Emma Pei Yin, today's guest author, is a UK-born and raised Hong Kong Chinese writer. She writes for publications including Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, HerCanberra, Aniko Press, Hong Kong Review, and Books + Publishing Australia. She resides in Australia with her partner and their extremely barky Dachshund, Lady. She is the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency specialising in manuscript editing, copyediting, proofreading, and web content copy for writers and businesses.
When Sleeping Women Wake is Emma's first novel... In this remarkable and harrowing debut novel, three extraordinary women--a mother, her daughter, and their maid--are each forced on a journey to survival during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II.
You could win one of five copies of When Sleeping Women Wake. Send an email with your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]
The Roads We Didn't Take
When I was seventeen, I had my life all planned out. I was going to attend the New York Film Academy in London, become a screenwriter, and write stories that would change the world. It was my dream, one I had nurtured since childhood, scribbling ideas into my Mulan diary and watching my grandfather practice calligraphy with quiet reverence each morning after breakfast.
But life, as it often does, had other plans.
Circumstances beyond my control derailed my path, and instead of London, I found myself on a plane to Australia with nothing but a one-way ticket and the weight of uncertainty pressing against my chest. I had no blueprint--no safety net--just an overwhelming sense that I had failed before I had even begun.
For a long time--over a decade, to be precise--I saw that detour as a loss. A lost opportunity, a lost dream, a lost version of myself that would never exist. But as the years passed, I started to realise that sometimes, the roads we don't take shape us just as much as the ones we do.
Had I followed my original plan, I might never have fallen in love with fiction writing. I might never have experienced the solitude and freedom that moving to a new country allowed me. I might never have built the resilience that rejection--both in life and publishing--inevitably requires.
In 2019, I finally did what my teenage self had once dreamed of, albeit a little different. I enrolled in university and attained my BA in Creative Writing. I started writing again, not because it was some part of some grand plan, but because I couldn't not write. And here I am, years later, with a novel on the way.
The truth is, there are infinite versions of ourselves that exist in the choices we make and the ones we don't. We are the sum of our detours, the unexpected turns, the missed opportunities that led to others we never even imagined.
I suppose this is my long-winded way of saying: if you're at a crossroads or looking back at a path you didn't take, wondering what if, know this: just because a road is closed doesn't mean the journey is over. Sometimes, the detour is where the real story begins.
With love,
Emma
-- Emma Pei Yin
You could win one of five copies of When Sleeping Women Wake. Send an email with your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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