Van Hoang: Novels Are Written in Drafts

Van Hoang’s first name is pronounced like the van in minivan. Her last name is pronounced “hah-wawng.” She is the author of Girl Giant and the Monkey King, Girl Giant and the Jade War, and the forthcoming Hidden Tails for middle-grade readers. Her adult debut novel The Monstrous Misses Mai will publish in spring 2024.

Van was born in Vietnam, grew in up Orange County, California, and now resides in Los Angeles with her husband, kid, and dog. When she is not writing, she spends her days force-feeding books to small children (and adults!) at the Huntington Beach library in Southern California. Follow her on Instagram.

Van Hoang

Photo by Francisco J Zuniga, 2022

In this interview, Van discusses the process of writing her adult debut, The Monstrous Misses Mai, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Van Hoang
Literary agent: Mary C. Moore of Aevitas
Book title: The Monstrous Misses Mai
Publisher: 47 North / Amazon Publishing
Release date: April 1, 2024
Genre/category: Historical Fantasy
Previous titles: Girl Giant and the Monkey King (Roaring Brook / Macmillan 2020), Girl Giant and the Jade War (Roaring Brook / Macmillan, 2021)
Elevator pitch: Young women accidentally become witches to pay rent in 1959 Los Angeles.

Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?

I am absolutely obsessed with the 1950s and 1960s for admittedly very shallow reasons—the dresses! The colors, the hairstyle, the hats! Everything was so much more aesthetically pleasing during that time. Even the cars. I couldn’t care less about cars, and somehow those mint-colored spaceship-looking vehicles really make me nostalgic for a milkshake in a diner with the doo-wops playing on the jukebox, sitting with friends in A-line dresses and pin curls while we fall in love with the prospect of the future and living life.

I desperately wanted to spend time with that vibe, to be surrounded with that atmosphere, and basically to escape into a better moment. When the idea first emerged, I was stuck at home during the pandemic. I had just had a baby and was awaiting the release of my debut middle grade-novel and was filled with anxiety and uncertainty. I had also just graduated (i.e. accumulate a lot of student loan debt) with my master’s degree in library information science, which seemed useless at the time because jobs were even more scarce in an already saturated, highly competitive industry. I had a lot of time to think and to mostly be angry about a lot of things such as the evilness of capitalism, the unfairness of race and privilege, the lack of pockets in dresses! And women’s clothes in general! And all of those emotions eventually culminated in this book.

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

About 3.5 years. The idea emerged around fall 2020, drafted and finished in 2021, revised with my agent’s editorial advice and beta readers’ feedback in 2022, and sold in early 2023 to be published in April 2024.

This book went through more drafts than I have ever had to write. Looking back, I suppose all my books do. I’ve been known to throw complete drafts out and start over from scratch, yet I’ve never revised so much as I did with The Monstrous Misses Mai.

Originally the manuscript hadn’t worked for many reasons, but mostly it had been because I didn’t want to deal with the pain of writing something so personally meaningful. I wanted to set it in a secondary world, perhaps to give it some distance, but I quickly realized that there is no such thing. Art requires you to give a piece of yourself, which is why books are so hard to write, and even though it was difficult for me to learn this lesson, once I made the decision to, the book eventually came together.

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

While this book is my adult debut, it’s not my very first book, and yet the submission process wasn’t any easier. If anything, it was even harder because I had to prove that I could write in this space as well as for younger audiences. I’m glad for the challenge and learning experience it provided because I don’t want to write myself into a box. I’m grateful for the opportunity to challenge myself and continue to grow.

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

I’m always surprised by how much of myself I end up putting into a book. With each new idea, I set out to write about someone who is completely different from me, either in personality or in looks. Yet no matter what, each character always embodies a part of myself that I didn’t know existed. What delights me most is that villains seem to be particularly easy to write, like I’m letting the dormant evil persona out for fresh air and she’s excited to run wild.

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

This book is one of the funnest books I’ve ever written, and that’s from someone who wrote not one but two novels about mischievous monkeys. There are dresses with pockets! Friendships and slow-burn romance and so many cocktails and pillbox hats and everything else I’m obsessed with.

But there’s also a lot of pain and history in this novel, trauma that the characters have to grow and move on from. So, I hope that readers will learn and heal along with them, and I hope that in reading about someone else’s pain, everyone will feel a little less lonely. And maybe prompt the fashion industry to give us more pockets.

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

Anything can be fixed. Often when I’m drafting, I’ll be filled with self-doubt and imposter syndrome, but it’s important to remember that I feel this way about every book. I’ll pick up something finished that I’m proud of and skim through it, remembering a time when I also wanted to throw it in a dumpster fire, and that will make me feel better.

Stories are layered, and novels are written in drafts. What you don’t fix in this version, you can always edit in the next, and whatever problems you can’t deal with now, you can always come back to later. This is your book, and you can continue revising until you’re proud of it.

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