“ Aiya, why did you do that? My own mother is Hainanese and I can’t even speak it!” he pointed out. “Because the cook is Hainanese.” In colonial Malaya, people from Hainan entered the cooking profession in droves. When I mentioned this to a Singaporean friend with whom we had dinner that night, he said, “And why is there Hainanese in your book?” There’s loads of Chinese dialects as well, including one which I don’t speak. Why are there so many characters in this novel and how am I going to make voices for all of them without sounding like a muppet? These are some of the Deep Questions that I clearly didn’t ponder when I leaped at the chance to do a test reading. The actual recording will be done in a studio in California later this spring, and I suspect it’s going to be a challenging, yet memorable undertaking. “Is it going to be abridged?” I said, looking at the pages of dense text and wondering which idiot had written it. We ran through two chapters and the upshot was that I’ll be narrating the audio book for The Ghost Bride. Visiting the recording studio was the culmination of all my NPR fantasies, and the experience of being directed by a real director, with a real audio producer, and a real sound engineer, was both nerve-wracking and so much fun that I couldn’t stop beaming. Later that afternoon, I went with HarperCollins’ charming audio producer to do a test reading for the book. In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to them and was vaguely surprised that I hadn’t been evicted yet. It raised a lot of questions about the exact moment when something as ephemeral as a thought becomes reality. On the other hand, this product was literally a figment of my imagination. On one hand, we were discussing a product that would be launched in August. Sitting around a table with three attractive publishing professionals was slightly surreal. I had the urge to rush up and touch the glass, but luckily we went in to meet some people from publicity and marketing instead. Books by famous authors like Isabel Allende, Elmore Leonard, and Neil Gaiman. My editor met me in the lobby we had exchanged emails, phone calls, and revisions but it was such a treat to finally meet her in person. As we exited the lift, she remarked that the building was very “Mad Men” and that they were due to move offices next year, but I was too busy gaping at the large, movie-poster size book covers that adorned the hallways. It still amazes me to not only have a wonderful agent, but also (unbelievably) a real publisher. So when I arrived in front of the HarperCollins building on a cold and rainy day, I was starstruck and couldn’t resist taking a number of photos, none of which were particularly in focus. It was also a chance to visit my publisher for the first time. Last week, I was lucky enough to escape from my children and go on a brief trip to New York with my husband.
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