Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:06): Hello, and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodwin, your host. This podcast is dedicated to the aspiring writer and artist and will provide inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or are new to it, I thank you very much. I would also appreciate if you took a moment to follow it on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts. Writers of the Future is one of the longest-running writing competitions in the world, now celebrating over four decades of providing a helping hand as initially conceived by L. Ron Hubbard. Today’s guest is Melissa Yuan-Innes, publishing under the pseudonym Melissa Yi. Melissa was a winner in 2000 and published in Writers of the Future Volume 16 with her short story, Skin Song. She was later invited as a guest to this podcast, number 84, almost five years ago, and I’m happy to welcome her back. Her website reads: I’m a Canadian emergency doctor, I’m a writer, I’m weird.

As this is the Writers of the Future podcast, we will focus on her writing for which she has written everything from medical mysteries and medical articles, from picture books to romance to suspense and from werewolves to baby books. Enough said. So welcome, Melissa.

Melissa Yi (01:20): Thank you so much, John. Love being back here.

John Goodwin (01:24): Yes. So from what I can see, you’ve now published over twenty-five novels. You’re at fifteen novels when we last spoke about five years ago. So this makes roughly two books a year, which you know you’ve already pre-qualified saying, okay, well, you got pre and post children. But this combined with working your medical shifts and then in the league of your own as a productive person, just I’m just interested how you do all this.

Melissa Yi (01:50): Well, I guess there’s no one secret sauce for it, but for me, I respond very well to external deadlines and I in general wouldn’t have trouble concentrating. So if someone would say, Mel, you only have five minutes, I’d be like, wait, I’m just gonna write. So I bring my computer everywhere and I would start writing. You know, yesterday I went to a I appointment for my daughter and she was like, You’re bringing your laptop and I’m like, Yes, just in case.

As it turned out I couldn’t use it, and I’m not quite as productive as I used to be, but I still like to be prepared all the time. I do wanna say though that if you have different abilities and like, you know, my family’s had a lot of health issues and stuff in the last nine months, like it’s no problem if you need to take more time or if it’s not the right season for you. But whatever you can capitalize on, please do so that people can hear your voice and get your story ’cause that’s what we want in the world.

John Goodwin (02:50): Yeah, and we’re definitely gonna dig into that ’cause that’s what again, as we before we started this interview, that’s I’m most interested and just fascinated about you. It’s just your just amount of energy and creative juices that you’ve got to be able to do everything that you do as a doctor, which obviously you’ve got a huge help button wanting to help people, and then raising a family, and then having twenty five novels is just, you know, you’ve got obviously you sleep, but maybe you have to parse that out too. So I’ll take five minutes here when I’m waiting for the eye doctor.

Melissa Yi (03:27): Yeah, and you know, I have to say, like I did sacrifice certain things, right? Like people will talk about the latest TV show and I’d just be like, I haven’t seen it. I don’t generally watch TV. I will do with my family as a special occasion sort of thing. And I know like people have told me it’s a very good way to learn story. So I if there’s something really that captivates me, I will make time for it, but that otherwise I won’t.

Or I’ll do, I’ll listen to audiobooks because it’s very important to read as well as write, you know. And I’ll do that while I’m working out. Or, you know, like I will try to multitask if possible, even though the evidence now is that multitasking, you think you’re doing a better job than you actually are. But that’s what I try to do is to really enjoy writing and editing and meeting people and sharing my work, but also enjoying the rest time and just acknowledging, you know, we’re all human.

We all make mistakes if we push too hard, so then just it’s great to be able to take the time and rest.

John Goodwin (04:32): Sure, sure. So it’s you know, you made the comment like we think we’re doing better than we really are. But then there’s the other side to that coin too, of you know, I guess you have to work out a happy medium on whatever’s going to happen because you have other people that are absolutely, you know, the couch potatoes. I’m just enjoying I’m just enjoying doing nothing, you know, and I like doing I mean, I’m a very busy life I’ve had for a long time and you know, I will I’ll slow down once, you know, I go through that fire and get turned to the ashes. You know, up until then I have no intention of slowing down.

Melissa Yi (05:16): I’ll just give you an example. Like last week I went to Ottawa. So I live outside of a city. So that’s another thing I guess. Like if I wanna do anything I have to drive a long time relatively. So I try to stack everything together. So I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna see my mother and I’m gonna lecture like I was supposed to teach medical students how to suture. And I’m gonna there was a free class on house dancing, so I’m like, and I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna try and do it with a friend so it’s together time. She brought her young son, so that’s,

I really, so that’s a lot of fun. And then I’m gonna go to my sister in law’s. Can I meet my son at the same time and we can eat together? Like just everything like I do try to make things sort of hyper efficient if possible. And then, but then I also will recuperate afterwards with my…

John Goodwin (06:01): Yeah. No, that’s cool. Yeah, that’s very, very cool. And it’s I’m I don’t watch TV at all. I mean for myself too, because of this podcast, I read almost a book a week. And so any time I’d have for just entertainment, and that’s one of the things unfortunately, I mean I would love to be able to just do the audio book ’cause I can multitask when I’m listening to an audiobook just to listen as I’m exercising or something, but I read like twice as fast as I can listen.

Comfortably. You know, you can crank it up and it just becomes distracting to listen to it if it’s just you know, I just…

Melissa Yi (06:39): My husband makes fun of me. If he hears the audiobook is going [really fast sounds], he’s like, What is that?

John Goodwin (06:47): Yeah. I can handle 1.2, but beyond that I’m just like, why bother? I’ll just sit down and I’ll just read and but I’m taking I use my Kindle a lot to read with because I have a thing where because I read so much and if I’m not careful, if I don’t look up the words that I don’t understand, I’ll end up snoozing. It’ll puts me to sleep because of just the non-comprehension of the book. So that’s what I was commenting on you like I’m not familiar with medical. So I was looking up a lot of terms in there to be able to keep up with, you know, all the action because I’ve read Cthulhu’s stories and that part there I know the dark fantasy slash horror side of that. But then getting to the medical part, you know, the different terms and the equipment there, I just wasn’t familiar with it. So I was looking up a lot of words to be familiar with that.

I know medical dramas is a huge market, you know, so people listening to this are this is when we’re done with this interview, people are gonna be like, Wow, I need to really check out this book, Killing Me Slothly. We’ll get into that now that I’ve dropped that name. We’ll we’ll open it up now in just a just a second. But I like using a Kindle because then I can wherever I go, you know, sometimes even when I’m waiting in a stoplight, if I know it’s a long light, I’ll just okay, I’ll get another page or two in. just through I’m just I’m cause I’ve got I’ve got any given time three or four books in progress because I’ve got a print book, one place. I’ve got an audiobook, which is a slow burner, because it takes me longer to do that. And then I’ve got a couple Kindles going. And so I’m moving through them to be prepared. And then I have to immediately when I’m done listening to the book or reading the book, write down the questions so I don’t confuse it with something else. And I can just really put it together while it’s all fresh and okay.

Cause what I try to do with a podcast is to have a better understanding of the author. You know, you can you can find out and get the cliff notes or you can go to Goodreads or you can go to Amazon. Okay, here’s the different reviews. But I like to get more in insight into the author and what inspired the story to make it more like, wow, that sounds really cool. I really want to read that. It’s a it’s a different take on it, but it’s I really enjoy it. And that’s like I said, that’s my interest level on it.

Melissa Yi (09:12): You know, you’re not passively reading. You’re taking notes. Like you’re wondering about the author. You know, really that’s what we want. And you know, it’s like music or something that you would start dancing to, like same idea, like your brain is going, like you’re like, what is happening? I wanna know, I wanna be able to visualize the emergency room as well as Cthulhu, you know, like how am I going to do this? Like it’s a challenge for your brain cells.

John Goodwin (09:38): Yeah, and for me also with you, because I had I did an interview recently with Brandon Mull and he’s a great YA author. And he said one of the most recent books he did is, it took him a couple of years to be able to put together and make all the different pieces fit so he could do and that’s one of the things he was talking about why he thinks that computer generated books and will never surpass what a human can do because what you did with your book there is like, you know, and we’ll get into like, how’d she think that? How’d she even think it’d go that way? You know, it’s like, wow. It’s not something that an AI is going to be able to do because it’s so creative what you did there. And it’s so unique because of your experiences as a long-term published author as well as an established medical doctor putting these two things together and you know rolling the dice and here’s what comes out. So let’s talk about now Killing Me Slothly. So describe, you know, let’s do the little first of all description of the story. And then I’m gonna get more into like your journey on creating that book.

Melissa Yi (10:56): Okay, perfect. So, this is a book that stars Dr. Hope See, who is my avatar. You know, she is a resident doctor, which means that she has finished her medical school, but she still has to do at least two years of postgraduate training in family medicine is what she’s doing, and then she’s planning to do another year of emergency medicine, which is what I did in Montreal, Canada. And the twist is that she finds murderers in her hospital and outside.

So that’s an established series, the medical crime series. But then I decide to dive into the seven deadly sins. So your listeners have probably heard of pride, anger, gluttony, etc. So in this case it’s the third book. So I am working on I was working on sloth, which I found really interesting because we, to combine that with murder, first of all,

like you don’t really think of sloth and murder going together because sloth means torpor, it means you know, lassitude, it means, you know, melting into the couch. It’s not something that you associate with killing anybody, right? That was a difficulty anyway. And The Seven Deadly Sins is a spin-off series where she has supernatural encounters as well as working at the hospital. So it’s a medical thriller and it has supernatural elements.

So in this case, like so far, I’ve done Wrath, Gluttony, and now Sloth. I have wanted to have kind of a different monster or a different evil force for each one, each book. And I was struggling just with sloth, what to do. And my husband said, Well, why don’t you use Cthulhu? Because he’s sleeping. And if you know H. P. Lovecraft at all, which I didn’t know him very well myself, but he created this alien entity extremely strong, able to manipulate people, you know, without even, like even while sleeping itself was, is able to that has such force and such compulsion. And I was like, that would be really different to have a non-human antagonist, and how are you going to defeat it?

Melissa Yi (13:20): How you gonna meet it in a hospital and how would you defeat it? So I thought that that was an interesting challenge. And also because H. P. Lovecraft now, people are questioning more, you know, the racism and other biases that he had in his work. So how I would address that as a woman of color. So I thought those were all interesting things and I love a challenge. So it’s like, okay, let me do this. But of course, it nearly broke my brain to put it all together. I wanted to do like when I was reading the Call of Cthulhu and there are people there were dreamers and artists who were the first affected, which I thought was really interesting. You had mentioned how Writers of the Future is really a, you know, a hub for creators, like writers and artists. But unfortunately, these in his world, these were the first people who had trouble sleeping, who might be driven to hurt themselves, like just and I was like, oh, this could be really interesting for psychiatry or neurology. And I’d already done psychiatry earlier, so I was like, I’m gonna do neurology. And then I wanted to dive deeper into that. And you know, there are cases, for example, in New Brunswick there’s been a lot of controversy. That’s one of our eastern provinces. And a number of people there have complained of neurologic symptoms that no one can explain.

So one woman on CBC, our national public radio, was saying to the television, you know, she had moved to New Brunswick, you know, had everything planned, had, you know, I think it was on a farm, like she was quite physical. But then one day just started losing her memory. She woke up in the shower and had no idea who she, like why she was there. Like she had no memory.

And I thought of how terrifying that would be to just have your memory wiped out. You know, people complain about, well, you know, I said the wrong word or something like that, to actually just wipe out your thoughts would be something else entirely. And you have no explanation. Like no you know, one day you’re normal and the next day it’s gone. And your maybe your brain scan looks normal and your blood work looks fine, so we don’t think it’s infectious. So then what is it? But you still can’t function.

So I thought that was really interesting. So I wanted to have the artists affected and like and coming in to Hope at the hospital. And I also wanted to have, I, he wrote like my favorite short story from Lovecraft would be The Thing on the Doorstep, which I just thought was a very interesting plot. Which was he comes like the narrators that like his best friend comes up and says you know, basically I killed somebody, but I didn’t kill them. And it’s this like what? You know, so in this case, in my case, Hope has a patient who comes up to her and like her very first patient that day is an elderly woman who says, I shot someone six times in the head, but I didn’t kill him. And Hope is just like, Is this a fact? Is she making it up? You know, like what is going on. So she’s trying to verify this. and take care of the woman. And then other things are going steadily going wrong in the emergency room. There’s also a cult that says they’re going to end the world today. So that’s also exciting. There are lots of things going on.

John Goodwin (17:01): Plus she had the doctor the head doctor seems to be a total jerk a holic.

Melissa Yi (17:07): Unfortunately it can be a common problem, but yes. Yeah, when you are a resident, you’re kinda kind of at the mercy of this hierarchy. That yeah, you know, you want a good mark, you have to do well, like you know, this is your career on the line, but it’s not logical. Like you can be excellent and really know your stuff and still someone can decide that they don’t like you and they’re gonna take you down.

So, you know, it’s a balance when you’re in school for much of your life and stuff and I want to balance all those things in Killing Me Slothly.

John Goodwin (17:41): Right. Now how’d you come with the idea of Nec, you know, as the as the opposing force to Cthulhu Necrocomicon? I’m in the world of going to Comic Cons right now, so I just said it is Necrocomicon. Necronomicon, yes.

Melissa Yi (17:57): I think that’s correct. I’m sure one of your million listeners will correct us if we’re wrong. You know John wants to hear from you.

John Goodwin (18:04): Yeah, he went to she went to Necrocomicon.

Melissa Yi (18:10): That could be good. I bet somebody will can make a good meme out of that. Yes, so there has to be an opposing force. I guess I won’t say too much as a spoiler, but if Cthulhu just comes in and squishes everybody, that’s not a good story. Right? But what like but realistically, how many weapons are you gonna have in the emergency room? Like almost nothing. I wanted to have the idea of power that you could

confer onto Hope and her friends, because it’s really she has a group of friends that help her a lot. Her Scoobies. And I love the idea of books as power. So we’ve talked about, you know, having books on the go and reading them. To me, books are just a portal to another world, another way of thinking, you know, good, bad, ugly. It’s really beautiful. You know, people talked about you can live a thousand lives by reading books. And so I do love the idea of a book as a power source that Hope can access.

John Goodwin (19:19): That’s which is which is great. And it’s one of the tangents that I’m easily distracted onto is the whole subject of imagination, you know, and the value of books as compared to movies or television, because as the budgets go higher and higher and every concept, every iota of imagination has been usurped by CGI.

So, you know, I know to me what something is when I read it. But then I go to a movie and then I’m told, okay, that’s what this is. And it’s not that it’s not what that is. It’s just that my imagination, I feel much more comfortable if I’m able to get in there and start creating in that world as well. And I think there’s a lot of value to that. And so, that’s why I like reading a lot of different kinds of books. I don’t I’m all over the place on books. I’m

You know, I’ve I’ve got a children’s book, I’ve got End of the World, you know, I’ve got Cthulhu’s taking over an emergency room, and then I’m reading Western romance, you know, and there’s all these different things I have because there’s like I said, I’ve got listeners all over the place. But for me, it’s like, wow, how fascinating. I didn’t know I liked that. You know, because you can get into I only eat this kind of food, I only read this kind of book, I only watch this type of movie.

And so you never go out to see, you know, is this something you’d even like? You know, I don’t want to go to the beach. I don’t I don’t like the ocean. You ever been there? No, I just they’re sharks, you know, so you never get past, you know, whatever your fixed ideas. And so that’s one thing about

Melissa Yi (21:01): That’s, it’s so foreign to me. I love that I also read widely. I call it that I’m omnivorous when it comes to you know, like ’cause why not? Like, you know, just give it a try. Like if you get it from the library it’s free, you know, like they’re like you could just you can everything you can sample, like it’s having this buffet of the world, that you can eat. Like I totally agree.

It actually reminds me of my roommate for Writers of the Future, Leslie Claire Walker. I had mentioned that sometimes people would say to me, like, I don’t read vampires. Or I don’t read, you like exactly what you’re saying. Like, and she said, How sad for you. And I thought that was such a great response because for me, sometimes I feel like honestly, angry or defensive, or like, you know, it’s not just for kids. Everyone can read about in my case, I prefer werewolves. But you know what I mean?

Like just why not try different things? Like sometimes people are like, that’s for kids, like you know, for fantasy and science fiction, for example. And I find that really strange. I guess I never like placing limits on things or on myself. You know, obviously the earth only has so many resources. I don’t mean that, but I mean in general, like as you were saying, why label yourself and limit your world?

John Goodwin (22:26): Exactly. Exactly. Now, one of the things I wanted to be able to discuss and we’re bouncing around, but that’s kinda like my SOP standard operating procedure here. So now when we started, so I was talking about all the different things that you do. So I wanted to help dispel the idea that someone is too busy to be able to write.

You’ve got people that say, yeah, I’ve you know, I just don’t have time for it. I really want to, I got an idea. And probably everybody does have an idea for a story. And you know, you’ve got you go to a store and you can buy a guitar or a trumpet. Nobody’s expecting you to sit down and just start playing like, you know, your favorite guitar soloists, or to play, you know, Louis Armstrong. You just you need to practice.

There’s no different with writing or with creating art. You need to practice. You know, I with the writing, I do, I don’t write books. I’ve written I write I’ve written hundreds of press releases. I do that type of stuff, articles and whatnot. But for yourself, you know, when somebody comes up and says, you know, I you know, I’d like to, I’d love to, but you know, I just don’t have time, what would you say? Or, you know, because your life experience for me shouts out like, you know, you’re totally delusional thinking that you can’t do it.

Melissa Yi (23:58): Well, I guess I would one of the things I’d have to do is I’d have to thank Dean Wesley Smith and Christine Catherine Rush. So I met Dean actually at the Writers of the Future ceremony. He greeted us and said, You’re all professional writers now, congratulations. You can come and meet me and Chris. We have workshops in Oregon where we critique a story like you know, we go around critiquing a story on Friday nights, once a month it was.

And I was honestly confused at the time because I lived in Montreal and I was like, well, I don’t know why I’d fly across the continent and critique a story, you know, like it just wasn’t usual for me. But and you know, and I was I was doing my residency and everything like that. It wouldn’t have been easy for me to do. But eventually I did make my way over there. They had what they called a master class, which went on for two weeks. And there were lectures in the morning and the evening.

And you had technical assignments and you had short stories. It was like minimum three thousand, minimum ten thousand, minimum three thousand. Again, like you know, and then you had to do an anthology where you read other people’s work and you assembled them into what you would argue would be the best anthology. And it was a difficult week and I had just finished my intensive care rotation and I had to go back to an intensive care rotation.

So whereas they were like, Okay, now make sure you stay up and you talk to other people because that is the most important thing and you know, you get as much learning out of that as you do have anything, I’d just be like, see I gotta go to sleep. Like the lecture finished at ten PM your time and it’s one AM my time and I just and when I when I go back on you know, I have to get up at five, you know, so there’s just no way that I’d be able to do all these things. So you set your expectations, but at the end of that, they pointed out that we had written a minimum of this number of words.

Just also, by the minimum, not the maximum. And they were like, and who attended this number of lectures, which was, you know, so basically it was the equivalent of doing a full-time job, but you still managed to write, you know, let’s say fifteen or twenty thousand words during this time. And that was mind blowing to think like, wow, we can do all that. And then of course the people who are there were very driven.

So when we kept in touch afterwards, I was in ICU and I’m like Wow, Melissa, you wrote 500 words. You’re a superstar. And they’d be posting, like, I wrote 8,000 words. I’m like, so it was a little bit scary. But it did make me think of productivity, like because otherwise, like I would sometimes just be like, Well, I’m gonna write for an hour, and then I wouldn’t write anything. And I’m like, Well, the hour’s up, you know, like, and I don’t want to sit here forever, so I would go. Whereas like these people who are really doing the work, I was like, I better do the work.

So I did have role models for…

John Goodwin (26:53): By the way, Dean’s still writing about a hundred thousand words a month.

Melissa Yi (26:56): Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You have to slow down, even with a shattered shoulder. Yeah, it’s amazing. So you it does like working basically does become a habit if you can if you’re able to, like if your health allows, etc. And other and just set realistic things for you and keep going at it.

John Goodwin (27:00): At eighty, at eighty he’s still doing that.

Melissa Yi (27:25): And try not to think about other people. You know, like it could it can be a one on one thing. Like I was, I’m using this.

Christine Yant has tools for writers. It’s free. She doesn’t take donations. And you just put in the number of words that you write per day. And if you put in zero, I think that one you don’t get any color for it. But if you put in one word, it will color, you’ll get like yellow. Or something like, you know, and you can change the colors if you want. But you know, it rewards you for doing one word. And so when I was doing surgery, that’s what I would think to myself. I would think there’s a Latin word, which the line that I will horribly mispronounce, but something like “nulistia sinia linea,” which means “no day without a word.” You know, and I would just be like, well, I am extremely, extremely tired, but I’ll just think of a word. And that made me happy. Like I wanted to be able to create even under really difficult circumstances, even with really minimal sleep, etc. And so if that’s what you want, if that really makes you happy, then please do.

But I just want to say I’m also trying to balance that with having a life and having my children and enjoying them. So there’s no one right answer. You gotta find the right place for you. But if so I if people come up to me and they’re like, I can’t write, I got an idea, but I can’t, I’ll generally be polite with them, but I will not spend time with them because they need to want to do it. They have to motivate themselves.

John Goodwin (28:49): Good, good. Yeah, it’s you know, when someone, like a decent sized book could be like forty thousand words, you know, that’s maybe now you’re if you’re used to like comparing yourself to or if you want to compare yourself to some of the big epic fantasy writers, okay, then that’s a whole different league. But that’s totally self-inflicted on that one there. But you can write a forty-to-sixty-thousand-word book and that’s a decent book. And you can, you know.

Melissa Yi (29:13): People like shorter books now too.

John Goodwin (29:16): So if you if you’re writing like 500 words a day or 200 words a day, just do the math on that. You can have a book in a couple of months. But for yourself, what’s your curve on actually having a book that you could then, like right now, Killing Me Slothly, how long it takes you to write that book? And then I’m gonna go back, how long it take to where you felt comfortable with having a book enough quality of writing that you could then publish that book?

Melissa Yi (29:42): That book took me a long time. So it was over a year. so you know, Dean might have been ashamed of me, but I just

John Goodwin (29:51): No, no, no, no, no.

Melissa Yi (29:55): Well I was gonna add like I also had I had other things going on, like Terminally Ill became one of my other Hope See novels was a play and I was performing in it and I produced the play as well and it was important.

John Goodwin (30:09): Oh, by the way, I wrote and performed enough. [laughing]

Melissa Yi (30:14): So that was a like I don’t know if anyone’s ever done theater, but it’s so much work. Like, you know, even just thinking about lighting and costumes and stuff like that, even if you hire people to do it, like it’s like everything is very involved and you just don’t have a lot of time and you don’t have a lot of money and things have gotta get done. So yes, one of my friends, A.M. Dela Monica, I was like I was like, I’m tired, I don’t know why and she was like, I know why.

So, it just extended my production. As I said, also like I just was wrestling with it. Like I did all sorts of things. Like I was reading, like I would look up just sloth in titles and there was the case I’m gonna have to think of it actually. I’m gonna, The Case of the Lazy Lover or something like that. Like that that was it Perry Mason? Like I went and looked that up to see if that could apply to my book. Like I just I wanted to bring in Winnie, I did bring in actually Winnie the Pooh. You know, ’cause the idea of

John Goodwin (31:12): Yes. Okay, you’re being you’re getting good to your to your country there with Winnipeg. Yeah Winnie. Yeah.

Melissa Yi (31:22): Winnie the bear makes a like so I wanted to tie in so many things that it was a really big book intellectually. And so that takes me longer. Yeah, I like every book is a piece of my soul. So that takes a long, that can take a long time. There are other books like my YA book, The Red Rock Killer, for some reason, you know, there are poets there’s a poet who says like one line drops from the sky.

And that book, which R. L. Stein recommended for the I won a scholarship for the International Thriller Writers with that book. That book was relatively easy to write. And so that one maybe I wrote in a few months anyway. And then I had to go through that for me, editing takes forever. So I’ll have to redo it almost in editing. So I might double the time to edit it.

But in the end, I have to be able to stand by the work and I’m not interested in artificial intelligence, you know, which has taken fourteen of my works already and digested it without any credit. And I don’t want the environmental impact of these things. So it’s very important for me to just to share myself with the books. And for better or for worse, that’s what I want to do.

John Goodwin (32:54): So I get that. So now with your journey to become a published author, so how did that at the beginning when like, okay, I really want to be an author, I really wanna be a writer, I’m gonna really wanna be a doctor, I really wanna do plays, I really wanna have a family. So like let’s just let’s just keep that back down. Let’s just

Melissa Yi (33:14): Do all these things at once?

John Goodwin (33:17): Yeah. So then with the writing, so when did you start writing? At what point did you get published? And what point did you feel like you developed your own voice as an author?

Melissa Yi (33:28): Yeah. So I feel like writing, you know, it was sort of almost a lifelong dream. Like if you look at my baby book and stuff like that, I would have said that I wanted to be a writer starting in grade one. So around when I was six. I think that for me like my parents wanted my brother to learn Taekwondo, which was only in the west part of

Ottawa at the time. So they would drop me at the library and they would just keep driving and driving my brother, he’d have his lesson, they’d come back, pick me up, and then go home. And they do that three days a week. So I just was reading and reading. And then, so that was wonderful for me. I loved it. And then we moved to Germany when I was ten. My parents wanted to explore Europe.

But then I was like, but where are all my books? Like, you know, there were still books at the school library, but not as many of them. And the librarians would be like, Melissa, how many books do you read a day and stuff? It was kind of embarrassing. So I wanted to so then I started writing. Like I had friends who were great writers, you know, for our age and everything. So we would just write together. And then I came back to Canada. I was able to read again. I stopped I stopped writing as much in grade eight. But then after high school, my then boyfriend now husband was like, you know, you could write this summer. And I was like, no, like my parents would never go for that. I have to work, I have to get you know, money from university and stuff. He was like, Well, let’s talk to them. Like So I did, and to my amazement my parents were actually okay with it.

And I realized that I had kind of forgotten how to write, by, you know, not writing as much during high school. So I tried to get back into it and actually in my first year writing an informal logic class at university, which was the writing part was taught by Dr. Sylvia Bauerbank, who was incredible. And she gave me the book Writing Down the Bones. Or she put a bunch of books on the table and you could pick out whatever you wanted. And I picked up that book and I was like, Whoa, that was mine. Like it just spoke to me immediately at the idea of well, for example, one of the things that I just remember offhand was her talking about fighting the tofu. Like, you know, you’re fighting this amorphous force like when you are trying to get yourself to sit and meditate or sit and write. Like so she would draw these parallels between Zen and writing, which were really interesting. So, and then I was like, so then I started writing like you know something went click and I started writing poetry and I started writing stuff again. And but then I went right from undergrad to medical school. So I was just trying to balance, you know, like you know, as you say, I really want to go to medical school, I really wanna write, I really wanna have a family. Like how are supposed to do all those things? So I you know, my friend Kim and I, like once we sat down and we just actually I was writing Skin Song because this as when I went to dissect in first year, I was like, you know, I really wanna write about this. And there was also On Spec the magazine, the Canadian magazine was having a contest for the theme was music.

And I was like, I don’t know what I would write about, but that’s really interesting. And then I heard about synesthesia, which is when people can you know, taste a word or they see a color with a number, like you know, that like basically the senses are mixed so you have at least two together. And I was like, Wow, that’s so interesting. What if there was a girl who went to medical school and when she touched somebody, she would hear a song. She would hear some sort of music.

And what would happen if she was dissecting a cadaver and touched the cadaver. So I was just playing with that idea and I like and so I you know, just started off just writing straight up what it was like to dissect and then adding in the fantasy element that ended up being my story for Writers of the Future.

John Goodwin (37:35): I get it. So then at what point did you feel like you developed your own voice and not like, okay, I’m my favorite author was blah. So I’m I like how they do this and so you’re trying to emulate that person, or did you not go through that? You just immediately just, okay, here’s Melissa Yee.

Melissa Yi (37:57): We’ll see you in a minute. Yes. I guess is my other name. Yeah, I it’s true. I have never had trouble with voice. So good. but so Chris and Christine Catherine Rush would be instrumental with that too, because I used to have a more literary voice though, because I read a lot of literary work and so that also meant spending a lot of time thinking about each word, which I still like to do and is you know part of an occupational hazardous being a poet. But because they were very strict about trying to do output like that like where they were and during their workshop and then my friends were once I left the workshop and stuff. So there was that. So there was speed. And also medicine affected my voice too, because it’s very much about trying to convey information as quickly as possible with as few words as possible. So that really cut out a lot of literary stuff for me ’cause there’s…

One of the nurses was like, Wow, you use a lot of abbreviations. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s just how I’m trying to get all the information across to you in as few lines as possible. So that made me a lot more terse in how I write. And then how did I get to the point where I felt like I was ready to enter the publishing world?

John Goodwin (39:15): Mm-hmm.

Melissa Yi (39:18): Yeah, it’s like you have to believe in yourself and put your work out there and eventually that somebody responds to it. So I was doing that and so I started off with short stories because that’s much more manageable. And it’s tough getting rejection letters all the time. I may have mentioned this on my other interview with you, but Writers of the Future rejected me the first few times and I was angry and decided I wasn’t going to submit to Writers of the Future anymore. Which is so stupid, right? Because…

John Goodwin (39:49): Our record is forty-seven.

Melissa Yi (39:54): Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think I had submitted at least twice before. But when I went, I was surprised because one of the first-place winners had for the quarter, it was his first submission, but I was actually more interested in his wife, who had submitted regularly for years. And I was like, that is actually the key to longevity, not to, you know, accidentally have the winning lottery ticket right away.

But to be the person who’s willing to put in the work for years. And also my big takeaway for that, that I I’m sure I did mention was that I had to be willing to invest in myself in my career, which I still have trouble doing, but to be like, Okay, it’s okay to spend money on yourself. It’s okay to go to this course. I met an author, Stacy Allen, at Left Coast Crime.

And I was and I was feeling guilty that I’d come to the conference. You know, like I worried about my carbon footprint, I worried about taking time away from my family. Like, so like we’re eating hors d’oeuvres. She doesn’t know me. And I just I’m just randomly asking people, like, well, do you feel guilty about being here? Which is completely the wrong vibe for like anyone. And her friends like thought I was quite weird. but she turned around and she was like, You have a gift. You’re supposed you need to be sharing it. That’s why you’re here.

And she was so definitive. And I was like, Wow, thank you. And like her friends were ready to lead her away. And you know, she turned around and she told me like she, you know, had more articulate things to say about like that this is your dream and you have to fight for it and don’t let anybody take it away. And, you know, so I was so impressed with her and you know, and her work and she ended up me and her husband ended up getting a place in Italy and following their dreams and everything and

I do believe in that. Like our I wish our society was more supportive of people’s creativity and the wonderful things that you can do with it, instead of just being like, But how many books did you sell? And you know, how many downloads did you get and stuff instead of just it’s not all about numbers. It’s not all about money. It can’t be. Like there has to be something bigger than that.

John Goodwin (42:11): Yeah, well that’s the whole thing with the Writers of the Future. You know when Hubbard created it was to provide that platform. And what you’re you know, what you’re saying there is a lot of people have been writing and they don’t like even someone who’s right now is as big as Brandon Sanderson, when he got an Honorable Mention, he wasn’t sure that, you know, writing was the career for him because he had

never had any recognition like, okay, good, you’ve you got something going for you. So that Honorable Mention for him was a point of okay, you’ve got something, keep going, keep going, you know, and this amazing number of people that are now established writers that got started initially with Writers of the Future because it’s free to enter. So, you know, the adage of the poor starving artists is based on fact, not on some fantasy story. And so, you know, being able to enter a story, maintain all your rights to the story, get paid for it if you do win, but get recognized for it as you move on up the ranks of being selected. So the fact that right now we have thousands of entries every quarter, it’s a big contest. And it’s just what was originally created and what was intended for it, that was when it was started by L. Ron Hubbard is still

kept us a forefront. And that’s the reason for this podcast as well, to provide inspiration and tips. Come on, guys, you can do it. You can do it. Cause there isn’t that encouragement out there. So I’ll use that to bridge over now. So when you were out here in in 26 years ago in two in 2000, what do you remember most from that week? And you know, cause we had the workshop, there’s obviously all the winners, there’s the reveal of the art of your story, there’s the gala.

Anything in particular that stands out for you looking back at that?

Melissa Yi (44:08): Well, I am like an elephant, so I remember everything. Yeah, so you know, I remember like you you’re paired up with somebody, so I remember my twin who we stayed in touch with and I ended up at his house and he really enjoyed my mushroom salad. And afterwards I remember my fancy dress that I wore and that like you know, I remember that I bought wings because one of the artists partners had bought these gorgeous red feathered wings and was walking down Hollywood Boulevard with them and I was like, I want them too. But they were sold out of the red so I got blue ones and I’ll add a funny thing which is that since then my son wore them for Halloween and they were very popular.

You know, little like a three year old was like, Butterfly You know, the like the stories can keep going. Like overall just as you say, really special to meet people, to make a community, to write a new story, to learn about writing and to be celebrated as a writer at the beginning of your career when you’re not sure if anybody is ever gonna understand you or get you or pay you or anything. But then that to come here and be like, no, we’re gonna give you, you know, X number of dollars for winning. We’re gonna buy you a plane ticket and put you up in a hotel and give you a week of writing tips. You know, we’re gonna pay you for your story and the anthology and we’re gonna have a giant party. You know, I remember one of the luminaries was like, the only problem is after this people expect like that whatever time they get published they’re gonna have this gigantic party and it’s not like this. And I smiled because I was just wanting to enjoy it.

John Goodwin (46:03): Sure, sure. So you had a weeklong workshop there. So any particular essays, because it’s built, the workshop is built around writing essays from Hubbard in the 1930s and 40s. And we had, you know, Tim Powers, Orson Scott Card, Algis Budrys when he was still with us, Dave Wolverton, who was still alive when he was there with you. They really, you know, respected his writing advice, which, even though it was written in the 30s and 40s, has practical tips and that’s what Dean uses in his workshops too. And he told me multiple times, you know, I was just aspiring to be like L. Ron Hubbard in his writing speed and creativity. And so anything that stands out for you again twenty-six years later, looking back at, you know, the essays that were part of the workshop that were taught.

Melissa Yi (46:54): Now I would say the one that strikes me is “Search for Research.”

So I thought it was interesting that he says, you know, he wrote these marine stories and he had that background, but actually those ones weren’t the ones that really gather people’s imaginations. It was the ones where he went and researched them and really knew his subject. And he said that you can’t write a story unless you’re deeply interested. And in fact, if you already know the subject, you can become careless.

John Goodwin (47:30): Mm-hmm.

Melissa Yi (47:30): So and he also said that he wanted to become a writer of infinite versatility, which spoke to me as somebody who loves to write across genres and not fit into one box. So that I found really interesting, especially because I do a lot of research for my books. So for example, I’d just rewrote Pride and Prejudice in Newfoundland, which is our easternmost province, and a very distinct personality. So I got my license to practice medicine in Newfoundland so that I could capture a little bit better the spirit and the music and if not the language and everything so that was a lot of fun. And this year I got my medical license to practice in British Columbia, which is the West Coast. So above you in California and I wanted to be looking at the gold rush and ghost towns and in this case I’m gonna be, I’m rewriting, so that was Pride and Provocateur and this will be Sense and Sword Agility.

So it’s Sense and Sensibility with dragons and talking swords. And I want to start in… [laughing]

John Goodwin (48:36): When are ya gonna get your license to practice on in the space station, you know. Yeah

Melissa Yi (48:43): …happen with book three. But I do enjoy the idea of researching and of, you know, really feeling it. ‘Cause for myself, I’m you know, I’m really in my own head. It’s hard for me to imagine like how things smell and what the layout of the room is. I’d rather go see it if I can and capture it as much as I can with my words.

John Goodwin (49:05): Mm-hmm. So now with so on your research, can you just like walk me through how you put together Okay, how you put together and Killing Me Slothly. So you said it took you a while, it took you a long while to write that book. So when you your procedure for writing a book is you can’t have you can’t be a pantser and do the book you just did there. That just does not seem like…

Melissa Yi (49:32): I am a pantser. But it was so painful. Like I tried. I tried to do other things. Like I did so many things. Like I I took a notebook and I wrote down like this idea and this idea like because and on this page so that I could physically have a record of it so I wouldn’t forget. I’m like, Do you want to include this? Do you want to include that? You know, I use Scrivener, so I have multiple folders, like, you know, anyway, so I tried many, many things, but it was really hard.

John Goodwin (50:02): Wow, ’cause it seemed like you had to have had to make all those different pieces fit together, you know.

Melissa Yi (50:09): It was like clockwork. I had to go back and like and I do like say what happens in each chapter and I did put them in a piece of paper and I had to like move it around and everything. Like for those complex books, like those are tough for sure.

John Goodwin (50:24): Yeah, it was like that seems like you’d have to have had some type of methodology to piece it together so it would all come together because there’s so many disparate parts. You’ve got a medical emergency room and you’ve got Cthulhu. It’s like, come on, you know, yeah, I’m just kinda like gonna weave this together just, you know, out of whole cloth. It’s like, no, you have and then let’s throw in a little bit of the Necrocomicon or whatever. I’m gonna still leave it with that.

And, you know, with all these demigods and gods fighting each other, but I’m still trying to make sure this bird doesn’t fall and hurt his head on the on the tile floor in the emergency room and avoiding the doctor who’s trying to flunk me out of my internship, you know. All these different things. And it’s like that seems like that would be hard thing to piece together just, you know, as a weaving it through unless your brain’s seriously complex and can kinda like, Okay, yeah, that’s just that’s just another day in the mind of Melissa Yee.

Melissa Yi (51:27): I think a lot of gray hairs. That’s all I can say. And I and also sometimes I’m just like, man, I don’t know. So I it was really hard to get my British Columbia license. I’m like, I don’t know if we’re gonna do that for book three. That was a lot of work. And it’s a lot of money too, because we don’t have a national license for doctors. So there are a lot of things to keep into account, but as long as I can and I have the energy and it’s fun for me, I will keep, you know, trying to get on that space station to write my book.

John Goodwin (51:57): Good. Yeah, absolutely. So now it normally takes you ’cause you like I said, in the since when we last talked, you had ten more books added to your library there. So you said, Yeah, well some of are are they children or YA or do you do all age groups?

Melissa Yi (52:17): I only wrote one YA recently. I have written some nonfiction as well, like some memoir and like back pain and dry eyes and some the things that would help me. So I have written a few different things. But yeah, I mean I don’t think of it as amazing because I’ve done it so other people can do it. Other many people who are more prolific than me. But for me it’s just really important to get the details right and to, you know, sometimes physically go there and everything. It just does not I just can’t go as fast as some other people and that’s okay.

John Goodwin (52:56): Yeah, but some other people can’t operate on somebody who’s deathly ill and save their lives either. So, you know, cut yourself some slack there, lady.

Melissa Yi (53:05): I do more minor procedures unless it’s like really emergent. Yeah.

John Goodwin (53:09): So what do you recommend for, ’cause you’ve like you commented like to write all over the place. So like what do you recommend people listening to this podcast, you know, and define it into like if you enjoy this type of book, I recommend this. If you enjoy that type of book, I recommend the other.

Melissa Yi (53:28): For my work?

John Goodwin (53:30): Yes. Yes for the work. For your work, yeah. This is all about you, Melissa.

Melissa Yi (53:34): Thank you, John. So my best known books are the Hope See books that we’ve been talking about. So the very first book without any supernatural elements is Code Blues. And the book that starts this the Seven Deadly Sins series is The Shapes of Wrath. So all of the all those ones all have punny titles.

And then people also enjoy my medical essays, so those are called “The Most Unfeeling Doctor in the World” and “Other True Tales from the Emergency Room.” Starts off that series. So if you want to start with one of the two, like you’re pretty good. But I have different age groups. I have Pride and Provocateur if you’re if you’re willing to go for romance and a rewrite of Pride and Prejudice and or I have hockey romance too.

John Goodwin (54:30): Hockey romance? True Canadian, true Canadian, okay, good.

Melissa Yi (54:33): I just have to represent, too. So I have a little bit of everything. So if people are willing to go to my website, Melissa Yee dot com or find me on social media, like then I would love to talk to you and get to know you.

John Goodwin (54:50): Good. So what’s the future of your writing career right now? I know you’ve talked about a little bit, but just are you in the middle of a project right now that you’re in the book that you’re writing, or are you going to take your vacation and then use that and build up your writing reserves and hit it again or what’s your future immediate future here?

Melissa Yi (55:09): Tomorrow, I’m flying to British Columbia to work, but also to research Sense and Sword Agility, the second book in the Jane Austen Eh series. So if people want to follow, I would love that. Doesn’t cost anything. You just put your name down and then when it’s ready to go, you will get an email.

John Goodwin (55:30): So what do they do now again to get this?

Melissa Yi (55:33): you have to go to Kickstarter and this the project is called Sense and Sword Agility.

John Goodwin (55:40): Sence and Sword Agility. It’s on Kickstarter under Melissa Yee. And when does a Kickstarter run?

Melissa Yi (55:46): So hopefully spring of 2027.

John Goodwin (55:51): Okay, so spring of 2027. So this will have already come out by then. So we can also work out if you can write to me as we get closer to it, then I can then do another promo off of this interview to get people to check out and sign up for the, in fact what we’ll do is I’ll probably take this one piece of this interview and make that as a little clip. Again, write, you know, write to me and we can and I can do this and then we can have it there to promote for people to sign up for your Kickstarter then in spring of 2027.

Melissa Yi (56:22): Thank you, John. That’s amazing.

John Goodwin (56:24): Yeah. So, as we’re getting closer, any, how does somebody find you? Where do they go to find your books? And if they want to be able to write to you or ask you something, how what do they do?

Melissa Yi (56:36): Yeah. So you can always find me through my website, melissayi.com, or I’m on pretty much all social media. If you look me up on Linktree, Melissa Yi. Unfortunately I did use different names for different platforms. I am a little bit complex that way.

John Goodwin (56:54): Okay, so thank you very much. This is really fun. I’m just you’re such an impressive person. I’m glad I had a chance to speak with you today on this thing and catch you before you take off to other parts of the world to save the next batch of people there. You know, just amazing. But anyway, thank you very much for listening.

Melissa Yi (57:14): For helping you know, creativity thrive in the world and supporting writers and artists. We really, really appreciate it.

John Goodwin (57:22): It’s important, it’s important. And thank you for listening. Subscribe to the Writers of the Future Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve also been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network where you can find these podcasts as well. Writers and Illustrators of the Future are contests created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. It is free to enter and open to amateur short story writers and artists of science fiction or fantasy. Again, thank you very much, Melissa.

Melissa Yi (57:50): Thank you so much, John.