About the Author: Aimee Lim
Author photo credit: Thomas Le
What would you like readers to know about you?
I’m a public library worker with a degree in Library and Information Science, Jeopardy! champion, and romance novel proofreader. My family is Burmese Chinese (of Chinese descent, but my parents were born and grew up in Myanmar), and I'm from the San Gabriel Valley in southern California. THE SPINDLE OF FATE is my first novel, though I am also a two-time finalist in a “write the worst opening lines to a novel” contest.
What music do you listen to (if any) when you write?
I make playlists for my books as inspiration—THE SPINDLE OF FATE playlist is a mix of Japanese Breakfast, dark electropop, rock, and Buddhist death metal. But when I’m actually writing, I’ll listen to whatever music I’m into at the time. This year that’s been a lot of St. Vincent, Dua Lipa, and The Shangri-Las.
What books or authors inspired you to become a writer?
I’ve wanted to be a writer pretty much as long as I can remember, though by high school, I had dismissed this as an impractical career choice. The books that led me back to writing were The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. I loved that series, but what really inspired me was her website, which had a lot of posts encouraging writers and about the process of getting published. This made me realize that my dream never really went away, and was what inspired me to seriously commit to writing with the goal of becoming a published author.
About the Book: The Spindle of Fate
What is your book about for those who haven’t read it?
THE SPINDLE OF FATE is about 12-year-old Evie Mei Huang, who is grieving her mother’s presumed death when she discovers that her mom belonged to a secret society of magical weavers. Her mom had the ability to change fate, which led to her being kidnapped by a demon and taken to Dìyù, the Chinese underworld. So now Evie has to go to the Ten Courts of Hell to bring her back.
What has been your inspiration for writing it?
This book was written in collaboration with Cake Creative Kitchen, a book packager founded by Dhonielle Clayton (author of The Marvellers and The Belles) with the goal of diversifying kidlit. Dhonielle and I had a conversation about wanting to see more diverse heroes in middle grade and a contemporary fantasy inspired by Chinese mythology. I grew up on books like Percy Jackson and The Sisters Grimm, so this felt like exactly the kind of story I would have loved when I was a kid.
What was your favorite scene or part of your book to write?
I loved writing Dìyù! I wanted the Ten Courts to feel appropriately hellish but still fun, and I had a blast writing a netherworld that felt horrible with a real sense of danger, but also a sense of humor. The idea of the afterlife as a bureaucracy is now a familiar trope in modern Western pop culture (one of my favorite shows is The Good Place, which was referenced a couple of times in this book!), but that’s actually an old concept in Chinese depictions of Diyu, which seemed intrinsically darkly comedic.
Where can your book be purchased?
You can get it through Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Target or your local indie bookstore. Signed copies are also available through the 826LA Echo Park Time Travel Mart, which supports writing programming for K-12 students in LA as well as all your time travel needs.
To the Future Writer:
What advice would you give to aspiring authors who want to write a book?
My #1 piece of advice is: Finish the book. I used to take a lot of time on my first draft and get frustrated when the story didn’t work, and I’d get caught in an endless cycle of trying to “fix” it. Finish the book all the way to the end, even if it’s terrible—because it will be! You can't avoid it. That’s what a first draft is for. There are often bigger-picture issues that you can’t identify until you can see what the full story looks like (even a terrible, first-draft version of it), and it’s also ultimately a waste of time trying to polish bad prose or fix cringey dialogue if you find out during revisions that a whole chapter or subplot has to be deleted. Getting all the way to “The End” is just the beginning—because now you can revise it.
And then, once you’ve finished your book, my advice is: Don’t be afraid to make big changes! For pre-published writers especially, this is one of the great privileges of not being under a deadline—you can play around and try different things. I think it’s a natural impulse to want to take the path of least resistance when revising (i.e. trying to fix a problem while changing as little as possible), but sometimes taking a completely different approach or angle may be exactly what your story needs.
What’s next for you? Any events, upcoming pubs, etc.
The sequel to THE SPINDLE OF FATE!
Where can we find you:
Instagram- @thesunweptrose
Website- http://aimeelimwrites.com/
What’s on your TBR list?
THE MAGIC PAINTBRUSH by Kat Zhang
THE LEGENDARY MO SETO by A.Y. Chan
KILL HER TWICE by Stacey Lee
LOOKING FOR SMOKE by KA Cobell
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