From stuntman to bestselling fantasy author: Why Wesley Chu sold his soul to writing

What a fantastic conversation we recently had with bestselling fantasy author Wesley Chu! Wesley Chu didn't always consider himself a writer, and in this conversation we delve into why that was, and how he finally found the path that led to the books we love. Along the way, we get into some fascinating discussion of the current state of fantasy and science fiction, so be sure to stick around for that!

Wesley Chu is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of thirteen novels, including The Art of Prophecy, Time Salvager, The Rise of Io, and The Walking Dead: Typhoon. He won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and his debut, The Lives of Tao, won the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Alex Award. An accomplished martial artist and a former member of the Screen Actors Guild, Chu he has acted in film and television, worked as a model and stuntman, and summited Kilimanjaro. Wesley Chu lives in Los Angeles with his two boys, Hunter and River.

Buy Wesley's books here

About The Art of Prophecy, book 1 in the War Arts trilogy:

An epic fantasy ode to martial arts and magic—the story of a spoiled hero, an exacting grandmaster, and an immortal god-king from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lives of Tao.

It has been foretold: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom.

The hero: Jian, who has been raised since birth in luxury and splendor, celebrated before he has won a single battle.

But the prophecy was wrong.

Because when Taishi, the greatest war artist of her generation, arrives to evaluate the prophesied hero, she finds a spoiled brat unprepared to face his destiny.

But the only force more powerful than fate is Taishi herself. Possessed of an iron will, a sharp tongue—and an unexpectedly soft heart—Taishi will find a way to forge Jian into the weapon and leader he needs to be in order to fulfill his legend.

What follows is a journey more wondrous than any prophecy can foresee: a story of master and student, assassin and revolutionary, of fallen gods and broken prophecies, and of a war between kingdoms, and love and friendship between deadly rivals.

Transcript

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and this is what I realize is the more you don't know about the craft the more confident you are like like I I have published 16 books now I am the least confident I've ever been and in the craft welcome to the Curious Cat Bookshop Podcast the podcast of the independent bookstore of Winsted, Connecticut creating a literary community in Northwest Connecticut bringing our local authors to the world and the world to our community in Northwest Connecticut OK welcome everybody I'm Stacy Whitman and I'm the owner of the Curious Cat Bookshop and welcome to our live chat with Wesley Chu hey, thanks for having me and I just wanted to let you guys know about what's happening in the bookstore before we get started with our conversation we are having our first D&D one-shot game happening in the store next week so keep an eye on uh not keep an eye but go to our website it's curiouscatbookshop.com/events for all the details you don't have to bring anything we'll even have dice so if you've never played D&D before this is the perfect opportunity to learn a little bit about it we have multiple book clubs and that includes Silent Book Club the last Wednesday of every month and we're starting to do online writing workshops with me I'm a former publisher and now editor at large at Tu Books, which is the imprint of Lee and Low Books that publishes diverse science fiction well all all genres for middle grade and YA I am losing my train of thought so that is for your first D&D session say that again do not pick the illusionist! unless you really love to roleplay that's good to know I'm done that that was my one that was my one I always goes for the ranged weapons but um curiouscatbookshop.com/events and look for our September 6th writing workshop and while many of you are not local to us we do ask that if you love this conversation tonight and want to buy the book please order it from us, all the books in fact and if you go to the link down below on YouTube you can order it at curiouscatbookshop.com order order all of Wes's books all of them forgot one thing oh well anyway all of our events are on the website so if I'm forgetting something you can go there don't be bard either! haha well that just makes me think of the movie and they actually did a good job with him the movie was awesome the movie was amazing like one of the best fantasy movies I've seen in like 10 years hahaha so welcome Wesley Chu hahaha I'm I'm gonna read your bio and then we're gonna talk so Wesley Chu is the number one New York Times best selling author of 13 novels including The Art of Prophecy, Time Scavenger, is it 14 now 16 I think okay your bio is out of date your bio ha ha ha I'm dying myself you won the--was it the Astounding Award when you won it? or was it still the Campbell? back then it was still the Campbell and that is Best New Writer as part of it is not a Hugo but it's part of the Hugo Award ceremony can we just be real for a second? can we just go ahead because I'm gonna be honest I've never won the Hugo/it's part of the same ceremony! that was my shot that was my shot to win the Hugo so look can we just call it a Hugo with and not just like you know I I don't see the difference to be quite honest it's given by the same body you know like and I think this is really fun that you won the Young Adult Library Services Association's ALEX Award, which is the award for a books published for adults that have some really great crossover potential for teens so that's always something that you know I'm on the lookout for when I'm recommending stuff in the bookstore to people who might be looking for their reluctant boy who is a teenager this is stuff that I want to ask you about too because you also are a member of the Screen Actors Guild and you've acted and worked as a model and stuntman I wanna know about the stuntman stuff and you live in Los Angeles with your two boys so but most importantly because this is so fascinating that we were at the University of Illinois at the same time I was in the Marching Illini oh you were in the band! and clearly you I think you were on the engineering campus I was I was a CS major that's a bad yeah I was over on the ag campus I was I was animal science pre vet at the time how'd I end up a children's book editor? I I was at Taft-Van [Doren] that that that was where I I I I dined at freshman year is that kind of near where you guys are cool I was at Presby House which is right on John Street OK I it's a it's one of the ag houses it doesn't exist anymore actually they mowed it down and created a regular dorm have you been back it was owned by the Presbyterian Church I got so lost when I tried to I tried to go back in 2010 on my drive out to New York I was moving to New York to start at Lee & Low and I was driving a giant like moving truck and I turned off on what is green Neil Street okay Neil Street to to get to campus I couldn't find campus I got lost I hear it looks completely different super nice now I heard it's like it's like super nice and like super expensive now tuition my freshman OK this is tuition my freshman year in 1994 with 2 k yeah in state tuition yeah so are you from Illinois then? I lived-- so I I grew up in--I was born in Taiwan I immigrated to Nebraska when I was 5 years old family moved to Naperville which is a suburb of Chicago when I was in seventh grade I went to U of I, graduated, worked downtown in in downtown Chicago for a good oh my gosh 17 years one day got really tired of the Chicago winters I don't blame you and kind of like my family out in LA I just kind of bought a place, sight unseen and I made the move I just couldn't wow it was like 2017, 2016 the winter of 2016 it was the year of like Snowmageddon I don't know if anybody oh it was like negative 20 I was gone by then oh it was awful yeah so I was just I I moved well I was there in Chicago from 01 to 03 after I graduated from college I worked in the Wrigley Building so literally like right on the river yeah yeah and yeah but I'm from western Illinois I grew up on a farm OK, so you know over by the Quad Cities Lincoln, Nebraska I mean I haha farmland us us us true Midwesterners are a different breed so yeah I completely understand wanting to be done with the winter though I moved to Seattle when I worked at Wizards of the Coast and I am soft I'm soft now I cannot handle the winter anymore I mean that's the thing is like like you think you're hardy because you're from like a place that had you know extreme climates but after six months especially in like nice weather like a So Cal like no nice weather I was after six months I'd be like oh my gosh it's 60 degrees I better go get my parka right you know my one Marching Illini story is that we played Hawaii in 92 for the holiday not holiday whatever bowl it was it was out in California so we're like taking off all of our coats in the 40, 50 degree weather going, it's California! we're gonna wear our shorts! and the Hawaii band is like hahaha it's so cold it's all relative but so tell us about how you got into stuntman work you're you're really into martial arts, right? I mean that's a long time ago like this is you know I so I immigrated to Nebraska when I when I was five and like you know back then like back in the 80s okay I'm dating myself but back in the 80s when you when you grew up in like the Midwest where there's you know in this whole state of Nebraska there's like five Asians in the entire state and like three were in my family four were in my family so there weren't many of like my people so I didn't really have a really strong connection to my to my childhood, my culture so how I discovered you know learned about my history was there's these movies that played every Sunday called Samurai Sunday and it's like really badly dubbed kung fu movies and like and that's kind of like that was my introduction into like oh, that's what my people are like I love that they called Kung fu movies Samurai Sunday we drink a lot of we drink a lot of tea we fly we punch through walls what the hell was what is going on here why why can't I do that it kind of started out my love for like martial arts you know as soon as I was old enough started training in martial arts it kind of was what got me into writing I was reading a lot of fantasy at the time but I really didn't see anything that was like Asian Asian inspired nothing martial art based you know and like the only book I read that was kind remotely Asia like you know based in set in Asia or secondary world Asia was Raymond E Feist Daughter of the Empire I don't think I've read that I mean it's it's part of his remember Magician's Apprentice that was his like his I series I mean I know of it but I haven't read it it's a great series but like he had a side series that's set in this in this other world and it was as agent inspired and I loved it but you know it's also written by a white guy you know yeah yeah and there's so much of that like if you go back far enough that I mean I appreciate that I appreciate that there's there's some guys who you know went back and tried something a little bit different right once I got old enough I was you know working downtown Chicago and and one day this director came in he's looking for basically stunt doubles and extras for an expensive indie and he was just looking for bodies and when he saw me train and I guess he liked the way I I moved and looked he offered me a role just say you want you want a speaking role and the first thing out of my mouth was like I don't know how to act and then he said this is film we can cut anytime you can have as many takes as you want and and that's true and so like yeah I shot my my first indie without having like any experience and like like the hardest scenes to to to do correctly are the ones where you have very few words like there's one scene where I had to say one word and it took me 15 takes cause that that made that scene so much harder because you gotta get that one word right but um oh yeah yeah it's gonna help I caught the bug of of you know being an actor and and doing stuff where kind of what came came in hand in hand I mean in Chicago, it's a great commercial town I was gonna say that it used to be I don't know if it still does but it used to be such a TV filming town 20 years ago it was a great commercial town these days I don't know anymore but that's how that's how I got started and I was fairly successful at it but--and at one point I almost made the move to LA in 2005 just like to pursue acting full time and then I realized that I really actually don't like acting you know I I don't love it like actors love acting you know right right those pure actors they're like they like they sell their soul to the craft and I wasn't that guy and I and like I wanted to sell my soul to writing you know when I was I was gonna say were you writing during this time as well well so I wasn't when I was 16 my father's an English professor and I when I was 16 I told my dad that hey dad I wanna be an English major just like you but instead of instead of like being a professor I'm gonna write books and my and my dad was like no, son do something practical? your life will suffer, is what he said your life will suffer and I'm like he's not wrong he's not wrong but but because of what he said I became a computer science major which why I end up at U of I, and then I became like like a consultant and I did the whole you know CS track and hated it I hated it and yet I did well like on one hand I was terrible at the job on the other hand I did pretty well in it you know and then I was actually you know climbing and climbing and one day I realized that like you know I hate my career I was training 18, 20 hours a week for martial arts but what am I gonna do with it? and then I thought about like, hey, what do I want to do with my life? and then I remembered like when I was 16 I wanted to write books so I had to make a choice and I think it was like 2005 I just I just cancelled all my hobbies I like stop training stop going to clubs I just stopped doing everything and I sat down and I just started working on my very first novel which was 180,000 word low fantasy called Wolves, Toads, and Crossroads and it was terrible but it was the most important book I ever wrote because I literally learned everything to every mistake you can make in a book and after that book obviously went nowhere I wrote Lives of Tao that was my next book oh so your--the book that you got published first was the second book that you ever wrote so I wrote I love that I love that you say that you finished that book though cause a lot of people don't finish the first book that they start writing oh, I thought the book was great I finished it and I was like this thing is amazing you know and like my dad wrote it-- he read it, and he's like yeah it's got it's got potential you know the thing is and this is what I realized, is the more you don't know about the craft the more confident you are like like I I have published 16 books now I am the least confident I've ever been in the craft and part of it's because like if you're a lawyer or an attorney or engineer or I mean if you're an attorney or engineer or doctor whatever the more time you spend it in your profession the better you are at it and the more confident you are at it if you're a plumber or electrician you've seen this before, you know how to fix this you know how to work around these things I don't think it's the same for a writer and every book that I'm working on is the hardest thing I've ever worked on and part of it is because we--you know, we're expanding and we're taking more risks and we're trying different things and you know and most writers I know don't write the same stories over and over again yeah yeah I mean some do some do like you know some genres will they they and I mean sometimes they do very well at it and yeah monetarily if you find your formula you know you make it work and you're a full time writer, fantastic, but a lot of us we don't do the same thing that we did before we're trying new things so no matter how experienced you are you're always kind of like feeling like you're on shaky ground and you don't ever feel more confident but the one thing I I will say is I don't feel more confident about my craft but the one thing I do get from experience is I know when something is not working and that makes all the difference people talk about people ask me about writer's block all the time like, oh, I have writer's block I can't write and I think for me it's-- when you have writer's block I don't think it's that you can't write it's just that you don't like what you're writing or or you're not interested in or you're slipping away from it and the question I always pose back to them is well what are you writing what what part of this scene is is giving you problems what what do you not like about this what is causing your attention to slip away because if if your attention is slipping away while you're writing it imagine what a reader's doing you know yep if if if you're boring yourself you're boring them for sure so I can't tell you how many writers that I've talked to who has said writing this book made me cry and I'm like, that's perfect! because hopefully as the editor it will also make me cry yeah you know because you've tapped into the emotions you need to be able to convey that story for sure so yeah that's that's and then so I think I wrote I wrote the very first draft of The Lives of Tao in 2007 then I trunked it for three years cause I was busy being a raid leader in world of Warcraft as you do, you know hahaha we were the number one we might have been a wow at the same time too we were the number one server--uh, guild on Anubarak back in 2007, OK I was a raid officer I was an officer for a guild of 150 people and let me tell you something there is no better training for leadership and project management than running a guild with 150 people who want loot who want like you know fat loots so hahaha yeah I was just a casual player I had a friend whose husband worked at Blizzard and they would give me a free a free card every year that was that was great I I was the richest guy on my server literally I had the gem market cornered if I only applied that skill and and knowledge and tenacity to the stock market the stock market or something about money but no instead you know actually that's very true because after I played WoW I was like I think I understand the stock market just slightly more I--it baffled me but just slightly more just slightly more but yeah but so like and then by 2010 I was like you know what, I again had the epiphany of like what am I doing with my life? you know I I did not quit martial arts so I could play World of Warcraft for like 16 hours a day right so I took out Lives of Tao, brushed it off, and then submitted it to Angry Robot Books in 2012 open submission month oh right right and that was in April 2012 for that one month of the year anybody can submit to them without an agent they had a thousand submissions that one year and out of those thousand five people got book deals and I was one of the five well congratulations that that really kicked off a what is it now almost 10 year 15 I can't do math anymore it is not 2025 I'm sorry but it kicked off a great career, right? it's been 13 years you know knock on wood it's like that it's like three times the average tenure of a writing career right yeah and I I've seen the numbers where what more than half of writers make less than 10,000 a year on their writing now that's I think that includes like everybody not just book writers but I mean not a great yeah I mean, I've seen five I've seen I you you look look at like Jim Hines kind of like he does these these yes and she's about five to eight thousand dollars you know and like I mean it's I I hate the idea that publishing for the for the creative side has become a like a hobby career right you know and it's increasingly that way which which is sad because you like when you I use the same argument for uh, for Midjourney, okay it's like we have a bunch of artists who, you know, who when they're starting out they're, you know they're surviving off creating prints they're surviving off creating book covers and all these things and eventually they get good enough that they're on the top level they're like uniquely skilled but if something like Midjourney or chatGPT comes in and they take all the business from that middle ground then all these writers with these artists with potential might not ever make it to the part where they reach their full potential right because they don't have a way to sustain themselves within that career we're having that same conversation on the publishing side of things because if especially we're talking about the big publishers a lot of the smaller publishers are standing against the AI stuff but I've been seeing CEOs of some of the bigger companies go, well, isn't this a great idea to replace our editors Jesus and if they ever do think this might actually work and think that they can implement it what does that mean for editorial assistants who are getting the mentorship along the pipeline how do you create a pipeline when you have no entry level employees I mean, it's not just that it's like editing requires nuance editing like you you you can't you you even copy editing which is more technical requires somebody to look at this word and look at the wrap-- the the words around it and how it's structured and where it is within the paragraph there's all these variables that like come under the human condition like like that the person here when they look at when they look at that word that you're trying to edit can understand what it means and feels when right in context with everything else around it and it's not just your the words that you're talking about it's the whole big picture yeah of plot and characterization and pacing and world building and all of those things that I don't know maybe eventually we might have a machine be able to handle all those things certainly not happening now but that's a human to human thing for me right that is making art is a human thing I mean, so I do have this concern that like at some point AI will be smart enough to write something that is just good enough you know like there are some genres that that are volume based you know right a lot of romance romance readers will read a book every 10 days and they they they are voracious in the content that they they they consume and at some point AI will be like they will write a good enough romance book that satiates that that the veracity but then what what does that mean for like you know like the the Diana Gabaldons who write like this this deep intricate romance that take that has so much nuance and detail and character like we're not gonna get those anymore because the whole ecosystem is gonna be flooded with good enough books, good enough stories right that scratches that niche without having to you know that it will only charge you $1 to read the book or something like that right right exactly so so complicated and we covered a lot in 30 minutes already is it already we're talking about we're talking about like you know hahaha well actually this let's let's move on to something else because I think that it's always interesting to talk to writers about their process and you've got such fascinating concepts that you're working with whether you're talking about a wuxia epic fantasy in a secondary world or Lives of Tao was in our contemporary world wasn't it? I mean I did have pagers in that I did I did have pagers so that was before smartphones came out so I did have pagers so so what's the seed that gets you started on any new project what does the journey look like for you from seed to finished book you said as we were talking right before we started that it can take you or was it in here I don't know that sometimes it can take you two and a/2 years to finish a book so that is a very complex process for you what does it look like for you so most writers I know have like a thousand ideas and like like a thousand ideas that are ready to go and they just kind of pluck that idea off the idea tree and they plant it and they're off to the races I am very jealous of them I am not--I'm-- I have like one idea at a time if I'm lucky The War Arts Saga basically was an idea that I had in my head since like, 2014, 2015 and it took me four years to really have it like just sit in my head and I couldn't get rid of it and then after I finished you know I think the last book I did before that was the Walking Dead book Walking Dead Typhoon that's when I go okay I'm ready to work on this book now Lives of Tao, again, was a conceit I had about like an alarm clock and it sat in my head for like 6 months before I wrote it Time Salvager at the time I was on a drug called it was an anti smoking drug that gave you like very very lucid dreams oh anyways I loved it, it was a great dreams but um lots of inspiration one night I dreamt that I was on the Titanic I was a time traveler on the Titanic and I was trying to steal the Hope Diamond and so I'm wandering around the Titanic talking to all these people I'm making friends fully knowing that this ship was gonna sink in two days and everybody's gonna be dead and then like right before like the ship sank I found the Hope Diamond I was gonna jump out and I woke up and I'm like that's a great idea for a story so I don't have a lot of ideas and and they all they all come to me and they have to kind of like latch onto me and and like not let not let go when I try to shake them loose so yeah so that's so it's not a great process to be honest it's organic and like for like my my my newest idea is you know I started working on it but like I'm not even talking about it anyway don't worry about talking about it it's in process like it's in process let it stew You don't want to talk while the sausage is getting made but so generally once I have an idea I'm known for high concept ideas I'm known for you know action and and humor so yeah man these ideas they kind of have to simmer on my back burner for like a long time before I work and then once I work I'm a hybrid plotter so usually I'll plot like a 10,000 word outline but I always like to give the-- I'm a I'm a big fan of giving the giving my characters like free will so I used to basically write the whole plot out and then and then I'll run a whole plot and then I'll start working on writing and then at some point the character wants to make a left turn but I want him to make a right turn I need him to make a right turn but if I make him a right but he but he doesn't want to make a right turn it's not an honest response so I let him make that left turn then I rather replot everything so now these days I just I usually pants the first maybe like 15,000 words and then I'll out fully outline but instead of outlining an entire book I'll outline an act like I just outline enough to keep me going and then if you need to make a different around a left turn somewhere I love to make all the turns they want to make and then I then I reoutline without having to outline the entire damn thing yeah well especially when you're talking about an epic fantasy that is a big old outline like you've done YA before too though right? you worked with Cassie Clare on a couple of YA? so how did that work? was that--because that's a shared world did they come to you with an outline you had to stick to it uh Cassie shockingly gave me a lot of she gave me a long leash on like you know here she basically here she goes this is the idea I have I wanna set it right you know right in in this section of I think it was book 2 when they're off for vacation um go that was it go so let me-- look, because she gave me such a long leash and because I was like writing you know all these things the problem with a long leash is you could write what she might not like what the direction you went and that's absolutely happened where she was like that's not what I had in mind you know right part of me wants to scream well you should have told me what you had in mind hahaha but it also gave me the ability-- like the opportunity to kind of like flex the the creative muscles and almost like like almost like you know, to carve out a little corner of of her universe and she absolutely let me do that more in the second book The Lost Book of the White where you know, it's set in Shanghai instead of you know the traditional US or Europe so I was you know I was able to like you know create the the the Shadow Hunter universe in that in that small corner of you know that small corner of of her world and it is super cool that way that's awesome so like you can you you really got to take ownership of just a little bit of that world and that's I when I worked at Wizard's of the Coast I was doing mostly shared world we did one non shared world book and that got cancelled in 2008 when I got laid off but um but that's my role as the editor of something like that is just basically saying you know do what you can as do what you want as long as it fills like these pillars it doesn't break the physics of that universe yeah exactly exactly the Walking Dead guys were like that like they were like you know we want you to do a Walking Deadbooks set in Asia... Go! as long as it it makes sense within the timeline and rules of the universe you can do whatever you want fascinating which is not true by the way right because I had just finished the Cassie books before the Walking Dead books and then um and then Diana Gabaldon had--I actually didn't-- I didn't write a lot of romance or spicy scenes in my previous stuff so Diana Gabaldon took me under her wing when when I got that job and she basically like gave me like a crash course on like how to write sex scenes how to write gay sex because you know so so she gave me the she said that she's like I haven't published this book yet but I'm about to publish this how to write sex book here let me send you a copy so she sent me all that stuff and then she's and then she goes you should look up yaoi and oh yeah yaoi yeah yaoi yeah which which is um Japanese gay Japanese boy boy boy yeah meant for straight women very specific cause there's one for oh okay so like so I so one day I'm like after she told me that I'm watching it and I'm like this you know like you know and my wife at the time comes home and she's like what are you doing and I'm like you know I'm like this I don't know what's going on in my career but um I I learned how to write really good sex scenes that way and so in the Walking Dead book in Walking Dead Typhoon I had a six page sex scene in there you know and the editor was like was this is a really great scene but this is The Walking Dead and I'm and I said I was like what else are you gonna do in the apocalypse? you know hahaha but this this story is great because the thing that I love most about the writing community and book community in general is the way we mentor each other right the it's it's a community I love that so I love that she just gave you those resources so that you could be a better writer I wrote it and then I mean so I they they did make me cut down that six page sex scene to a page and a half but you know hahaha but still still you're like I did it I couldn't hahaha it was a good sex scene! one of these days so so um just in case anybody is watching it live because I know a few people were planning on it if I just want everybody to know that we have a delay on the live stream so if you have any questions please enter them so that we can be responding to them in our last minutes I have two more questions for you and then we're gonna open it up to questions for everybody else except that I oh I wanna know more about wuxia I don't understand it I watch a lot of Korean dramas I watch a lot of Korean movies but I don't watch a whole lot of Chinese stuff and there's so many specific things like being able to ride the wind and and stuff like that that you've got in the War Arts series that feel like they're specific to this genre of storytelling can you tell us about it and and kind of gets back to your Kung fu movie inspiration right? so I'm-- so to break it down to like a very basic explanation is like wuxia is basically it's like medieval Chinese fantasy center centered around Chinese martial arts where the martial arts is magical where once you are skilled in in the in the martial arts you can do supernatural things and one of the and one of the more more common supernatural things is you can fly or or or jump very high you know or very long distances so like whatever one of the better the better examples of of wuxia is like one of the most famous ones is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon okay oh right, yeah fantastic, beautiful example of kung--of wuxia and it's not just the martial arts it's the it's the romance of it you know wuxia is you know it's usually like you know it's it's very Robin Hood you know it's it's it's the country folks who are honest and trained in martial arts and it's the it's the sheriff slash king and noblemen who are-- and the eunuchs who are who are evil and it's so there's something called the jiang hu which is the direct translation is like of the forest and that's like the real people of of we we we we are the real people who train who are good and wholesome and we were fighting against oppression so it there is definitely a very kind of that sense in um in in wuxia so like uh something that's more popular now is called xian xia which is which is you know still kind of Chinese martial arts but more spiritual there's the ghosts and the zombies and like you know oh you know the the the the that's right up my alley is that right maybe I should write a xian xia you know yeah you should I would totally read it that's what I would write next we actually have a question from Diego who I work with at Lee & Low he's asking and this is actually right into what I was gonna ask you next about wuxia how do you play with tropes and writing conventions like the Hero's Journey the Chosen one, individualism and how do you interact with an east versus west vieww of these tropes and conventions so I was I was actually gonna ask you like cause it feels like there are specific tropes in wuxia were you playing with that in the War Arts trilogy I mean is that a trilogy or is it gonna be more books oh it's three books and three books and done after like after like 900,000 words I'm like you know I need to do something in fact in fact I'm just gonna do standalones from now on okay hahaha if you're a writer standalones are amazing okay so here's the thing is is I never really I've never really wrote because based off of tropes The Art of Prophecy the first book in the War Arts Saga was kind of known as I know I I I read in a lot of reviews that I was flipping a lot of tropes on its head you know and and not just like the chosen one trope or or the master student trope or or you know or the prophecies or but so when I wrote it I really I didn't think about like OK I'm gonna flip tropes I just thought OK what is something that I wanna write and what's something that's what's a little tweak of an angle of it that's a little bit different you know so the idea that we were marketing books by tropes was relatively new to me cause I wasn't keeping you know I was it was like a thing that wasn't that didn't really exist until like what 2019 right and and I wrote not not yeah not as a marketing thing yeah not as a marketing thing so but in 2019 when I wrote the first partial for The Art of prophecy and then from that point on I was you know but I was head deep writing it and when the book came out um in 2022 people were like oh this book steps a lot of tropes on its head and I'm like oh I didn't like we were I didn't even realize they were like we just we marketed books based off of that no lovers to heroes enemies to lovers you know that was a very strange thing for me and now everything is a trope everything is marketed by trope and I'm not sure how I feel about that yeah I don't know how I feel about that either because it kind of does play into stereotypes and before any of this what you're talking about I would talk about tropes in the fat in the in the way of like with like people in my grad program whatever as trope equal stereotype yeah and you know like are we playing with them or are we playing into them if that makes sense you know that kind of thing as opposed to being a marketing tool right it's interesting though because like I think that's the most used in romantasy and romance because people look for certain kinds of stories I feel like a lot of writers now instead of letting a story flow the way it's supposed to flow they will like try to hit all these tropes intentionally or they'll they'll shove it in to make so so so they can say oh, this is this this is a enemies to lovers story too you know and so I I don't know I mean I'm not a fan of publishing by marketing yeah so I'm I'm thinking more along the lines when I ask about tropes I'm thinking more along the lines of like when I watch a Korean drama they may be new to me like the story beats that you might see common in Korean storytelling but they're familiar to a Korean audience where you know there's the you know the the rich chaebol you know, father who's going to deny the the son to marry the Cinderella girl or whatever and there's the there's the mother in law who always you know whatever you know like those those are kinds of things that I'm thinking about like there are storytelling common storytelling in a culture that you can either be like I'm gonna embrace this and play with it or I'm gonna completely turn it on its head but it sounds like you didn't really do either of those you were just playing in your own world I you know I-- I really don't like outside influences affect how I craft a story together cause if I do then it's it's gonna like a lot of weird things gonna spill in and I'm then I then I feel like it's gonna kind of hold me back a little bit because I'm not writing that pure story I'm trying to get out hmm yeah, interesting and I have one last question that I actually was inspired by a friend who did this on his own podcast he's a poet and he said that they always got fascinating answers and so we are gonna see oh and by the way that's Pyewacket in the background haha um what is your weirdest or most unexpected obsession like obes-- like obsession? obsession things that you're really into like hobbies or anything that you're like super into I mean I'm a big nerd now this is first time I'm trying the questions so we'll see so this is not even a cool answer actually but like I like I went for like a good part of a decade collecting keyboards keyboards? keyboards like these I have like I have like oh I thought you were talking about pianos no no no literally keyboards I had like at one point I had like 70 keyboards and like like I was taking like IBM Model M keyboards those old clicky ones and it was just a thing I would collect them and I would mount them and I'd just be like these are my keyboards um I don't know not not not a sexy answer um more recently but you're a writer so more more recently I don't know what my obsessions are let me think about that I play a lot of pickleball but but that's the best in the world what are you talking about you know yeah so I don't think I have any really goofy obsessions I don't know now I wish you asked me that ahead of time let me think about it but oh yeah well you can think about it well because I just realized that we meant to talk about more like the publishing industry as well and I forgot to ask you about it because I hate to leave us on a down note but a lot of us are dealing with book bans and it feels like marginalized people are most targeted right now under everything that's happening and I'm wondering how that's affecting you personally or what you're seeing and how that's affecting how you're dealing with the publishing industry I mean I I do have a few books that are banned my my my I think my my my Shadowhunter books are are banned in Florida and Texas I think you know at least to some degrees pulled from the shelves of libraries I don't know how that affects me personally but you know obviously I would say that up until like maybe 2015 we we were still a very like European centric especially in genres still very European centric and you know we were you know everything was Arthurian or German to an extent and it's been really refreshing to actually have like different voices different worlds you know we're seeing seeing obviously Asian mythology and Asian fantasies and Africans so that's been fantastic and we in in right absolutely we were in a kind of a golden era of that having to have all these kind of stories I mean it it is a shame that like what's what's happening I obviously the the there are certain voices that will be affected more you know more more LGBT stories you know maybe not so much like we're like you know different culture fantasy but there's definitely been a pushback lately and I think we're gonna see it more I think we're I think it's gonna happen publishing feels to me has always been very progressive or at least it tries to be progressive um yeah and I think there definitely within the past two years there's been a pushback to be to be a bit more traditional and that sucks you know obviously yeah but but on the other hand like you know publishing's been doing weird things lately you know I think ever since Covid we we've been seeing like a certain you know romantasy has been been massive um yeah um YA's been struggling a little bit I think middle grade's been struggling a little bit too as well um a little bit I I've heard that science fiction's been really hard to to well to sell these days um yeah um I like I think I told you while we were offline like the biggest publisher in Germany stopped publishing the biggest fantasy publisher in Germany stopped publishing fan stopped publishing fantasy and part of it was because of romantasy you know and romantasy got really huge because well romance has always been huge right right right ever since Covid where like people wanted you know that that they want to they kind of want to feeling have a feeling escapism escapism right so like romantasy has has eaten everybody's lunch you know yeah it's gotten to the point where like like like like I told you earlier like you know I used to be like a rising tide lifts all lifts all boats but it feels like now specifically for publishers they I mean the truth is they can only publish X amount of books they can only produce X amount of books and with so much focus on romantasy see now there are a lot of good books that probably aren't gonna get published well at the same time let's just be honest about like the the the deluge of romantasy books coming in is they're probably not all good now there used to be there used to be a cut off point you you want the good romantasy books there but now because they want to fill that space they are pulling in a lot of romantasy books some of them who might not be great but at the expense of other books that are great and each one of them is getting the sprayed edges yeah treatment and all that where I even on the bookstore side for a time I was like oh this is something special I'm gonna order in the sprayed edges version and now it feels like every book is getting the sprayed edge treatment right and that's just a new standard so it's not necessarily saying this is our number one or our number top ten out of 100 anymore it's more like this is the new book this is the new book this is a new book and and I am not saying that because I want people who are not familiar with the publishing industry to listen to us and and misunderstand I don't want people to think that I'm saying that means it's a bad book but there are a million books published literally every year and not all of them can be the best book ever so that's where it can be challenging as a bookseller right and and but and also like are are there like now five editions of each book they'll be like like it's like you go to the airport it's kind of a collector situation there's like there's there's like the regular Lord of the Rings and there's the sprayed edges Lord of the Rings and now there's the leather bound Lord of the Rings and at some point you're like this all take shelf space yeah okay how my house is going to fall down from the weight how many Lord of the Rings editions do we need? it's the same story inside can we can we clear some shelf space for something other than Star Wars and you know yeah yeah no I I think about that a lot as a bookseller because we are only 15 square feet and so you know it's important yeah Sarah J Maas takes up a whole shelf Yep Brandon Sanderson takes up like three you know and so I can't keep every book in stock because then it would only be the best seller shelves right and I need to curate and you would be an airport bookstore then yeah and that's and and people come to a small town bookstore because we have different right choices and I think like and I don't know if this is actually true this is just my opinion so like I think one of the big issues that we had was when when Barnes and Noble was bought out by a hedge fund and they basically said OK we're gonna we're gonna make all the book buyers regional buyers so you know each person each book buyer in your bookstore you can buy whatever you want instead of a national buyer you can all choose what books you want to buy so that sounds great on paper but like I know I knew the national buyer at Barnes and noble okay and he read everything right I don't think the book buyers here in each of the regional stores have time to read everything I don't think they have time to read everything but also they have certain specific directives about what they can bring in so even though they're giving more control to the locals they're not really because like they've cut back on hardcover middle grade for example right and usually that affects the POC and indigenous authors the most because their book won't get a paperback if it didn't sell well enough in hardcover right so like it it's this continuum problem well I feel like the the variety has gone down ever since they did this you know well it's the toys too yeah shelf space for toys it's the toys that are placed right before the books like my kids well I was gonna say you're a dad you have experience with this right? my kids don't even make it to the books because they put the toys up front and then my boys are just like neeeow! straight to straight to the toys you know I get why they did it but still because it's like you know yeah exactly I have a question for you because this is a question that most people ask of women who are writers and you are a newly single dad so I'd love to ask you as a writer who is a newly single dad how do you balance it all? how do you find time to write? I mean you don't I'm not gonna lie it's it's I mean here's the thing is like my golden writing time is basically 9 to 2 am 9 pm to 2 am you know and after you drop off the kids after you do their thing you pick them up you feed them and everything it's I'm not one of those guys who can sit down and go OK I got 20 minutes to write let's go you know I have you need that that deep work time yeah I have to slide into it I have to get into the mood and like look I'm a full time writer I am contractually obligated to be creative and and there's definitely a a space that like like I mean because I had I work from home even before I did a fair amount of like the parenting so it's not wasn't wasn't like a huge switch for me but still it's just even more it's even more now and I think all I can say is if if you wanna be a writer and that's part of your job and you have all these responsibilities day job kids and everything else you just gotta block that time off and you gotta guard it with your life you gotta guard it like like it's a job you know I don't care if it's half an hour you gotta guard that half an hour of like it's it's that half an hour of your writing time and you're gonna sit down and do it and I don't care if you get eight words I I wrote with Pat Rothfus one day and we're just like a one hour writing thing and and after after an hour I was like hey Pat I got 700 words how'd you do? and Pat was like well, I got eight words. but they were eight good words. you know well that's good hahaha that's all you need as long whatever your metric for progress is as long as you're making progress as long as you don't like cause it's it's so easy to just like put it aside have no prioritize something else it's so easy to prioritize everything else in writing yep you know and but the the more you do it the harder it is to get back onto it you know after I finished the third book in the in the War ARts The Art of Legend I took the summer off you know I was buying a house getting divorced blah blah blah and now it's like after taking 3-4 months off of writing it was so hard to get back into it you know like I needed it I wrote a million words and I'm like I needed the break the break was great but it almost feels like I forgot how to do this I have I forgot how to become a writer again you know so so that's a thing that's definitely a thing so it's a muscle that you have to keep maybe not work out hard but like constantly but yeah go go for that go for that muscle jog go that brain jog on writing and just like no spend 20 minutes daydreaming ideas or jotting down notes just something to keep it going cause once you take that time off or extended period of time you really do forget how to like sit back into it perfect I think that's a great note for us to end on thank you so much this has been such a good conversation and we don't have any more questions so we'll just end here um again the the book is the series is the War Arts series and what is the new book coming what's War Arts Saga thank you um you got a new book coming out next week two weeks two weeks 10 days and 10 days it's called The Art of Legend it's the third book in the third and final book in the series I will not leave you hanging and where can people find you online you can find me you know what I'm on Facebook the most now so look up Wesley Chu on Facebook I have you know I have a I have a Twitter account or X account I have blue I have a Bluesky account see that's ever since you have a just a regular website people can find you at sorry go ahead just look just look up Wesley Chu, you'll find me somewhere perfect well thank you so much and we'll let y'all go and buy the books they're linked below my gosh bye