What is your book about?
GHOSTS OF WAIKĪKĪ is my debut novel. It’s about an out-of-work newspaper reporter named Maya Wong, who reluctantly returns home to Hawaiʻi to be a ghost writer for a rich land developer whose family paved over much of Oaʻhu. When her new boss’s father dies under mysterious circumstances, she discovers coming home to paradise can be murder.
How do you get inspired to write?
I think it’s more about discipline than inspiration. It’s like going to the gym regularly or not skipping Tuesday night Zumba even if your day job was a bitch. Writing has to be routine. It keeps those creative muscles toned and primed for getting words on the page. The longer you stay away, the harder it is to get back into the groove.
That said, I don’t set unrealistic goals, either. I have a full-time job, and I’m a mom of teenagers. Being a published author is the equivalent of two full-time jobs: writing books and promoting them. My job as an author includes going to conferences, book events (my own and author friends’) and being part of the writing community through organizations like Sisters in Crime.
My WIP is always open on my computer. I’m not able to work on it every single day, but the tab on my screen is a constant reminder to write.
How do you deal with writer’s block?
I go nuclear.
Writer’s block is usually a signal that something isn’t working in my manuscript. I’m a plotter, and I got stuck when I reached the midpoint in my current WIP. I plowed ahead and wrote some more, but I knew something was wrong because I kept writing myself into corners.
I was talking to Honolulu noir author Scott Kikkawa about my problem. “You have to go nuclear,” was his ominous response.
By “nuclear” Scott meant I had to stop writing and read my manuscript from the beginning to find out where it went awry, like retracing the last movements of a missing person. Scott was right. My midpoint scene wasn’t really the midpoint.
What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?
My grandmother. She was born in San Francisco in 1926, but during the Depression she was sent back to China where she lived with her father’s first wife until returning to the U.S. in her teens. She was involved in a scandal that rocked Chinatown and is still talked about to this day.
What are you currently working on?
I’m revising the second book in what I hope will be the sequel to Ghosts of Waikīkī.
I’m also marinating on a standalone mystery about a widow with young children who runs the family’s mochi shop with her grandmother in what is left of Sacramento’s Japantown. Secretly, she’s investigating the unsolved murder of her husband, a police detective killed in the line of duty.
Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?
I’ve been wanting to write a mystery with an Asian American newspaper reporter as a protagonist ever since I was a reporter working a split shift to make morning deadlines and cover city council and school board meetings at night. Partly because reporters witness a lot of weird stuff we couldn’t make up if we tried, and partly because I wanted more representation and diversity in genre fiction.
But by the time I started writing it twenty years later, the newspaper industry had changed so drastically it no longer made sense for Maya to be a working journalist. Having her struggle to pay bills and taking a ghost-writing gig for a rich land developer was a great way to create tension.
What kind of research did you do for this novel?
I lived in Hawaiʻi as a kid, so most of my research involved Googling things I thought I remembered but needed to confirm. I wanted Hawaiʻi to be more than a tropical island backdrop. I wanted readers to come away with a small taste of the rich and diverse local culture and some understanding of the socioeconomic issues that play out every day.
I dug out my old Hawaiian history books and started following local businesses, news outlets, and podcasters on social media. I ended up getting an idea for something that Maya will grapple with in Book 2 from a TV news post about the city cracking down on long-term stays in vacation condos.
For my mochi mystery, I spent a day hanging out at Osaka Ya, one of the last remaining, family-run mochi shops in all of California.
In general, what emotions do you usually wish to elicit with your writing?
I write mysteries, so of course I want to elicit suspense, enough to keep readers turning the pages.
I also hope to spark their curiosity. I love books set in real places that are so integral to the story, they’re like another character because they either a) make me want to visit, or b) they transport me back to a place I’ve already been to.
So I hope my writing does that for other people.
Best advice on writing you've ever received?
Just do it.
Can you tell us a two-sentence horror story?
I can’t. My battery is dying.
What else would you want readers to know about you? Where can readers find you online?
Readers can find me on my out-of-date website, jenniferkmorita.com or on social media. I’m most often on Facebook @authorjenniferkmorita or Instagram @jenniferkmorita
Comments