What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

First, to own who you are. If you create with words on a daily basis, you are a writer. Period. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

My advice is simple, and it’s simply this: write. As much as you can. And read. Read as much as you write.

Art is just a pretty word for hard work with a vision. If you write, you have vision. So do the work. The rest will come.

How did you come up with the idea for The Drafting of Josephine Saito? 

When I was a Junior in high school, my boyfriend at the time turned 18. I remember we went onto the Selective Services website at my house after school so that he could register his name. Of course, there hasn’t been a draft in my lifetime, and this was prior to 9/11, but we sat there for almost an hour, staring at the screen and talking.

What if there were a draft?

I remember thinking, I’m so glad I’m a girl, so I don’t have to do this. But I spent a lot of time after that struggling with the thought. Why was I so relieved? Did it mean I didn’t love my country? Did I ever think there would be another draft? What did I think about women serving in the military? Women fighting in combat?

Ten years later, these questions still fascinated me. They became the premise for The Drafting of Josephine Saito.

Did you serve in the military?

Neither I nor any of my immediate family members have served in the armed forces. One of my uncles served in the US army in Vietnam. He was in Ho Chi Minh City on the night it fell to the Viet Cong. My father-in-law also served in Vietnam, though his experience was quite different. He spent the entire war in Thailand, loading nuclear missiles for the air force. I also have a cousin who served in the Gulf War and a dear friend who served in Iraq.

None of them were drafted.

Did you have to do a lot of research to write The Drafting of Josephine Saito?

Did I ever! I really think I did more researching than writing. I knew almost nothing about the military, modern China, or being Asian-American (I’m a European-descended mutt). Every turn in my story just seemed to open up more questions, which meant more research, and the new research inevitably blew holes in everything I’d already written. Which meant lots of rewrites.

I also faced the challenge of striking a balance between accuracy and storytelling. Yes, the army is real, but the war I created is fictional. Yes, China is real. There really is a women’s prison in Hangzhou but (a) there was no way I was going to get myself inside it and (b) this wasn’t a story about the modern Chinese prison system. Or the US military. It’s a story about a person. It’s her story. And that’s what I needed to write.

I’m not going to say it wasn’t hard. There were times when I just hung my head over my keyboard and said, “Why? Why couldn’t I write a story about a nice little white girl from Seattle who does NOT join one of the most nuanced, hard-to-understand niches of culture known to the human race and then travel to a continent I’ve never even set foot in?!”

But that wasn’t Josie’s story. That wasn’t Josie. And for some reason I can’t explain, I was compelled to tell her story, her way. And that’s what I did.

Note: An infinite debt of gratitude to Lt. Morgan Knighton who devoted an amazing amount of his limited time to get me started on the right path and clear the clouds when I dug myself in too deep. And for his poetic description of the JBLM cafeteria.

What are your favorite books?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Once and Future King by T.H. White, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and The Giver by Lois Lowry. 

I’m sure I’ve left a few out, but you can pretend you didn’t notice.