We chat with author Samantha Sotto Yambao about Water Moon, which follows a woman who inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and she then embarks on a magical quest when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop.
Hi, Samantha! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! Thanks for having me! I’m a mom to four furry kids and two of the non-furry kind. When I’m not writing or fighting a losing battle with Husky hair – Wait. Scratch that. I’m never not writing or drowning in Husky hair.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
My favorite bedtime stories were the odd little stories my dad made up on the spot about talking peanuts, tiny soldiers, and flags that could walk. This nightly ritual set the foundation for my love of all things strange, mysterious, and magical. But while I enjoyed cosuming everything from David Eddings to Anne Rice, the first time I ever attempted to write fiction was in my thirties when I tried to nurse my book hangover from The Time Traveler’s Wife by writing a story about a character that wouldn’t/couldn’t die. This story would become my debut novel, Before Ever After.
With it being the new year, have you set any goals for the year?
I have two. The first is to savor every moment of Water Moon’s release into the wild and the second is to finish polishing up my next book while remembering to breathe and drink more water.
Your latest novel, Water Moon, is out January 14th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Dreaming while you are awake
What can readers expect?
Hopefully, not much. The less they know about the book, the better. I believe Water Moon is best experienced by going in blind and letting its world slowly unravel around you.
Where did the inspiration for Water Moon come from?
The seed for Water Moon was planted on a visit to Ninenzaka Street in the historical district of Kyoto before the pandemic. I had wandered into an old and traditional-looking house and found myself in a modern coffeeshop. I left the coffeeshop with a matcha latte and an itch to capture the sense of wonder that I had felt when I had stepped into the unexpected. The missing piece was the right story to tell it. This part of the puzzle would fall into place during lockdown when I saw how the pawnshops in my city became lifelines for so many people. It made me think about how the items that were pawned weren’t just objects. They were the physical manifestations of the stories and choices that led their owners to the pawnshop’s door. Water Moon was born when I weaved these thoughts I had about pawnshops and my memories of Ninenzaka together.
Did you find yourself thinking about your own regrets whilst writing?
My characters do most of the thinking while I write and so if any of my own regrets did creep in, I pushed them away.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I enjoyed the whole process of writing Water Moon. I had never felt more free as a writer. My previous books had strong historical fiction components and so I had to work within the parameters or real life events and characters. With Water Moon, my only limit was my imagination.
Did you face any challenges? How did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge I faced with Water Moon came after I had written the book. Fantasy was a new genre for me and not a genre that my then-agent represented. After the book was with her for a year, I decided that it was time to move on. Our parting was amicable and I will always be grateful to her for being the first person who wasn’t related to me who believed in my writing. I was pushing fifty at the time we parted ways and had two traditionally published books with Penguin Random House and two independently published ones. It would be extremely generous to say that I was a midlist author at that point and so the idea of starting over was terrifying. I knew, however, that I couldn’t look my kids in the eye and tell them to never give up on their dreams if I gave up on mine. I couldn’t give them a a guarantee of a happy ending, but I could show them that dreams didn’t end when a chapter did.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Black Beauty
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Time Traveler’s Wife
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Flowers for Algernon
What’s next for you?
I’m finishing up my edits on my next book and once I’m done with that, I’ll be preparing the synopsis and first few chapters of a new book idea that I’ll soon be sharing with my agent and editors.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up in 2025?
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by Victoria E. Schwab, and Cat’s People by Tanya Guerrero.
