#57 Lily Chu: How Audiobooks Have Changed Her Writing Process

Off The Shelf with Morgann Book

In this episode of 'Off The Shelf,' Morgann Book interviews Audible author Lily Chu about her journey as a writer, her latest audiobook 'Just Kiss Already,' and how the rise of audiobooks has

Key takeaways

Audiobooks have influenced Lily Chu's writing process by making her more conscious of auditory flow and pacing.
Swearing, while natural in written form, can feel jarring when heard aloud, prompting subtle edits for audio versions.

Main topics

Lily Chu's journey from Twitter contest to securing an agent
The impact of audiobooks on narrative structure and editing

Notable quotes

"I swear like a sailor. It is a gift I got from my mother."

"Swearing is extremely jarring when you're listening to something. Like it really is emphatic when you're listening to it."

Conclusion

Lily Chu's experience illustrates how the rise of audiobooks has reshaped her approach to

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) you Speaker 1 (0:04) Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Off the Shelf. This episode is brought to you by Audible, stories that speak to you. On top of having a massive library of audiobooks, they give you more out of every single story with A-list narrators, music, and sound design. Today's guest has written several Audible originals performed by Philippa Soo, John Cho, and Simu Liu, and more incredible voices. Her most recent audiobook, Just Kiss Already, follows a forensic anthropologist and a filmmaker in her upcoming release, Christmas Confidence. Speaker 1 (0:34) essential is available for pre-order as of August 24th. She also loves ordering the second cheapest wine and like many of us staying up late listening to a good book. Lily Chu, welcome to Off the Shelf. Hi Morgan, good to see you again. Thank you for coming in. Now as someone who wears a lot of perfume, what if you had to wear one perfume for the rest of your life, which one are you choosing? It is Sandalwood. It's what? Sandalwood. Okay. It is. So it's more of a note rather than like a brand of perfume. Yeah. In fact, my most favorite of sandalwood has been discontinued. It was like 1990s body shop and it was, you know, my, my peak sandalwood. So I have spent years trying to replicate that. Speaker 1 (1:19) But yeah, it's my favorite, my favorite smell. Now, this might be a silly question, but do you ever associate different smells with your books? Or like, do you ever think about like what your characters might smell like or wear? Yes, that I definitely do. But I don't think like the books have a particular smell to them. But characters, you are thinking. But characters, yeah, because especially I write romance. So, you know, your characters, there's always... Full sensory detail, right? It's like not just what do they look like, but how does it feel when their hair rushes over your skin? Or what do you smell when they walk by and you just get that whiff of citrus or cedar or, you know, fruity light florals, whatever it is. Now, can you take me back to how you found your agent through a Twitter contest? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You know, I think back and. Speaker 1 (2:10) Just writing is so, a writing career is so much luck, so much luck, so much timing. So this was back when there were all sorts of Twitter contests going on and you would basically write a tweet that was your log line. So just a one line, 100, what was it, 140 character description of your book. And if agents liked it, I believe it went, like they would like it, like if they liked it, they would like it. And then you would send them like five pages or three chapters or whatever it was. So I wrote mine in and my agent, Carrie, liked it. And then she asked for the full. And so then I freaked out. Did you have a full at the time? Yeah, I did. I did. But of course, I went through it, you know, again, just in case. Because you kind of feel like you've got one shot, right? Speaker 1 (3:02) And I wanted to make sure I gave it my best shot. And I sent it over. And then she's like, hey, do you have time for a call? I was like, that's the call. And I said yes. And so, you know, we had a call. And I was actually, it was, I was at work. And it was during my lunch at work. And we just talked to see if we were on the same. wavelength for a lot of stuff and then at the end she's like okay that sounds really great you know I'm looking forward to this and I actually had to clarify I'm like so like are you my agent now because I didn't I just really wanted to there was no you know confusion she's like yeah like if you if you want me I'm like yeah yeah yeah um so we've been together Speaker 1 (3:44) gosh, over 10 years now. So since then? Yeah. And we still have not sold that book that she took me on for. What book was it? It is a steampunk romance, which I actually, I read over a little while ago and I still really like, and I'm, I'm actually going to take it and kind of morph it into something else. Cause I just, I really like the characters. I really like the world. It's going to be something. It is going to be something one day. Okay. So then You have this steampunk romance and then you also have your debut novel, The Stand-In. Was that the next step or was there others in between? There was other stuff in between, but the problem, not the problem. One of the challenges of being a writer is that you can write a great book, but if the market's not buying that book, then you can't really sell it because no one's buying it. In 2020, my agent, you know, I was in New York. Speaker 1 (4:35) for a conference and we met for lunch at a waffle fry place and Carrie's like, hey, you know, do you want to do you want to sell a book? I'm like, yeah, I do. And she's like, OK, I do, too. So she's like, what's selling now is rom-coms. You know, what do you think about, you know, trying to write one? I was like, I don't I don't know. Like, so I said no. And now I say yes to everything because you never know what's going to happen. And then a few months later, I was thinking about it and some things happened. And I was like, you know what? I am, I'm going to try. I'm going to try to write a rom-com. And this was January, 2020. And I, I texted her or emailed her just as she was texting, emailing me. And I was like, I want to try that rom-com just as she said, you really do. I want you to try that rom-com. So we're like, okay, you know what? Let's, it doesn't hurt to try. Speaker 1 (5:27) And then we all know what happened in the early months of 2020. So I was at home writing my funny stand in while the world was, you know, and watching like Korean zombie shows on Netflix, working from home, writing this book. And I finished it around June and it sold in July. Wow. Yeah. Now, in my research, I saw that it went to an eight house. auction and then landed that Audible. What did that feel like? Really surreal. It was because that's the dream, right? That it goes to auction. And it was also happening when all this other stuff was happening. So nothing felt real at all. But it was also the it's going through the first week of July. So we have Canada Day. The Americans have Fourth of July. So the auction also took extra time because there's like a weekend and two holidays and this and that. So I was just. Speaker 1 (6:23) on edge for a full week. Like just please, please, please, please, please. And then when it sold, I actually wrote myself a letter because I knew I would never get that feeling back. Like no matter what happened, I would never get that feeling of selling that book in that situation again. And then I've lost the letter. I don't know where it is. It's somewhere in the house. But I wanted to capture, like feelings are so, they go by so quickly. I want to capture that. particular moment of a dream coming true. What did it say? Like, did you just talk about how you were feeling in that moment? Yeah, I just wanted to. Well, I mean, the goal was that sometime down the line, I would find the letter or reread the letter and be like, yes, like. Speaker 1 (7:10) you know, in this one moment, you did the thing you wanted to do. Hopefully, if someone finds that letter, like, in a floorboard or something 40 years from now, they will have that feeling. But, yeah, I just really wanted to, like, it's also hard for me to, I... I process things through writing. So that was part of me kind of processing what I was feeling because it's not until I write it down that I can kind of see what I'm feeling, if that makes sense. So that was also me helping myself just like, oh my God, this happened. Wow. Now, the story goes to Audible. Did you have to change anything about the book now that it was going to be audio first? Speaker 1 (7:54) No, not really, because my deal was not just Audible, but I also have a print publisher. Yes. So my books are, they're not written as kind of scripted, you know, radio drama ensemble scripts. They're written as narrative novels that you can read or listen to. So I think my writing just naturally lends itself to... um an audio space as well which is great so all the edits we did were you know the usual kind of edits um but we do for all my audible books we do also do an audio edit like an audio draft and when I say we I mean my editor does all the work but it is stuff like you take away a lot of the dialogue tags like you know he said she said if someone sighs the narrator can just sigh so it's stuff like that um that you can Speaker 1 (8:46) pull out to streamline the audio draft. But the book is fundamentally the same. Yeah. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but did you also take out some swearing? No. After hearing it in audio or no? No. So that's the, that is funny.