to show that Britain is diverse, and I put a Comic Con in the book as a homage to East Asian actors who are breaking down barriers in TV and film. I watched a lot of Marvel films during the pandemic too!

I purposely show readers that, even though I am of Chinese heritage and may not look ‘English’, I actually am very English and that’s one reason I included Strictly Come Dancing, which is like a British institution.

Blackpool is such an English place too – it’s working class and iconic. I had asked for help on Twitter during my research for Lizzie Chu as I couldn’t make the trip to Blackpool myself. I wanted to know what Blackpool looks like, smelled like and impressions people had of the place. Two wonderful writers sent me video files and photographs of Blackpool, and one said it smelled like “chips and cigarettes” and I knew I had to put that into the book. I wanted the reader to be able to invoke the place of Blackpool from my words.

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We love your book, Stories From Around the World. How did you go about gathering all those beloved global tales, myths and legends?

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We love your book, Stories From Around the World. How did you go about gathering all those beloved global tales, myths and legends?

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I had a lot of fun writing this collection of myths, legends and fairytales for Scholastic. When you retell these tales, you have to find original texts or sources that are out of copyright. That means they have to be very old! I used both online sources and also books. I knew I wanted to have some stories in there from places you don’t often read about. Moana, the Disney film touched a little upon Maui, the demigod and I wanted to write about him. I read some books about Maui and how stories about him sprung up all over Polynesia and in New Zealand.

I also found a fox spirit tale and realised that similar stories of shapeshifting evil women who turned into foxes were prevalent in China, Korea and Japan. My favourite story in there is the one from Pakistan which originally was about a husband and wife who both refused to shut the front door. I thought it was hilarious. I did take some creative liberties with a lot of the stories and modernised them for today’s readership. Many of the original fairytales like The Little Mermaid were very dark and contain a lot of violence against women. I didn’t want to always have stories of women looking for princes, and sometimes I changed romantic stories into ones of friendship.

Many of those old tales were passed down orally from one generation to another and I’m sure that they would have been changed in each telling.

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What tips would you give to young budding authors?

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What tips would you give to young budding authors?

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Read a lot and just write! If you read, then you can find out how other writers did it. You can read for enjoyment but then go back and see how your favourite authors created characters. What is it about their books that you think works well? What is it that you really like about them? Can you find your own style or way of seeing the world. Writing is basically communicating with someone who isn’t there in person. Words on a page can create a picture in someone else’s mind. Can you choose the right words to do that?

If you want to write a fantasy book, then read fantasy books. If you want to write a detective mystery, read detective mysteries. Many genres have some generic conventions or things that you expect when you read certain types of books. You can learn a lot from other authors, so reading is essential!

Keep a notebook handy and be observant! I’m always listening to how people speak, and I watch how they move in the space they are in or how they interact with others. For me, characters are the key to a good book. If the characters are boring or a bit flat, I lose interest very quickly.

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Can you describe your writing process? Do you try things out, make mistakes and rework your ideas? 

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Can you describe your writing process? Do you try things out, make mistakes and rework your ideas? 

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I do like to challenge myself all the time to see if I can do something. I started off writing books that were quite realistic and I never thought I could write fantasy or action-adventure books. Then I got the opportunity to work on the Tiger Warrior series and I absolutely love it! I get to research Chinese mythical creatures and imagine how they move and if they growl loudly. I get to use my imagination now in ways I never thought possible.

Being a writer can take you to any place in time, to any country, and you can live the life of anyone you want.

I wrote a few historical pieces a few years ago and one of them was about Mary Queen of Scots. I loved pretending I was her and writing from her perspective for a short piece of writing.

I always have some mistakes in my work when I write my drafts. Mistakes are made by humans, and I am a human!

In my first drafts, I don’t think too much about the mechanics. I know the basics of how to put a sentence together, but I don’t want my flow to be interrupted too much by going over spelling and grammar: I can edit that later, and I always get help from my publishers who get a copyeditor and a proofreader to go over my work when I’ve finished. They are wonderful people who spot mistake that I miss.

I redraft my novels a lot of times. This means that I will delete and rewrite pages and pages of my work. I don’t feel too sad about it as I know the book will be better the more I work on it. The more writing you do, the more it becomes second nature.