The Joy of Infusing Fiction with Heart and Heritage by Tori Eldridge

As fiction writers, we spend a tremendous amount of time living in a make-believe world of our own construction. When we’re not doing that, we’re often lost in addictive research on topics that are incredibly fascinating, at least to us. It’s a wonderful way to live, and we’re fortunate to have this creative expression in our lives.

But there’s a special kind of joy that comes when we can infuse our fiction with our own history, heritage, and experience. When working on these kinds of projects, our creative expression becomes a vehicle to celebrate the influences that have informed our personality and our perception of the world. This is what I experienced while writing my debut novel, The Ninja Daughter, and the sequel in the Lily Wong series, The Ninja’s Blade.

I drew from my own Chinese-Norwegian heritage, my training as a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts, and my thirty-five years living in Los Angeles to give birth to Lily Wong and her adventures. Although, I haven’t dedicated my life to the rescue and protection of women, as Lily has done, I have written and hosted podcasts about empowerment and taught seminars on the ninja arts and women’s self-protection across the country.

Lily Wong isn’t me, but she’s a protagonist born from my heart.

In The Ninja Daughter, Lily dives into a twisty mystery involving Los Angeles Metro, politicians, Ukrainian mob, and an enigmatic assassin with a disturbing obsession for Lily. In The Ninja’s Blade (out September 1st), Lily hunts for a kidnapped prostitution victim, a missing high school girl, and a sociopathic trafficker as the surviving members of a murderous street gang hunt for her. It’s a dark and gritty tale, lightened by Lily’s amusing and meddlesome grandparents who arrive from Hong Kong to stir up trouble and match Lily with the perfect Chinese son.

My life has been exciting in much safer ways.

I acted, sang, and danced in the original 1st national company of Cats, was a series regular on The Love Boat, and performed motion capture for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I recorded with Brian Wilson, wrote screenplays, and raised two sons with my producer husband. Now, I write novels, short stories, and even had a narrative poem published in the re-boot of Weird Tales Magazine. Not single gangster, trafficker, or assassin in sight!

Although very different, Lily and I share many things in common: our meditative practice, our love of tea, our favorite weapons, our experience in martial arts, our mixed-race culture—and, of course, our complicated family dynamic. But while I emerged from my family, community, and experiences, I had to deconstruct Lily’s personality to discover who and what had made her “a heroine for the #metoo generation” (Library Journal, starred review).

What kind of family did she have? Where did she go to school? What path did her martial arts take? Who was her ninja sensei? What pressures, expectations, and traumas forged her character? What hopes, guilt, and fears plagued her subconscious? The answers for all of these questions were very different than what I would have answered for myself.

Lily is her own person, but she emerged out of my own deep cultural well.

As authors, we can accomplish this #ownvoices depth without drawing from our personal history and heritage, but it requires a level of research far beyond facts, interviews, and Google maps. We have to embody culture and place through music, food, language, art, sensory perceptions, and empathy. We have to know and love the people and communities about whom we write. Anything less leads to stereotypic characters in shallow situations.

In the process of writing The Ninja Daughter and The Ninja’s Blade, I was able to honor my parents, pay homage to my culture, and bust through the ninja stereotype to share authentic practices, philosophies, and techniques from my martial art. I deepened my relationships with family and friends with conversations I might never have had and researched parts of my personal history I would never have known. Some of this made it onto the page. All of it added color, nuance, and authenticity to my characters, fight scenes, and plot.

Rather than cast myself in Lily’s drama, I created a protagonist whose life resonates with mine.

While Lily’s North Dakota Norwegian father gave up farming to marry Lily’s mother, fell in love with her culture and became an authentic Hong Kong cuisine chef; my North Dakota Norwegian father enlisted in the army at seventeen, met my mother in Tokyo, moved to Honolulu, and opened his own life insurance investment company.

While Lily’s mother is a highly educated and ambitious immigrant from Hong Kong running the Los Angeles branch of her father’s finance company; my mother was a Hawaiian-Chinese stay-at-home mother and golf enthusiast from Maui whose father immigrated from Canton.

My maternal grandparents died before I was born. Lily’s grandparents try to control everyone’s life from Hong Kong.

So, imagine my surprise when our son started dating a Hongkonger after I had begun writing The Ninja Daughter! Not only did my past inform my fiction, but my fiction magically intertwined with my present to create an unexpected future.

Stopher and Joeye married in Hawaii one month before my debut novel released. Before that, our families celebrated Christmas and New Years together in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Hong Kong. What a treat it was to play mahjong in their home, eat her father’s homemade congee, and laugh with her mother’s siblings during their Sunday ritual of dim sum brunch.

While much can be learned from research, interviews, food, language, music, and “walking” or “driving” through virtual streets, nothing substitutes for the personal experience of living in a community or traveling to a story’s location. Only in person, can we smell the scent in the air. Only in person, can we feel the complexity of a place and infuse that feeling into our fiction to make it come alive.

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Tori Eldridge is the Anthony and Lefty Awards-nominated author of The Ninja Daughter, which was named one of the “Best Mystery Books of the Year” by The South Florida Sun Sentinel and awarded 2019 Thriller Book of the Year by Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Her short stories appear in several anthologies, and her screenplay “The Gift” earned a semifinalist spot in the prestigious Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Before writing, Tori performed as an actress, singer, dancer on Broadway, television, and film.

She is of Hawaiian, Chinese, Norwegian descent and was born and raised in Honolulu where she graduated from Punahou School with classmate Barack Obama. Tori holds a fifth-degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninjutsu and has traveled the USA teaching seminars on the ninja arts, weapons, and women’s self-protection. Her second book in the Lily Wong series, The Ninja’s Blade, released September 1, 2020. https://torieldridge.com

THE NINJA’S BLADE

Lily Wong―a Chinese-Norwegian modern-day ninja―has more trouble than she was bargaining for when controlling grandparents arrive in Los Angeles from Hong Kong at the same time she goes undercover in the dangerous world of youth sex trafficking. As she hunts for a kidnapped prostitution victim, a missing high school girl, and a sociopathic trafficker, the surviving members of a murderous street gang hunt for her. Life would be easier if Lily knew who to trust.

But when victims are villains, villains are victims, and even family is plotting against her, easy is not an option. All Lily can do is follow the trail wherever it leads: through a high school campus polarized by racial tension or the secret back rooms of a barber/tattoo/brothel or the soul-crushing stretch of Long Beach Boulevard known as The Blade. She relies on her ninja skills to deceive and infiltrate, rescue and kill―whatever is necessary to free the girls from their literal and figurative slavery. If only those same skills could keep Lily’s conniving grandparents from hijacking her future.

 

BUY THE BOOK HERE

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips