Steph Cha reads ‘Dead Soon Enough’

Steph Cha is a Korean American novelist and fiction writer; she is the only woman in her genre, Korea American Noir. Cha studied English and East Asian Studies at Stanford, then went to Yale Law School and got her Juris Doctor degree. It was then when she began writing fiction in earnest.

“I think I have the title of ‘only Korean American Feminist Noir writer’ locked down,” said Cha.

Cha began publishing the “Juniper Song Mysteries” in mid-2016. The first book of the series, “Follow Her Home” was published on April 11, 2013. The sequel to “Follow Her Home,” “Beware Beware” was published on Aug. 12, 2014. Cha then published a third book, “Dead Soon Enough” on Aug. 11, 2015.

Cha was one of the three authors that were chosen to participate in the Writer-In-Residence program here at PCC.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15 Cha and the PCC English department held a public reading for Cha to read a section of her third novel “Dead Soon Enough.” After reading the first few pages of her book, Cha then went onto answering questions that the audience had.

“Dead Soon Enough” is a crime novel about a woman named Rubina Gasparian that hires a private investigator, Juniper Song, to look after her cousin Lusig who is also the surrogate of her baby. Rubina thinks that Lusig may be harming her body and the baby because she has a history of being a party girl, and Lusig has been unreachable and off the radar for while, and she is eight months pregnant. Rubina instructs Juniper to photograph and document whatever Lusig does and to report back to her.

Cha was asked about her writing process and how she she feels about her writing throughout the process. Her writing is something that she takes very serious and gets very consumed while writing and greatly appreciates when her hard work is recognized.

“you work on this thing for so long that you can’t see clearly anymore that you think and hope there’s a possibility that its perfect. That someone sees its and recognizes it perfection and pays you a million dollars for it.” said Cha.

“Most writers are huge messy ego maniacs dealing with self doubt,“ Cha later added.

When asked about rejection later on Cha began to talk about the rejections that she has gone through as an author.

“Over the course of a year I sent out emails saying ‘Hey. This is who I am and this is what my book is like. You represent so and so, so I think you might like this book. If you’d like to see the main script I have it for you,’” said Cha.

She then went on to talk about how 60 of the emails she sent, she got 10 replies that wanted to see her main script while the other 50 did not seem interested in her book. Of those 10 some rejected, and she did take it personal because they rejected after reading the book. The other 50 rejections weren’t that personal because they had not read the book yet

Cha’s novels are mostly based on crime mysteries so each character is very unique, they have their own little twist that spark a curiosity about their lives.

“I put myself into a lot of my characters so I can connect with my reader,” said cha when asked about how she develops her characters.

Cha is an admirable writer in her unique genre and has done a great job so far with her three published novels, the Juniper Song Mysteries. Cha has also been greatly recognized for her many yelp reviews that she has accumulated over time. She is a great author not only in her novels but also in other writings also and in her work that she contributes to Trop magazine, USA Today, and the LA times.