Peng Shepherd: On Exploring the Relationship Between Happiness and Truth

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, and Mexico City. Here global travels inspire the settings in All This and More.

Her second novel, The Cartographers, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, named a Best Book of 2022 by The Washington Post, and received a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her debut, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today show and NPR’s On Point. Follow her on X (Twitter) and Instagram.

Peng Shepherd

Photo Credit Delbert Vega

In this interview, Peng discusses the complicated format of her new speculative novel, All This and More, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Peng Shepherd
Literary agent: Alexandra Machinist (CAA)
Book title: All This and More
Publisher: William Morrow
Expected release date: July 9, 2024
Genre/category: Speculative fiction—with a healthy dose of mystery and a dash of romance
Previous titles: The Cartographers; The Book of M
Elevator pitch: A woman wins the chance to go back and rewrite every mistake she’s ever made to make her life perfect—but there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does to change her fate.

Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?

The last few years have been pretty intense for everyone. In 2020, the world went from a race to a standstill overnight, and in that pause, it was hard not to reckon with our choices, for better or worse. Were our lives how we imagined they would be? Were we happy? Could we change things? Should we change things?

I’d been dreaming of writing a book with multiple paths for years, but I didn’t want to ask readers to make choices about the character and the plot simply for fun. That concept of having to decide what to change—what to gain, and what to give up to do it—had to be deeply important to the story.

And also, I was climbing the walls during lockdown, desperate for travel or adventure. Those two desires merged into All This and More—a zany, maximalist game show premise that allows its contestants to try out new personalities, countries, jobs, and even partners with the snap of their fingers, all while the darker question of the price of happiness simmers beneath.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

All This and More came together much faster than I expected, given its unique structure! The whole publication process always takes several years, but in terms of actual writing time, I spent about six or eight months on the first draft, and another six months in edits.

I’m not saying I never had to delete half a chapter or rewrite a subplot, (there always are plenty of those days!), but some ideas come to you like the faintest whisper on some distant, mysterious breeze, and some come to you like a piano falling from the sky. This book was definitely a piano.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Everything has been a learning moment with this novel! Because readers can read the book either straight through like a traditional novel or create their own paths through the story, we not only had to figure out how to make this work as a physical book, but also in e-book an audio formats.

I’ve always been so grateful to everyone at William Morrow, but All This and More especially has shown me just how much of a team effort it is to get from manuscript to finished book.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I’m not a writer who outlines ahead of time—I just dive straight in and figure everything out as I go. As you can imagine, that’s enough chaos for a conventionally structured book, but for one with multiple paths that must connect with each other in a way that makes sense and is also emotionally compelling, I thought that trying to write a first draft without a plan was going to end in disaster. What surprised me was how (relatively) straightforward it turned out to be. Perhaps because of its structure, I could really “see” the shape of the story in my head at a much earlier stage than I usually do.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I want to explore the relationship between happiness versus truth with readers. All of us have faced difficult decisions in our lives, some of which we’ve gotten right, and some of which we’ve gotten wrong and regret deeply, and wish we could go back and change—but if you actually could go back and reengineer things (and assuming the unanticipated new consequences didn’t spiral into chaos), would that actually be your life anymore? Would it matter?

Put another way, is something that’s real worth more than something that’s not, but makes you happier? And is there a line you wouldn’t cross?

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Put a plant on your desk. It’s much nicer to stare at a plant when you’re thinking than the computer screen.

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