We chat with author Joyce Chua about her latest release No Room In Neverland, along with writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Joyce! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m Joyce, a Singaporean author with a penchant for character-driven stories with a dash of magic, romance and whimsy, diverse fantasies, and relatable contemporary stories, among other things. I used to work in magazines (my articles have been published in Cosmopolitan Singapore, Harper’s Bazaar and more), but now I’m the editor-in-chief of a personal finance website by day and author by night. I’ve written six novels so far, three of them are YA/NA contemporary, and three are part of an Asian fantasy trilogy. I’m a Gilmore Girls fan and an unabashed serial re-reader of my favorite books. My first book was published in 2013 in a nationwide competition in Singapore, and that came out of a one-act script I wrote in playwriting class in university.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’m an only child so books were my constant companion. Becoming a writer felt like a natural progression from being an avid reader. I wrote my first (terrible) murder mystery novel when I was 11 after reading one too many Nancy Drew books – and I fell in love with the process of writing novels right away. I’ve been writing ever since in various forms – novels, short stories, poems, plays.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: It’s either The Doomspell by Cliff McNish or Adventures of the Wishing-Chair by Enid Blyton.
- The one that made you want to become an author: Ooh, this is a major one. I’d say The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen or Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta and Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton still live rent-free in my head years after I read them.
Your latest novel, No Room In Neverland, is out November 21st! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Bittersweet, whimsical, heartbreaking, escapist, vivid.
What can readers expect?
It’s a story within a story, where the present-day narrative is laced with a dark Peter Pan retelling. The lines between memory and fiction are blurred (i.e. unreliable narrator a la We Were Liars by E. Lockhart), and the book explores themes of escapism, dysfunctional families, childhood trauma, abandonment, and mental health. Tropes include stubbornly optimistic girl meets cynical boy (though not quite sunshine x grumpy), childhood friends turned lovers, and found family.
Where did the inspiration for No Room In Neverland come from?
Two books, mainly: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart and On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. These books inspired me to experiment with writing a novel in non-chronological order. The narrative voices were so strong and compelling, and I was shook by the emotional reveals in both stories, so I decided to recreate that with my own version of a deceptively whimsical story told by an unreliable narrator that masks a darker, more tragic truth.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I thoroughly enjoyed writing the adventures in Neverland, i.e. the retelling bits in between the chapters. I’d never written middle-grade novels before and this felt like dipping my toes into that genre without committing to writing a full novel in that voice. I enjoyed switching narrative voices between the Neverland chronicles and present-day, between fantasy and contemporary, and I think that kept things interesting and exciting.
Weaving those two narrative threads into one coherent book was also a fun challenge! I had been very stuck around page 200 in the first draft (which was only written in present-day), but I put the manuscript away for months and came back to it one day with the idea for the Neverland chronicles, and immediately everything clicked. The words flowed, and I completed the novel in a couple of months after that. It was a magical experience that I had never experienced before and up till this day I’m hoping to recapture that magic with my new works.
This is your fifth published novel! What are some of the key lessons you have learned when it comes to writing and the publishing world?
For writing, always believe in the story you want to tell. No matter how many setbacks you face writing the story, no matter how difficult it gets (first drafts are always terrible!), no matter how many rejections you receive, if it’s a story you want to tell and that you believe deserves to be on the shelves, then – as Gemma (the protagonist of No Room in Neverland) would say – always hold on to that hope. I often call this book the book of my heart, because I put so much of myself into it emotionally. Years of rejection almost made me give up on it, until Penguin Random House SEA acquired it.
As for publishing, I find that it helps to always have a project to work on. Whether you’re editing or querying or on submission, always be working on something so you don’t pin all your hopes on that one thing. Always keep things moving, so that by the time your book gets acquired (or not), you have another thing to look forward to and you can either move on more quickly or have another manuscript for submission.
What’s next for you?
I have the last book in the Children of the Desert trilogy coming up in the first half of 2024, but that’s not the end of the Children world, because I have a spin-off duology planned. Aside from that, I have ideas brewing for a new adult contemporary romance and a YA urban fantasy.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
For YA: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, On the Jellicoe Road and Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta, Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley, Stolen by Lucy Christopher, What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen, The Girl King series by Mimi Yu, the Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater, the Curseworkers series by Holly Black, Rebel of the Sands series by Alwyn Hamilton, Daughter of Smoke and Bone series by Laini Taylor, the Legend series by Marie Lu.
Adult: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton, Elegies for the Broken-Hearted by Christie Hodgen, Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, After Dark by Haruki Murakami, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.
