Making It Up with Radha Lin Chaddah, author of And the Ancestors Sing

"I wrote the story that I thought I would want to read... I tell people, this was like a love letter to those years that I got to spend in a completely different part of the world... I met so many fascinating people who opened their hearts and told me their stories." — Radha Lin Chaddah 

Born in London, Radha grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US and majored in Biology at the University of Chicago, earned medical and law degrees at the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. She completed Internal Medicine residency training and later practiced at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Radha worked as a primary care physician in Boston, NYC, and Beijing; worked with the China CDC to co-write the book, HIV/AIDS: Beyond the Numbers; and provided mental healthcare to patients as a telemedicine doctor. And the Ancestors Sing is her debut novel. 

Among other things, Radha and Carter discuss having an international worldview growing up, how Radha interviewed Chinese sex-workers from the 1980s as research for her book with the China CDC, and the struggles of getting her book published during COVID. At the end of their conversation, they make up a gripping story using a line from Mailan Doquang’s Ceylon Sapphires. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Friends, hello, this is Carter and welcome to this episode of Making It Up, uh, my podcast where authors come on and we just talk. Um, usually, so it's it's interesting because I only record on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I record um, but I only record actually once a week. So I my calendar is open to be booked on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but once say a Tuesday is taken up, I don't record on the Thursdays. So um as a result of that, I um I've been fortunate enough where I get booked out pretty far out. Six or seven months out is usually when I'm booking, because I'm recording only once a week. So then comes the recording day, and then I go to my calendar and I'm like, who am I talking to today? Because I haven't considered this conversation since I booked it six or seven months ago. So to me, it's it's it's it's kind of like how it is to you, the listener. Like, I kind of don't know what I'm getting into because I I hadn't been thinking about it. So I I pull them up and I research them and and um you know, I don't prepare any questions, but I make sure I know um kind of who I'm talking to. And and so to me, that's great because I feel like I'm at a party where I just met somebody for the first time and they say a few things. I'm like, oh my God, you're fascinating. I want to find out more about you. And today's episode is definitely a great example of somebody with a fascinating history that you know I didn't know much about until I met her. Um, and I it was one of those things where had were we at a cocktail party, I would have been like, all right, come sit over at this table because I want to find out a lot about you because she is very, very interesting. Um, and before we get to her, I am going to shill for my new book. Um, so my new book is When They Find Me, and it comes out on November 10th from Poison Pen Press, um, the publisher I've been with, I think, for about seven or eight books now. Um, and I am so crazy excited for this book. It might be kind of the most intense, paranoia-filled uh book that I've ever written. In a nutshell, it is a home invasion gone very wrong. The whole take book takes place over the course of five hours in a blizzard two days before Christmas in this home in a tiny mountain town in Colorado. Uh, people have invaded this woman's home and they've gotten the wrong house. So the question becomes who is she? Whose house have they invaded? And what are they facing when they invade this wrong person's house? And what is she hiding from? So it's called When They Find Me. Oh my goodness. If you love snow, if you love blizzards, if you love tension, you love paranoia, um, perhaps a little bit of violence, um, I think you're gonna like this one. And it's the early reviews have been very favorable, fortunately. Um, and everyone, it's it's the biggest twist in a book that I've ever written. And this twist occurred to me about 50% in because for listeners of mine, you know, I don't outline. Um, so I had no idea. And all of a sudden, I just had this random thought when I was actually thinking about the structure of the book and the structure of the story. It caused me to have this thought, which then caused me to have this idea about this twist that I think probably was planted in my subconscious all along. Um, but I'm so excited for people to experience this book. So check it out at CarterWilson.com. You can pre-order it. Pre-orders are very, very important because all those pre-orders go towards um your first week sales, and those first week sales go towards, you know, hoping that you're going to make some kind of bestseller list. So um, if you're thinking about it or if you're interested in that book, I highly encourage you to pre-order it. And it can be from the bookseller of your choice. All those links are on my website. Um, so anyway, that is my plug for my book, When They Find Me. Um, all right, today's guest. So I already kind of um teased her a little bit, uh, but today's guest is Rhada Lynchada. Um, so Radda, we kind of go back and forth in the conversation about um her history. Um, but I want to kind of just read a little bit of her bio so you kind of have a sense of her um of her timeline. So, born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian-Chinese mother, Rhada grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US. She majored in biology at the University of Chicago, earned medical and law degrees at the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. She completed internal medicine residency training and later practice at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Um, so that is, you know, so you're reading, you're like, how does this person have any time to write at all? And so we will we go into that in detail in the podcast about you know her relationship with her husband and how they both have wanderlust and they've traveled and lived around the world. Um, and her work and her time um in China um got her to the point where she co-wrote a nonfiction book with the Chinese, uh, the China CDC titled HIV AIDS Beyond the Numbers. Um and but through this experience of living in China um and writing and co-writing that book with China's uh CDC, she had an idea for a story. And that what that did was that culminated in her um debut novel titled And the Ancestor Sing, which is available now, came out in February 2026. Um and she was fascinating because this was just something that she wanted to do. But the we we we discussed this towards the end. The act of writing wasn't necessarily cathartic, wasn't necessarily the first step in a long writing career. It was just a story that she felt that her time in China almost caused her to write. Like she almost owed it to that life experience to write this book. But it's not like she's sitting there now saying, I can't wait to write the next thing. She's like, This book served its purpose for what it needed to do in my life, which is a really beautiful thing because we did talk about being able to let go of your writing, being able to not attach yourself to the outcome of it. Um, so even hearing about her, you know, querying this book and her selling this book, um, she approached it with a very gentle and relaxed attitude, which I think sometimes in the world of writing, the less you try to hold on to something, the less you try to control its outcome, the greater the chances of success. Um, when you're trying so hard and you're so singularly focused on something getting sold, and you're not allowing yourself to let it go a little bit and start thinking about the next story. Um, you know, every rejection then becomes that much more painful. So she approached this with a very relaxed attitude because her expectations, she didn't put such high expectations on herself for it. And it became a very successful release. So it's fascinating to hear because it wasn't the conversation that I typically have with many of my guests. Um, so anyway, lots of good wisdom in here. She's a fascinating person. This is my conversation with Rada Lin Chada. So where are you in a hotel? Where are you?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yes, okay. So I am in um I'm at SFO at San Francisco Airport at the Grand Hyatt. Um, my husband just started a job out here in San Francisco. We're based in Philly.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, yeah. I saw on your website Go Birds. So my brother-in-law is yeah, I mean he's 74 and he he could tell you who played in the 50s. He could tell you everything about the Phil about the Eagles.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, well, Eagles fans are they're in a category unto themselves.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

They're a little insane.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

But he just my husband just took a job in San Francisco, so we are going to be going back and forth. So we are here and we are just kind of yeah, we just yeah. That's it's gonna be the bicycle.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Coast to coast, yeah, yeah. That's that's a haul. Well, it's it's it's interesting, just obviously looking at your history and your bio, you've I don't know if there's a country you haven't lived in. But just like everywhere. You grew up in Kenya, Kenya, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

I was born in the UK, lived a little while in Kenya, like it when I was a little little girl, um, ended up back in the UK, US, Taiwan, China, um, and now back in the US. And I think we're very amenable to I I married a great guy who um like me has clearly has wonder lust, and we both are pretty up to you know trying out new new geographic spots and spaces, so it doesn't scare us too much. I have two daughters um who are uh just as as people have you know the the term launch, like have you successfully launched? I don't I don't know that I like that phrase, but they are just freshly graduated from college, one is one year out, okay, the other one just two or three weeks out, and they're doing their own thing in New York and Boston, and uh that's a lot of fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

It's it's so important to, you know, and I I speak from a very small worldview, but I traveled, you know, a fair amount as a kid, and then in college just lived with a lot of international students, yeah, and just having that exposure for kids, any kind of international worldview is just so it's it's you can't even estimate how the dividends that it pays for their intellectual, you know, flexibility, I think, as they uh and understanding as they get older.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

I completely agree. I mean, you know, when my when we moved to Taiwan, uh well, I was practicing medicine in New York City. I had my own internal medicine practice right in the heart of Manhattan, 57th on the west side. And my husband came home and he said, What do you think about going to Taiwan um for like 16 months? And I my practice was just up and going. And I had a at that time a four-year-old and a three-year-old. And I said, and we had just, you know, kind of really settled into living in Manhattan, um, which is a feat unto itself. And I couldn't believe he was then saying to me, How about we go away for about a year and a half? And then I thought about my parents and I thought about, you know, stories of migration. I thought about what it must have taken my parents to immigrate, um, you know, to different parts of the world from where they originated. And I thought, well, you know, this is it, why not? And so we left thinking it was going to be, you know, a 16 months, and we came back nine plus years later.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Wow. Well, now, you know, on the surface of that story, I'd be like, that's a pretty selfish dude. But I so I don't know if it was a job offer or whatever, but even if it was just like, let's let's shake up our lives, there's definitely something to be said about that of like let's because that's scary, right? Let's do something that's scary and unknown. I mean, I know you had had some connection, obviously, but yeah, I don't know, language barriers if those were an issue, but no language.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

We did not speak a word of Mandarin. None of us speak.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

That's really scary.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

And um, you know, I think you know, my husband is always he lives by, you know, he has this constant, you know, kind of philosophy, which is, you know, it's your responsibility to make yourself happy. Like, you know, we all we all want to help each other, of course, but he's like ultimately, you know, we get to decide what makes us happy and try to like move towards that. And, you know, to the if if you are in the privileged position to be able to be like, this is not making me happy, I want to try something else, then he feels it's almost like you're it's on you to to do that. And so, you know, he kind of said to me, Listen, you know, when will the girls have an experience like this again? This is such an opportunity. It was for his job. And and he said, and if we don't like it, we're just coming right back, you know, we're coming back. And um, you know, I said, Well, what if we don't like it? We don't like it, and we know that in the first like 60 days, you know, and you've agreed to go out there for a year and a half. He goes, Well, you know, the worst thing is I say, Oh, I'm coming back, and then my job is like, Okay, well, you're fired. And he's like, you know, worse things could happen.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And I thought Yeah, you find something else. Yeah, that's a very like um, you know, it's a comma, almost a very young-in kind of philosophy. This idea, because you know, looking at your bio, you're obviously very accomplished, you know, and then you're you're you like to your point, you open up this practice that's I I think looking at your bio, I guess I would say you're the type of person who probably has this very strong vision about where your path goes forward, because you've you've you had the schooling that puts you on different tracks, that you see the outcome of that. And so to deviate from that, not whimsically, but certainly massively, and to do something where maybe I can't get a medical practice going there, maybe I'm doing totally different things. The there's a freedom associated with that that I would venture 99% of the population wouldn't even touch because we're like because we all gravitate to what's comfortable, even if what we know isn't maybe the the best thing for us.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Right. You know, I think that's a great point. And so, you know, when I was a kid, when we immigrated to this country, I was nine. When my my dad is Indian, was Indian, he passed away, um, and grew up in Kenya. My mom is Chinese, grew up in Malaysia. They met in the UK, which is where I was born, and then they came to the US when I was nine. And I tell this story all the time. You know, my dad, every two weeks, Carter, without fail, at the dinner table, would ask me what is your plan? Every two weeks, what is your plan? He's like, We're immigrants to this country, you have to have a plan. I was nine years old, I had no plan. I mean, my plan, you know, was you know, chores and then fun.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Like, get through this conversation. This is my plan, Dad.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, getting out to play, play Foursquare with the kids on the block. I mean, you know, or tetherball or whatever it was back in the end. And um, so I just remember that. And I remember then being 12 and loving my history class in English, and he coming up my English class, I'm sorry, in high school. And he I came home and I said to him at 12, I said, Dad, I have a plan. And he said, Great, I've been waiting. And I said, Well, I'm gonna be a historical fiction writer. And he did not miss a beat. He said, No. He said, He said, That's not let's talk about plan B. And he's like, I realize now I've been waiting for you to give me a plan. He's like, I have to give you the plan. And so, you know, I think from a very young age, I had this idea of making plans, but then um, you know, things don't ever go the way that you think that they're going to go. You know, his plan for me was either medical school or law school. I mean, I think I kind of confounded him and ended up doing both because of my own personal interests. Um, and I wish I could say that that it was really, really well thought out. Everything I thought I was gonna do, I didn't end up doing any of those things. And, you know, decades later, I find myself in China and I in this very interesting situation where I'm in China, I'm practicing medicine, something I could never have predicted was going to happen. I end up working with the China CDC, also something that I could not have ever envisioned. Um, and a lot of people would have been shocked. The China CDC has invited you to write a book with them. Yes. And, you know, all of that was a setup. Then one day for me to, as I was leaving China after being there for so long, and I kind of thought to myself, well, why did I have all of these experiences? You know, we came here for a year and a half. I ended up being abroad for nine years, I ended up practicing here, I learned Mandarin, I worked with the China CDC, and all of that ended up going into this book. And by the way, after I told my dad I wanted to be his historical fiction writer, and he said, No, it's not like I pined for that career. I just thought, oh, okay, my dad knows my dad knows back. You know, it wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't like, you know, chomping at the bit to write a book and the whole time kind of being like, oh, woe is me. I'm in medical school. I mean, no, not at all. I just kind of was like, oh, okay, I guess that's not the path. And then here I am decades later, and I have all of this amazing material for a uh an historical fiction book.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

I mean, that's the beauty of the journey of life, right? Because it's so unpredictable if you allow yourself to be immersed in that kind of chaos. And it but I totally get your dad's point, right? And you know, I think this is evidenced with a lot of people who emigrate from one country to another, that's usually attached to a story of like, we had to really work hard to create this life. Now don't screw it up. You know, so it's like you saying I want to write. I mean, even a well-established, comfortable family would be like, That's you're insane.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah, no, my father was like, uh, how about you write when you're in your 80s? Right. That's what he said to me. He said, like, he said, let's be realistic here about what this whole, you know, how this whole thing works. Um, and you know, I understand. I never held it against him. I never thought that was like bad advice. I just was like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

So all that experience to go into the book. Now, are we talking because you you did co-write the book with the C the Chinese CDC, the H I V A's Beyond the Numbers? Um so I mean, so you're writing this book, which is obviously very different than writing fiction. And I can only assume it was really difficult, not only heavy subject matter, but just that kind of you know, scientific uh medical book is yes, completely different, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

So a lot of research. The China CDC book was a research-packed book, and it was a public health book. It was really written to help other countries around the world, other public health agencies to kind of learn about how China had experienced the HIV AIDS epidemic and what they had done from a public health standpoint to tackle the epidemic. So, how does that lead to a fiction book for me personally? Well, one of the things that I had exposure to in writing that book was amazing primary research. And one of the um gifts I really considered a gift is I was allowed access to interviews that have been conducted with sex workers in the 1980s in China. Oh, health officials. They followed about 57 um female sex workers for five years.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

And if you had asked anybody in the 80s in China, what are you doing about you know the sex work industry and the HIV AIDS epidemic, they would have said we don't have sex workers.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Right, right, right. There is and there is no HIV in this country, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

You know, we don't have sex workers because it's illegal and immoral. Right. And but really, of course, you know, public health workers were doing what public health workers needed to do. And so here I am now in the 2000s, and I'm getting access to these transcripts. And there was so much fascinating public health information in those transcripts. But, Carter, what was much more interesting, and I know you know this because you're a writer, you're a storyteller, and you love having conversations with people, you know, over five years, the the women that were followed and were interviewed, they ended up in deep conversations with these public health workers who kept coming back, you know, you know, every several months to kind of ask them what was going on and how life was going. And so, sure, there was public health data in there, you know, about partners, about, you know, going to see the doctor, about screenings, all of that kind of stuff. But it was all the interstitial stuff that was fascinating to me. It was all the it was all the hopes, the dreams, right, all the because you know, most of the times the the transcript would start, the interview would start with like, how are you? I mean, you don't jump into, so tell me about your last visit to the doctor. I mean, they would get there. Right. But of course, it was all the how are you? What have you been doing? What have you been up to? And in that was were these amazing stories, these amazing, you know, kind of human journals.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Right. It's all because you think about their position as not only a marginalized community, but an illegal community. Yes. And and in order to, I mean, I can't even imagine the steps to take to get the trust to talk to a public health worker. Yes, maybe they're not law enforcement, but they're public. They're they work for the government. But once you get over that hump, it's like somebody's interested in me.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Somebody's seeing me. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody's listening to me. Yeah. And so, you know, in there, you know, hopes, dreams, you know, ideas of what life might look like after that that part of a woman's life, you know, things that I think we often don't think about when we think about, you know, like sex workers or any marginalized group. We kind of we kind of, you know, identify them in their marginal, in their marginalized state. We don't think of them as whole people with all kinds of ideas and thoughts and dreams and possibility, ideas of possibility.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

So you have this rich material, you have this deeply rooted desire to be a writer who that comes from wherever that comes from. We have never been able to identify that um with any of the people I talk to. It's just this it's like a strand of DNA that you're born with, right? And somehow it's going to evidence itself at some point. Point in your life. Um, and then you you have this idea for and and the ancestors thing, like, let's but that's there's a huge chasm there, right? Like because everyone we talk to, when you say you're a writer, they're like, Oh, I've always wanted to write, oh, I have this great idea, and then right in front of them exists this gorge of like, how do I get over that? How do I actually start writing? Because I don't know what I'm doing. How did you kind of broach that?

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Okay, I love that question. So for me, and I I love this question because I've heard it answered by so many different writers, and it's amazing how, as you know, everybody has their unique journey. So for me, when I decided to write a historical fiction novel, I realized I had spent, you know, years doing nonfiction writing. You know, I'd been a doctor, a lawyer, I was the editor, one of the editors for my law review when I was in law school. I had written like a lot of, you know, nonfiction articles. So the question is how do I approach fiction? And then I thought about it. And I thought, you know, well, all good writing is persuasive. I mean, ultimately, when you're writing something, you're trying to persuade somebody to see something the way you see it or the way or even to persuade them to have an emotion over it. Yes. And so I realized, okay, that's what this is. All you know, all the books that I've loved reading over the years, it's because they persuade me to enter a world that I otherwise not in, right? Like and I see the characters, I feel the characters, I want to understand everything. And so when I thought about how to write this, I had that in mind. And I think because I went to law school and I'm such um I'm like a big planner, uh, I plotted my book and I wrote a 43-page single-spaced outline. It took me eight and a half months to write the outline.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah, that's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

And um, and I didn't write a single word of the book until my outline was finished.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

And that's how I approached it. My my book is told from omniscient narrator point of view. There are multiple characters and time jumps.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

And so it's very complex.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I needed two characters.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

We talked a lot about outlining versus pantsing. And did you did you just approach outlining in terms of like, hey, this looks like I the what I'm thinking about is really complex. And in order to get my brain around it, I need to outline it. Yes. Or did you just try and like, okay, I have to absolutely outline this?

SPEAKER_01 24:24

No, but it was more like that. I didn't want to lose strands. I didn't want to lose, I didn't want to lose a character along the way. I didn't want the characters to do something later on that hadn't been earned. Right. So sometimes I feel like when you read books, you know, for me, one of my um things that I think always catches me, or I I will do a double take, is if I read something, if the character does something all of a sudden, and I'm like, well, where did that come from?

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

And sometimes that is the goal of the author. The author's trying to have you have that kind of moment where that it's startling in that way. But oftentimes it's almost like a shortcut. It's almost like it feels cheap.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yeah. You don't feel like it was earned. You don't feel like there was enough that built up to the character to for you to believe that the character will do that. And I was really worried with my book that that might happen because there are quite some dramatic things that happen at the end, some really big, big you know, decisions that have to be made. And I needed you as a reader to believe that, you know, maybe that was not the decision you, the reader, would have made, but you weren't going to sit there and go, oh no, that character would never have made that decision.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

And that's it, that is like what you're talking about is such a difficult thing to achieve because most of the time, because we're so close to it, we can't see, like in our minds, they've totally earned it, but we don't know if we've expressed it. But I think layering on top of that is an omniscient point of view with you know potentially dozens of characters, you're that that creates an automatic distance between the reader and the characters because I'm only spending so much time with each character and I'm not in their head. Right. And so that's even that you've raised the bar higher to have that, you know, earning of decision making where you really have to layer in little things like, yes, they would make this decision as weird as it seems.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Exactly. And I think, you know, and I didn't even know that that was a thing that I was chewing off. I didn't, I didn't realize that I was biting off and trying to chew, I didn't realize how difficult that omniscient narrator is. I just kind of knew that's how the my story was going to be told because I I wanted to give you a slice of Chinese life in from this period of time. And I didn't want the slice to only come from one person's point of view. I wanted many different characters, um, including minor ones that you only meet for a couple pages, you know, then they're they're offstage left or whatever. Um, and so yeah, so I felt the outline was super important for me to understand and to keep track of everybody and to um yeah, feel like you things were in there that would justify things that came later.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, that makes sense. And I I can, I mean, so this this sounds like it was a real, you know, probably very difficult thing to write um to pull off. And then I'm just totally talking out of my ass here. And I'm envisioning this. You have this, you know, you have this writer who's this first massive work of fiction, and you've written something on that I'm sure is beautiful, uh, but it's also very niche, right? It's very like it's very specific, and I would think would fall under literary fiction. Um now let's go try to sell it, and whereby you have, you know, because this falls into something where it's either like the next breakout, you know, Barnes and Noble, literary pick of the year, or it's like this is so specific and nuanced and beautiful, but where's the audience? So, what was your experience being like trying to get an agent, trying to shop the manuscript?

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Yeah, I love that. Carter, so let me tell you one thing that I am so thankful for. When I started writing this book, I knew nothing about how books get published.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

I had been in the academic world where books they're already they already have a publisher, like you're writing to a what a publisher is wanting.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

You've already posed right, it's a university press or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

It's a university press, like the thing is going to get published, and you know, your audience is not the world, your audience is I don't know, probably other academics like who are in that area. And so it was very, very different. And I'm really grateful because I think because of that, I wrote the story that I thought I would want to read, slash I wanted my daughters one day to be able to read and say, Oh, what was our mom thinking for all those years that we were in Asia and we were running around being kids as we should be, and um delightful kids. Um, but you know, our mom was kind of a thinking adult. What was she thinking? You know, and then they would be able to read this and understand kind of what some of my thoughts were. And so when it went to getting an agent, um, I was like, oh, querying. Okay. So just an agent.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah, that's what my reaction was. Like, I didn't know what an agent was.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Like, who are these people? And what and and and do I have to have one? And um, so I went into the querying trenches. I'm sure like many other debut wannabe debut novelists, um, and I sent out like 20 letters or 26 letters or something like that, which seemed like a lot, right? I mean, I was kind of like, oh, wow, that's a lot. Of course, it turns out that's not a lot necessarily.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

And I got back um from about 26 or 27 letters I sent out, I got back seven requests uh for partial or full manuscripts. And and at that time I didn't realize that that was actually a pretty good hit rate. So I kind of just and so I was really pleased about that, sent the book out, um, sent parts of, you know, some people want five chapters, some people want the whole thing, some people do it in stages, and I got through, you know, several gated um requests. And, you know, I got really positive responses. Like I got one um, please revise and resubmit. I got another one that's like, I love this, come back to me. I I queried in March of 2020, and people literally said to me, I had two agents who said, I love this, come back to me in six months when COVID is over. Because right now, I can't imagine trying to sell a book about COVID, uh, about China. And because, as you know, I wrote for the China CDC about HIV AIDS, it will not surprise you that it's not a main storyline, but there is a storyline that involves a virus, right? Like when it was emerging and it wasn't known what it was yet, and all of this kind of stuff. And they said, Yeah, we can't sell a book about China and a virus right now, come back in six months. Well, as you know, the rest, it was not six months. And you know, I was very like, okay, I guess this is this is not the time for a book like this. And I didn't worry about it, I just put it on the shelf. Right. I was I thought, okay, well, I wrote the book I wanted to write, and that's okay. And I put it away, and then I didn't start querying again for another three years, and that was the only thing and that was only because my husband encouraged me to. I was like, what are you doing with that book you wrote? And I was like, Oh, nothing. I'm just I I was thinking of getting a couple copies bound and leaving them, you know, giving them as Christmas gifts to the girls. And he's like, Well, how about trying to get an agent? And I was like, Well, you know, I I I I didn't feel confident about that after the last go-round. And so I actually, to make a very long story short, I went to a writer's conference, a hybrid writer's conference. And you had the option uh to submit your first 500 words anonymously of your manuscript. And then for three nights in a row, they picked three anonymously, three, you know, sets of pages out of a hat. I'm sure it was all digital. It was like a digital wheel or something like that. Um, and um on I, you know, on the first night, they pulled three sets of pages and they read them out and to a panel, kind of like uh America's got talent panel of editors and agents and stuff like that. And they gave honest feedback. And it was it was feedback. It was kind of like, oh, I would not re ever request the next pages. I don't understand the voice, or oh, like what's the aim of this, or oh, like I don't like how this opened, or you know, just and I thought to myself, oh my gosh. And I mean, by the way, it was hybrid, it's not like anybody could see anybody, but I I thought, oh my gosh, I'm so glad those are not my pages. Well, guess what? My pages got pulled on the second night. Um, got all five agents were like, I would definitely ask for like more pages. And then the next day the conference um organizer reached out and said, Are you okay if I and it's all anonymous? Can I share your name? There's an acquisitions editor who would like to talk to you from a small um press, uh independent press. And I said, sure. And that was a woman-owned press in Canada that um, and that's how my book got acquired. I don't have an agent to this day. My book got acquired by a small indie press in Canada um that had ink to deal with Simon and Schuster to be their distributor and like their sales arm. And that's that's how the book came out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

That's amazing. And you know, it feels like writing that book almost felt like the way that you describe it to me, the way that I interpreted it is like I I have to this is this is a culmination of this experience. And and what's fascinating to me is that that the writing was almost fulfilling enough, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:43

It was absolutely when I finished that story, I did not know what was gonna ever happen to that manuscript. Yeah, I felt completely satisfied.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Right, which is you know, when I work with students, I I see a range, right? But what I see a lot of is like, hey, I've worked on this for five years. This is my this is my white whale, and something has to happen to it. Come hell or high water. And one of the things that I preach and I coach is the process of letting go, of understanding that manuscript served a purpose that maybe you're not seeing right now, but it's you'll see it once you let it go. Um, and you're already there, you're like you're not writing something else during those three years that you weren't querying, and you're just like dealing with COVID.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

I'm a physician, I was following all the data, I was helping, you know, people in my community. I had like I started a new job, I was seeing mental, I was doing telemedicine, you know, because it was like COVID times, things like this. I mean, I had moved on, and it literally was my husband saying, What are what happened to your book? And I'm like, Oh, you know, it's it's great, it's done. I'll I'll I'll make two copies for the girls at Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

He's such a signpost in your life, right? Like, let's let's move abroad. Like, I wouldn't have thought like like there's he's pointing you, like not forcing you, but he's pointing you.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

He's a great partner, and I'm forever grateful that he did that. But I I I share that because I've met a lot of writers as well. Like you said, I can hear the pressure when you're talking about students that they put on themselves or writers, you know, trying to, and I I am so grateful, Carter. I have none of that.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

I was just like, I'm gonna write this story because right, because it all goes back to, and this is the other thing at coaches, like we examine like why are you writing to begin with? What is the point of you doing this? And you know, it's it's some kind of emotional release, it's some kind of exploration of psyche, whatever it is, it's almost never I'm writing because I want to sell a book to a publisher. That's that becomes a goal, but it's not the purpose, right? Um, and I think I think writers can get those two things confused.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Um I agree with you. And and for me, you know, I tell people this was like a love letter to those years that I was um got to spend in an in a completely different part of the world. It's kind of a love letter almost to, you know, that gift I feel that was given to us. Um and I met so many fascinating people who opened their hearts and their, you know, and and told me their stories. And I was seeing patients in China. I started, I practiced in China. I don't know if I ever if I shared that with you. After after being in Asia for three years and I had not practiced medicine, and guess what? I hadn't gone back to my New York City practice. I studied for and passed the foreign medical licensing exam when we moved to Beijing and I started patient. And so I think of myself as a physician first, even I even to this day, I don't think of myself as an author. I think of myself as a physician. And so for the the book for me was advocacy for all of those people who I had met.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yeah, that's amazing. And now, so you have this experience. Are you do you have a bug now? Like, where you're like, I want to keep writing, I want to do this, or are you like, hey, maybe this will come to me again, but it's not at the forefront of my mind right now?

SPEAKER_01 37:10

It's definitely not at the forefront of my mind. I do have an idea that's brewing that's very much influenced, as you can imagine, by all the things that are happening in our country now. Like that shouldn't surprise anybody. I mean, I am the daughter of immigrants, um, I've lived abroad, I've been an immigrant to other countries. Um, and so I'm you know, I'm fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by ident identity across diaspora. So I do have an idea for a book that's kind of brewing in my head, but I feel zero pressure. And I again am so happy about that. I just, you know, I think that that's and so you know, I I can tell because I told somebody when I started writing this book, um, I felt compelled to write it. Characters kept waking me up in the night and telling me things. And so I, you know, if those, if if if a new set of characters starts waking me up, yeah, I'll be very excited. But if it doesn't happen, I don't feel any sense of like, oh, but I'm supposed to be doing that.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Because, you know, when you're selling a book, whether it's through an agent or or or through the process that you went through, um, regardless of the press, whether it's a small indie press or a big five or whatever, for a debut author, a lot of it's like we love this. What else does Rana have?

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yes, absolutely. That's what it's a lot of it's about. I've been lucky the book has had some nice um, you know, recognition. I was uh uh I got to be on national TV. Um, you know, I it's it's uh allowed me to go and give some really interesting talks and you know, uh around the country. That's been a lot of fun. Um, definitely the pub my publisher's like, is there another book? Are you writing something? Are you writing? I hope you're writing. Um but you know, right? I I don't I don't feel that pressure.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

You're straight, you're staying true to your own kind of vision of of storytelling, which is great. I mean, because you're not it like the way that you identified yourself as a physician, first and foremost, that's important, right? And that's very telling. It's like this is you know, it's you wouldn't say, Well, I'm not gonna practice medicine for a few years because I just don't feel like it, I don't feel pressure to practice. That's what you love to do, right? Right. Um, so that's that's amazing. That's a great story. Um and and we're gonna wrap up before we do, we have our own little storytelling to do. Um, I don't know if you've if you've heard the podcast before, but this is this is where we just make shit up.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

I know, and it's I don't know why I'm so nervous, but okay, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

It's it'll be fine. I've got three books chosen at random. We're gonna choose one, and I'm gonna choose a random sentence, and then I'm gonna read that sentence, and then we'll just alternate sentences, and it'll last for like two minutes. It'll be horrible, it'll be awesome. I've got um Mark Guggenheim's In Any Lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Um, Lou McCreary's The Thirteenth Step, and uh Milan Duquang's uh Ceylon Sapphires. Um, so choose one of those, they're all pretty different books.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

I I can't, I don't okay. I'm gonna say Ceylon Sapphire because that's just a fascinating title to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

And she's she's a tremendous person. Um give me a page number between one and three hundred.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

223.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Okay, so I'm gonna quickly scan 223, see if we can find something that might serve us.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Um Carter, this is brilliant. Do you do this with your students?

SPEAKER_00 40:37

No, but I do it with every podcast guest.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Oh my god. I feel like so, like, like you know, million-dollar question.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

I've done this a lot, yeah. Well, if I was doing this for a million dollars, it'd be a much more successful podcast. Um All right, you do whatever you want with this sentence. Her anger vaporized at the sight of the two officers striding toward her.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

She knew she should have left the basket at home, and now she regretted that it was placed under her seat.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

That anger turned into a fear that she tried to conceal, but nothing could stop the beads of sweat forming on the back of her neck. She rolled the window down and wondered what she should do with her hands as the officers approached her.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

She clasped her hands together, trying to draw their attention to what they might be holding. Of course they helped nothing. She used her left foot and gently pushed the basket further back under the seat, hoping that they didn't notice.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Of course, carrying a basket wasn't a problem. It was what was inside the basket. She did the math as she had done so many times before. How many years would this cost her? Could she get off early on probation? What would this do to her family? And all the math suggested that the best course of action might actually be to use her right foot to press on the accelerator.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

She got the better of it suddenly because she realized that what was inside the basket was alive, and that accelerating unexpectedly would certainly cause an unmissable yelp to come forth.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

I think we call it there. So I I I love it because now you've got something living that is valuable, that is for whatever reason, illegal.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Yes, I'm thinking of like people who smuggle like exotic pets.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Yeah, yeah, totally. Or maybe it's a puppy that has bags of heroin in it.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Right, right. Or it's one of those puppies that's inherited like a million, you know, millions of dollars from a deceased previous owner. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

So when come back five years and we'll talk, and you can tell me when you finish this book about the the exotic puppy and how you sold five million copies. It all started with this little storytelling.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

This little storytelling, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

I love it. Thank you, Rada.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

What a pleasure to talk to you and to meet you.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

It's been so much fun. Thank you, Carter. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Yeah, I hope to meet you in in person at some point.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Absolutely. Go birds.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Go birds. Take care. Bye. All right, that is it. That is uh my conversation with Rada Lenchada. Uh, great conversation, great storytelling about whatever that was, the multi-million dollar puppy, or whatever the hell is in that basket. Um, so as a reminder, Rada's new release, her debut novel is titled And the Ancestor Sing. And you can check that out and read anything you want to read about Rada on her website, which is just Raddalynchata.com. Uh, and if you're interested in pre-ordering my new book, When They Find Me, which is out on November 10th, head on over to CarterWilson.com and you can read all about that book. Um, that is it, friends. That's it for this episode of Making It Up. Uh, as always, I appreciate you listening, and another one will be out soon. In the meantime, say and send me an email if you're looking for gig uh if you have a guest to recommend or any feedback on the show, you can just email me at me at carterwilson.com. All right, friends, take care of the.