Suzanne Park, ONE LAST WORD
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more. Learn more at ZippyMedia.com or follow me on social
[0:25]at Zippy Owens or join the community at Zippy Readers.
[0:31]Suzanne Park is the author of one last word, a novel. Suzanne is a Korean American writer
[0:36]who is born and raised in Tennessee. She is the author of the adult novels, The Dew Over,
[0:41]so we meet again and loathe it for a site. As a comedian, she was selected to appear on
[0:45]BET's Coming to the Stage. Suzanne was also the winner of the Seattle Sierra Mist Comedy Competition
[0:51]and was a semi-finalist in NBC's Stand Up For Diversity Showcase in San Francisco.
[0:56]Suzanne graduated from Columbia University and received an MBA from UCLA.
[1:00]She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband, female offspring,
[1:04]and a sneaky rat that creeps around on her back patio. In her spare time, she procrastinates.
[1:09]Welcome, Suzanne. Thank you so much for coming. On Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss
[1:13]one last word, your latest note. Thank you so much for having me, Zippy. I'm so excited to be here.
[1:18]Can I tell everybody that it is 6am where you are and this is like a complete act of,
[1:23]you know, writerly dedication that you are on the podcast this early. I feel terrible.
[1:28]Yes, but I've listened to other podcasts where there are people there at 5am, so I don't feel.
[1:33]I feel so badly. I have a ride to say anything. Sorry, I'm so sorry. It's pretty fun.
[1:41]Okay, one last word. I love the way you write. It's so fun and breezy and like you jump right in
[1:47]and don't want to put it down and you're like, wait, that was like a whole book there. Like,
[1:51]you know, it's like conversational but yet not, you know, flippant, right? I mean,
[1:56]anyway, I just, I really like books with this tone because they feel so accessible and
[2:03]accomplishable. That's not even a word and yet fun, like fast paced and all of that. So
[2:08]anyway, I just love it with the inner dialogue and just all of it. Anyway, I love it.
[2:13]Thank you so much. I'm really happy to hear that you connected with the story in the writing style.
[2:18]Yeah, loved. Tell listeners what one last word is about.
[2:22]Sure. So one last word follows Sarah Che and that she's developed an app called
[2:29]one last word that allows you to send your final words to people when you pass.
[2:34]And another Sarah Che dies and when that happens, her obituary is posted online.
[2:42]And the drunken drunkenly drafted messages that she Sarah has put into her draft folder
[2:50]have been sent out. And they're sent out to her overbearing parents, her ex best friend
[2:57]and her unrequited crush from high school. And then she did that after math while she's also
[3:05]trying to get into a pitch contest for her app. She's trying to be mentored by some
[3:10]highly esteemed venture capitalist. She gets into the program and then finds out that the
[3:15]unrequited crush that she sent the message to is actually going to be her co mentor.
[3:20]Love it. This of course is everyone's worst nightmare.
[3:24]Right. Then yes, this is that you write just for yourself to get out of your system or whatever
[3:29]somehow become, you know, shut down to your recipient and you can't do anything about it.
[3:35]Yeah. So now that it's left me after I've written it, I completely double check everything that I do
[3:40]now on a fear that this might happen because I know it's possible. So I, um, yeah, I now I triple check
[3:47]before I, you know, send out any email because of my book. Yeah, I think I, my main takeaway is not
[3:53]to have anything in the drafts folder. That's a good idea. Right. Just why even have a draft
[4:00]just delete the draft. I mean, not for writing. Yes, you can keep lots of drafts and writing
[4:05]but for emails and other and apps and things like that, forget it just forget it. Yes,
[4:09]I've started to at least just take out the email address.
[4:13]She or fear now that that that might happen. So at least I know won't get sent. That's a good
[4:18]idea though, just to not even have it under draft. I mean, my kids probably have 200 drafts
[4:25]of TikTok videos because I was like, you can make them, but you can't post them. So like,
[4:29]if those were to ever get out, it would really be not, not good at all. I should probably just go
[4:35]in and delete them, but yeah, not good. I appreciated the VC pitching and all of that as someone
[4:41]who's worked in the startup world in the past. And, you know, I guess theoretically I'm sort of
[4:46]started about it even now. But, you know, I know we both went to business school and there's like that
[4:51]whole common language of trying to get backers and all of that. And this, I love this sort of shark
[4:59]tank-ish vibe and the great news of somebody, you know, coming down with the chicken pox and
[5:05]like talk a little bit about the VC world and app development and all of that craze. Sure.
[5:14]So when I wrote this book, I think I got the original inkling that I wanted to write a book about VC
[5:19]probably back in 2017 when there was a lot in the news about women in VC and the poor treatment
[5:27]of women in VC. And then I started digging around and I think it wasn't until probably two years
[5:33]ago when I drafted the book that I really started doing more research into, okay, that was 2017,
[5:39]how have things changed? And in a lot of ways they haven't. So only 2% of VC funding find this way
[5:47]to women. And when the money is given to women who have owned companies, it's always in lower
[5:53]amounts. So I've kind of, most of my books, my adult books have been focused on women in the
[5:59]workplace, especially male dominated work environment. So that to me felt like the perfect
[6:03]type of book that I wanted to write next. And yeah, so there was just more and more data that
[6:08]was researching and reading about that only 5% of the S&P 500 CEOs are women and that when
[6:17]they do have these types of pitch competitions and whether they're online or in person,
[6:22]the questions that are targeted to the men that are these, you know, the developers are these,
[6:29]you know, aspiring CEOs. They're always focused on kind of the winning aspect of a business,
[6:35]like what are the opportunities? And then when you hear the questions targeted to the women,
[6:40]they're always focused on how do you avoid losing? And they have a different tone. They're about
[6:46]limitations and problems. And just everything that I was reading about it just felt so biased that
[6:52]I really wanted to call that out in the book. And then the way I write, as you mentioned before,
[6:57]it has kind of a different kind of a breezy tone. I wanted to definitely couch my point with humor
[7:04]so that when people read it, they'll kind of maybe sit back after and reflect after they've read
[7:09]the book saying, oh, well, you know what? VC does have a long way to go as far as equity goes.
[7:15]Well, you do have that scene where someone, you know, blatantly calls out that this woman is Asian,
[7:21]this woman, what's her name? Susan is Asian. And, you know, how she should conduct herself in a
[7:27]pitch in this net. And Susan has to say, you know, I don't know about that. And the person who takes
[7:34]her aside and says like, well, I'm actually Asian, but I present his white and you wouldn't have
[7:38]known that. And, you know, I found that scene really interesting. I do feel like the things that I've
[7:43]tried to include in the book, there were things that were taken out to just for storytelling
[7:47]to say. But I feel like what was left in the book, I really feel give an accurate portrayal
[7:53]of what the VC world is like. When I started writing this book, when I started writing any book,
[7:58]I do a ton of research. And in most of my adult books, because they're centered on the workplace,
[8:04]I do usually find people, friends or friends or friends that are in whatever industry. So in this
[8:10]case, I did have friends who had pitch startups, people who were in VC or have presented to VC
[8:16]funders. And in speaking with them, I got a lot of information. And I don't, and I actually spoke
[8:23]with a woman who works at a VC and she has funds that are targeted toward women and own companies.
[8:30]And so when I spoke with her, she had a lot to say about why she ended up where she is, because she
[8:37]had worked in the industry for so long. And finally ended up doing what she thought was best
[8:42]for the business and also doing something to change how VC was set up.
[8:47]Interesting. Very cool. Well, when you were thinking about some of these messages,
[8:54]because of course, the book got me thinking about, well, what would I do? What would I say?
[8:58]And I actually did at one point write notes, although I'm going to have to toss them soon,
[9:03]because God only knows what I wrote. But I did write like the buy notes to people. And for when
[9:09]they could open when I'm gone, which is so morbid. But, you know, of course, this is not
[9:13]doing an afternoon with my anxiety, like brain always thinking the worst. Do you have notes to
[9:18]people you love for when you pass away? What do you think about that idea in general?
[9:23]You know, I don't know if I have anything specific now. I do know when my daughter was born,
[9:29]I had written a few things that were just a collection of like life lessons that we have kind of
[9:35]developed over time. And I wanted to put them all in, you know, one document so that she would
[9:40]have them when she's older. Because there were things, you know, that happen when you're teaching a
[9:43]toddler or something or whatever. And you're like, actually, this happens all the time in the real
[9:49]world. Or this actually happens to women and just share that knowledge and try to guide her in life.
[9:54]And that's probably the closest I've come to that. I have had a few things sitting in my
[10:00]that I wanted to send off to people that I knew,
[10:03]but never did.
[10:04]And there's probably a bit deleted on the note.
[10:07]You know, just things that have questions
[10:09]or, you know, just when I,
[10:10]especially during the pandemic,
[10:12]I had a lot of time to think about things.
[10:14]And so I did have a few things drafted to a friend
[10:17]that I hadn't heard from in a long time
[10:18]and just wanted to reconnect with somebody sent out
[10:21]but not all of them.
[10:23]So you have written a number of books.
[10:25]Are those all the books on the shelf behind you?
[10:27]Yes, yes, these are all of my books.
[10:30]This is my YA side and this is the adult side.
[10:34]Honestly, I feel like the line between YA and adult
[10:37]is so blurred.
[10:38]I can never tell the difference really
[10:40]because I'm an adult,
[10:41]but I like reading about people who are teenagers,
[10:43]like I don't, I don't know,
[10:45]I'm not a fan of this new categorization.
[10:48]But do you think about that?
[10:50]A lot of the times when I'm asked the question,
[10:52]how difficult is it to write between the two
[10:56]and is there a difference?
[10:58]And for me, there's no true difference in how I write.
[11:02]It's mostly about making sure that the voice
[11:06]of the young adult is authentic
[11:09]and has real experiences that are realistic for that age.
[11:14]So when I've written books that are about high schoolers,
[11:19]they do make a lot of mistakes
[11:21]that will probably frustrate somebody
[11:23]that has lived full experience in their life.
[11:28]And I give them time for first mistakes
[11:31]and let them try to resolve them
[11:33]and reflect upon them.
[11:35]And I think that that's one way
[11:37]that I've found a difference between the two
[11:40]and to also just make sure that the voice is authentic.
[11:43]And that's not just saying like,
[11:44]oh, we'd include slang or something that's current
[11:47]in culture, it's actually just making sure
[11:50]that the type of experience they're having
[11:52]is realistic to high school or junior high
[11:54]or whatever age group you're targeting is just making sure
[11:57]that you're not putting your own experiences
[12:00]as a mom into what you think that a teenager would be living
[12:05]and feeling like, or my experience is when I was young
[12:08]because it's different now.
[12:10]Right, true.
[12:11]As I see with my teenagers, but yes, yes.
[12:15]So how did you get started?
[12:18]What is your pacing on releasing these books?
[12:21]Like how do you continually innovate?
[12:24]Well, I have like a hundred questions,
[12:25]but okay, let's start with how you got started.
[12:27]And then how are you coming up with these different ideas
[12:30]and how often you write?
[12:31]When I started writing, it was back in 2014,
[12:35]I think it was the first time I actually wrote a novel,
[12:37]but if you had a fast forward before that,
[12:41]what I originally had wanted to do after graduating
[12:44]from high school and college was to become a humor writer.
[12:48]And I didn't know how to do that.
[12:50]And so I ended up actually in stand-up comedy somehow.
[12:54]That was the way I ended up writing.
[12:56]But thinking back to what I did,
[12:58]I don't know if I would have done anything differently
[13:00]because I do think that the type of humor
[13:02]that I had on stage translates very well
[13:05]to what I do in novels.
[13:07]But back then, I was fresh out of college
[13:10]and I ended up googling Asian American humor writers
[13:15]and a list of stand-up comics came up.
[13:17]And I just contacted the first person
[13:19]who was a stand-up comic in New York.
[13:23]And I had drinks with her and she ended up telling me
[13:28]that she was just a stand-up comic.
[13:29]Like all of her things that she'd listed on her website
[13:32]were a little bit inflated.
[13:34]But her writing was actually her joke writing.
[13:38]Her performing was her performance on stage.
[13:40]Everything was kind of revolving around her doing stand-up.
[13:42]So when I realized it wasn't the perfect match,
[13:44]I said, oh, well, nice.
[13:46]Thank you for your time, nice meeting you.
[13:48]But then she invited me to your stand-up show
[13:50]that was happening later that evening
[13:52]just across the street.
[13:53]So I decided, well, I'll support her.
[13:55]I'll go and see what it's all about.
[13:57]And on stage, her whole act was about her being
[14:01]Korean-American into Tumble Washington
[14:04]and her experiences dealing with how that was for somebody
[14:09]growing up in a rural environment with an Asian-American
[14:13]family.
[14:14]And so when I saw her on stage, something clicked,
[14:16]and I said, wait, those were the types of stories
[14:19]I didn't know were interesting to people.
[14:22]And to see her come alive on stage and then tell
[14:25]that type of humor and then have funny anecdotes
[14:27]from her growing up, I just realized
[14:29]that that is something that I could do fairly easily.
[14:32]And my family is far more dysfunctional than hers.
[14:35]It's a little more scary, deeper well.
[14:38]So if later on, I ended up going on stage
[14:42]and performed comedy for 10 years, probably altogether.
[14:46]And at some point, after motherhood, I realized, wait,
[14:50]I don't know if this is the life that I had dreamed of myself.
[14:53]I am fairly successful in terms of
[14:55]has stand-up comics go where I can probably get a gig
[14:58]and perform and then go on the road if I really truly
[15:02]wanted to.
[15:03]I have done that and I did not enjoy it.
[15:05]So I had to do some soul searching
[15:09]and then ended up deciding taking some riding classes
[15:11]and that's how I ended up kind of where I am.
[15:14]I actually started off with a collection of essays,
[15:16]personal essays and tried to send that out to agents.
[15:19]And the feedback was mostly positive,
[15:22]but the climate was different in terms of what publishing
[15:26]was buying and they were not buying collections
[15:28]of essays at that time.
[15:29]But one agent had a really good insight where she said,
[15:32]if you are willing to take some of these essays
[15:35]and fictionalize them, you might have what could be
[15:37]the shell of a novel and that's just food for thought.
[15:41]And that was enough to get me going
[15:44]to start my first novel.
[15:45]I was also, by the way, trying to sell a collection
[15:48]of essays in like 2018 and everyone's like,
[15:51]as they collections don't sell.
[15:53]And I'm like, you know what?
[15:54]I actually love reading essay collections.
[15:57]Why?
[15:58]Why do they not sell?
[15:59]I guess they collections are great.
[16:01]I completely agree.
[16:03]I really enjoy them, especially humorous ones.
[16:05]And the thing that was funny was most of the people
[16:09]told me that the only way to sell an essay collection
[16:12]is to be really famous, a celebrity.
[16:14]And I said, well, it seems easy to write a novel.
[16:16]That'd be a celebrity.
[16:18]So we all go with a novel writing at this point.
[16:21]And it ended up working out.
[16:22]Yeah, it looks like it.
[16:23]Yeah.
[16:24]And the other thing that I've found people doing
[16:26]is they are essay collections, but they don't call them that.
[16:29]They just say memoir, but they're actually really essays.
[16:32]So they think they trick you into reading them anyway,
[16:35]which is great.
[16:38]I want to hear one of the dysfunctional stories
[16:40]that you used to tell on stage about your family.
[16:43]What's like one thing that used to go on the road
[16:48]and crack people up.
[16:49]Gosh, I don't know if I've actually told that many jokes.
[16:53]I mean, I told a lot of jokes about growing up.
[16:55]I don't know if any of them are ones
[16:57]that I remember word for word, but a lot of it was, gosh,
[17:02]I could tell some about my brother, but he would kill me.
[17:06]And then I thought that's how the best he would kill me.
[17:10]There was one that I never really ended up telling.
[17:12]And I had in an essay collection that was about how we lived
[17:16]in Tennessee.
[17:17]And 10 years after we had moved into the house, maybe just, sorry,
[17:21]it's probably about 15 years after we had moved into the house,
[17:25]it was the mayor of our small town was on that street.
[17:29]And he moved out, but the end of the street,
[17:31]Garth Brooks moved in.
[17:33]And so I had a whole thing about how my mom had an encounter
[17:36]with Garth Brooks and I don't know if they got along.
[17:40]I think she was weird and then made him a little weird,
[17:45]but it was really funny because any time I would just explain,
[17:48]like the idea of just a very idea of my mom just talking to him.
[17:52]And then at some point, she showed him her garden in the backyard,
[17:57]which was funny because at the time there was no garden,
[17:59]she had just planted a bunch of stuff.
[18:01]So there's nothing growing.
[18:02]It was just like rows of dirt.
[18:05]And he came down and he didn't understand like what was going on,
[18:10]because she was trying to explain that she planted tomatoes
[18:12]and whatever, but they hadn't grown yet, but they will.
[18:15]And then she, because it was steep hill,
[18:17]she knew the footpath and how she got down.
[18:19]And then she said, oh, I have to go back to cooking.
[18:22]She ran back up the hill and left him down there.
[18:25]So just to see my sister and I staring down the hill,
[18:29]watching Garth Brooks try to climb up her backyard
[18:33]and not succeeding.
[18:35]He's a wonderful man, but I feel bad that my mom couldn't be bad.
[18:39]So, you know, he's got like dirt under his fingernails
[18:41]and just trying to go climb up the hill.
[18:43]And I just could not get that picture out of my mind.
[18:46]So anytime I see him winning all these awards,
[18:49]I really don't have that same vision of him.
[18:52]I see him as our neighbor who my mom abandoned at the bottom
[18:55]of a hill ditch, showed this pathetic garden.
[18:58]That's so funny.
[19:00]This is the first time I've actually told the story
[19:02]in maybe 10 and 15 years outside of a friend group.
[19:05]So, I feel awesome.
[19:08]Thank you.
[19:09]I feel honored and I loved it.
[19:11]And I will now think of Garth Brooks differently.
[19:13]It's like he's got to be someone's neighbor, right?
[19:16]Right.
[19:17]Right.
[19:18]Turns out that you didn't come over,
[19:19]you know, very neighborly.
[19:21]Very neighborly.
[19:22]Who knew?
[19:22]Amazing.
[19:23]Wow.
[19:24]See what happens when you just ask that's excellent.
[19:27]OK, stand up comedy.
[19:29]Then you got the advice to write fiction.
[19:31]You just like cranked out a novel and sold it
[19:34]and the rest was history.
[19:35]Is that was it easy?
[19:36]Oh, man, I have a very windy journey.
[19:40]So the first book that I wrote was an adult book.
[19:44]And that was actually how I got my agent back in 2016.
[19:49]And I was part of a program called Pitch Forest
[19:52]where people who are accepted into the program
[19:56]then get mentored by agents to the writers or.
[20:00]authors. And I was lucky to have an amazing duo that agreed to be my mentors. And at the end,
[20:06]I was able to pitch this book, got the agent, and we took it out and it did not sell. And I was
[20:12]very disappointed because I thought, you know, I thought once you got an agent, that's what
[20:19]was the key to publishing. And I learned a lot since then. So, all fast forward, the book that
[20:25]did sell first was the perfect escape. And that is my fourth book. So, I had three shell
[20:31]demand use groups up to that point. This one sold pretty quickly. It's a YA book about two
[20:37]teenagers who work at a zombie escape room. They both find out that they have a desperate need
[20:42]for money. So, they enter a survivalist competition. And, you know, could go wrong with that.
[20:48]So, that book sold in 2019. And then, I decided why all that book was being shopped around.
[20:55]I would try to revive one of my shelved manuscripts. And that was the first site that started off
[21:01]as a darker workplace company. And I rewrote it at a love interest in a romantic storyline
[21:09]and turned it into a more lighthearted story that I guess could be considered a romcom.
[21:15]And that was right when wrong cons are starting to sell. So, I think that was good timing.
[21:20]I felt like I had a good idea of what was coming out in the marketplace as far as, you know,
[21:27]what was starting to become a trend or starting to sell. And that was something I just had
[21:33]a gut feeling could work. I don't want to think anything else I had written could have worked.
[21:37]So, that sold right after my young adult book. And then that's how I ended up in the situation
[21:42]I ended up writing fairly quickly multiple books during the pandemic. And my release, my first
[21:49]release for the young adult book, the perfect escape that came out in 2020 April. And as you can
[21:55]imagine, that was not the best time to release. So, that was exactly the time where, you know,
[22:01]you couldn't buy anything in any store. And bookstores were shuttered. And Amazon was
[22:07]saying certain things were essential and books were not. So, that was a tough time to debut.
[22:13]And then my adult debut came out in August of 2020, that same year. So, it was a rocky time,
[22:20]but somehow I made it through on the other side that still being able to continue to ride and not
[22:25]lose that momentum. Wow. So, they all came out really recently in what you've just been one
[22:30]a year since then? Yes, yes. So, there was a point where I was doing two a year. And then I
[22:34]slowed it down to one a year because I was losing my mind. Yeah. When I do a very hard way,
[22:40]like, yes, yes, it was back and forth between the two. And I'm not somebody that can juggle a lot.
[22:47]And in terms of just multiple projects at once, some people are good at it. I'm not a multi-tasker
[22:52]turns out. So, I would be able to work on one and then have to finish it or put it down and put
[22:58]in a good place before. I could start something else. I wasn't able to have several things
[23:03]happening on my screen or in my mind. So, that made it difficult to actually do the two.
[23:09]So, we slowed it down. Even one year is pretty tough, but I was able to feel like I could get
[23:15]better grasp of schedules and be able to promote and do all the things that authors are
[23:20]supposed to do for book releases rather than just be in deadline constantly. It was really tough.
[23:28]Yeah, I'm stressed out even just thinking about the schedule you must have had to keep
[23:31]and like, how could you even possibly promote? Do you have two different publishers then for YA
[23:37]and adult? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yes, that's the idea. That's the thing is when that happens
[23:46]where you have two different publishers, it's the author that has to juggle,
[23:51]incorporate everything into as far as scheduling and dates and events and things and make sure
[23:57]they don't overlap with the other publishers' intentions. And so, that was all falling on me as
[24:02]well, the project management of it all. And I saw that you said, because I thought this was
[24:06]interesting. I hadn't seen it before on your website when people ask for blurbs. You say you're
[24:11]a really slow reader. And so, you don't want to blur a lot of books. Is that true? You're a
[24:15]snare reader? Or you just don't want to blur. No. It's so funny because people really don't
[24:22]believe me. And I'm actually not a fast writer either. It seems like I would be, but I have to be
[24:27]very, I'm very good at putting tasks on my schedule and completing that in the amount of time
[24:34]that I need to. So, I tried to put things into realistic goals. And so, when it comes to reading and
[24:42]writing, writing takes precedence over reading. And so, when I do have time, I'm the slowest reader
[24:49]in the world. So, when any time anybody has one of those good breeds challenges. And I'm like,
[24:53]oh, I read a thousand books this year. I have read one a month that are just on my own free time.
[25:00]And it's funny because my Kindle will say, oh, you are going to hot reading streak or whatever.
[25:07]And it's like five pages a day. It's like for me, that's hot. So, I do blurb. But it has to kind of
[25:16]come in at the right window where I open for blurbs. And then somebody has passed along, usually
[25:21]my agent or editor has passed along that request. And if it happens to land right when I have
[25:27]finished blurring, then it goes into the queue. So, yeah, it really is like five to 10 pages a day
[25:33]is it really all I can handle. And I know someone like you could speed read and other friends of mine,
[25:38]literally reading maybe a book or two a day, if not a week. And I may be, if I'm lucky, I read a book
[25:47]on my own kind of to help fall asleep and one book to blurb a month. I wish I could be faster. I
[25:53]know I've read, I've read stories about how people can read faster, you know, speed read. And it
[25:59]just doesn't work for me. But hopefully one day I'll figure out a system. Yeah, I'll just read and
[26:04]blurb for you. It's basically what we'll have to do. I just don't under my pile. Okay, this is
[26:12]and thank you so much. Thank you for waking up early and coming on momstone time to read bugs.
[26:16]Congratulations on one last word and changing all my drafting habits. And yeah, best of luck with
[26:22]everything. And I hope to see you in LA. Thank you so much for having me. It was a ton of fun. Thanks for
[26:27]me too. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. If you love it, please
[26:34]leave a review and follow us on social at City Owens and at City Readers.