Author Interview: Van Hoang and Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon Giveaway

 Happy Monday, Everyone! Today I’m excited to have Van Hoang here to share about her new middle grade contemporary, Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon. It sounds like it’s got a great setting, and serious problem, and interesting characters. I have already reserved it at my library. 

Here’s a blurb from Goodreads:

 

A heartwarming and funny middle grade novel about family, resilience, and the power of second chances where one girl’s summer punishment turns into a mission to save her aunt’s struggling nail salon and bring her family together.

Twelve-year-old Domi Pham had the perfect summer lounging by the pool, making art with her best friend, and celebrating her escape from seventh grade. But one costly mistake puts her dream summer on hold. Instead, she finds herself deep in debt to her parents, and shipped off to New Mexico to work at her Auntie Q’s nail salon for the next three months.

At first, Domi is miserable—surrounded by nosy aunties, constant nail polish fumes, and endless work. But as she gets to know Auntie Q and the people in the salon, she starts to see their struggles and resilience in a new light. When she discovers that the salon is at risk of closing, Domi puts her creativity and determination to the test to help save it. 

Hi Van! Thanks so much for joining us. 

1. Tell us about yourself and how you became a writer. 

Hello! I’m so honored to be here! I’m a Vietnamese-American author of books for middle grade and adult readers. Ever since I was little, books have been a huge obsession for me, starting with series like Baby Sitter’s Club, Animorphs, and anything with dragons in it. 

I’ve always enjoyed writing stories but never thought being an author was something I could realistically pursue because authors seemed like such magical beings to me. After graduating college, in order to get through my long days at my day job, I started writing fiction again, and rediscovered my love for stories. Writing became a source of joy, where I could escape into the worlds I created and spend time with characters I loved. 

I still didn't really think that becoming an author was a serious goal until I was at lunch with a coworker who mentioned that he was friends with someone who had just gotten her first book deal, and that was the moment I realized that it could happen to someone in real life, and that someone might someday possibly be me. I began to pursue publishing seriously from that point on, dedicating years to researching and learning about the process of finding an agent, and then suffering through the grief and recovery after each failure, until one day, I got the call from an agent that changed my life. 

2. Where did you get the idea for Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon? 

When I was in high school, my parents got this weird idea that I needed to work at an auntie's nail salon. Maybe they thought it was good character building or maybe they wanted to punish me for something I don’t remember doing. It was one of the most traumatic summers of my life yet I look back on those memories fondly, remembering the nostril-singing chemical smell of acetone and nail polish and the constant drill of the electric nail filers. I find myself missing the friends I made, hearing the gossip and smack talk, and collapsing with exhausted pride at the end of the day. 

Writing a book often means spending enormous amounts of time with the characters you create, and that was what I really wanted--to return to those summers when I was young and full of goals surrounded by people who were eager to give me life advice because they cared about my future. I wanted to capture the bad days with its long hours and tough work but I also wanted to show the slow times with its card games, sitting around exchanging gossip. 

3. It’s cool that you drew on your own life when creating this story. Once you came up with your idea, how long did it take you to write and revise your manuscript before submitting it to your agent or editor? Share about your process and how you know you’ve revised enough. 

I draft my books as fast as I can, and then edit as thoroughly and as long as it takes. For this book, because it was written in first person (my past books have been in third person perspective to give some distance between me and my main character), the draft went by much faster. 

I like to imagine that I'm telling a story to my best friend, or in this case, to Domi’s best friend. When I had moments where I felt stuck, I'd pull up a separate document and pretend it was a letter to Evie, Domi’s BFF. 

I probably finished the first round in 3 months. However, revising took about 6 more months before I felt comfortable turning it into my agent. 

I can usually tell when it's ready, instinctively, when I don't find myself cringing as much as I read it. If I'm embarrassed in any way, then I know there's still work to do. 

4. That’s a great idea to envision telling your story to someone when drafting it. Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon sounds like a fantastic setting that girls will like. What made you pick this setting and create the unique characters who work in the salon? 

I knew the ins and outs of working in a nail salon from my experience there in high school, and I loved how close everyone got to the people they worked with. When you spend all day with someone, you can’t help but get to know them, and nail salons are the perfect place to throw some characters together, all with different personalities and pasts and struggles, and watch how their dynamic unfolded. 

In the book, Domi also makes friends with Bobby, a boy whose parents own the pho restaurant next door to the nail salon. I wanted to capture that second-generation immigrant experience of having to spend time at your parents’ business, and how those days also shape your life. As boring and difficult as these childhoods may seem, when other kids might be on the playground or at home with their tablets, being surrounded by grownups and learning the life lesson of making money to survive is pretty transformative. 

5. How did you keep your plot moving and make readers want to turn the page? What tips do you have for contemporary writers who want to write contemporary stories for middle graders? 

Stories are driven by goals, motive, and conflict. So even though this was my first purely contemporary book where no magic or demon-battling adventures took place, the plot always moved forward because from the very first page, Domi’s goal was clear: make back $500 to pay off her parents. The rest of the story was about how much more difficult it was to do that than she thought, and every time she comes close, something bad would happen to prevent her from reaching her goals. 

No matter what age or who your main character is, they should always want something so badly, they’d be willing to do anything to get it. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but it has to be something meaningful to them, and audiences need to feel it and care desperately enough to vicariously be drawn into the story. 

6. Share a bit about Domi, your main character, and how she evolved as you wrote her story. 

I wanted to write someone whose personality was completely different from mine. Someone who was confident and popular at school and sassy but still sweet. That was why I chose to write it in first-person, otherwise I would have been too removed from the character. 

In the first few drafts, I ended up making Domi too snarky, and she turned out to be unlikeable. After a few revisions, I found a balance where Domi simply came off as misunderstood, especially to her parents. 

7. Mary C. Moore is your agent. How did she become your agent and what was your road to getting your first publishing contract? 

Mary and I have worked together for ten years now! I pitched a story to her about a boy without magic and she asked for the full manuscript, and then a few months later, made a phone call that I slept through. When I called her back, we had a long conversation about the story in a way I’d never experienced. She was treating my characters as if they were real people and the book as if it already existed in the world. 

I’d heard about agents asking for a Revise-and-Resubmit before offering representation, and I thought that was what would happen due to our lengthy conversation about what I needed to edit, but by the end, she was already offering to be my agent! 

Of course, getting an agent is just the first step of the journey and doesn’t mean you’re going to get published yet, if ever. But it was one step closer. Mary and I worked on that manuscript but it didn’t sell. She’s always been the type of agent who pushes me to work on the next book as soon as possible, not only to get my mind off the current project, but also because publishing works slow, and every project feels like a sapling. The earlier you plant the seed, the more time you’ll have for it to grow. 

I worked on my next book, about a girl who develops super strength and wants to get rid of it because it causes a lot of problems in her life. I wanted an excuse to add in the greatest obsession of my life: the Monkey King. Mary has always been an editorial agent–she gives a lot of advice before we even go out on submission (where we then get more feedback)--so we worked on the book for two years before she felt it was ready. That was the book that would become my debut, Girl Giant and the Monkey King. 

8. You published your first middle grade novel, Girl Giant and the Monkey King, in 2020. Since then, you’ve published three other middle grade stories (including this one) and two adult novels. How have you kept up the pace of writing and publishing your stories so consistently? 

That was all before I had my kid haha. 

Joking aside, I’ve always been a prolific writer, and have used writing stories as a means of escape from the daily grind. I suffer from insomnia, and would often wake up in the middle of the night to write. It also helps that I have such an encouraging agent, and I’m friends with her other clients (we call ourselves agent-siblings), and we all motivate each other to keep writing. 

9. How did you celebrate the release of Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon, and how are you planning to market it? Has your approach to promoting your books changed since you were a debut author? 

My first two books came out during the pandemic, so I had very low-key, virtual book launches. My adult books were celebrated with my local library at a fancy author luncheon. This time around, I’m going to celebrate with my family in a quiet way. 

As far as marketing, I’ve found that the best approach is reaching out to bookstagrammers and booktokkers personally, sending them a cute PR packet I put together myself with ARCs of the book, some stickers and swag, and a personal note. I love book influencers and the impact they’re having on the reading world. 

10. That’s great that you have connections to booktokkers and bookstagrammers. What are you working on now? 

I’m working on an adult thriller, which is totally different from Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon, and is a bit scary at times to a Halloweenie like me. But it’s fun to write something totally out of my comfort zone, and challenging and satisfying. I’m on the third draft, when the puzzle pieces start to feel like they’re forming a coherent picture, and it’s exciting even though I know there’s still lots of work ahead of me. 

Thanks for sharing all your advice, Van. You can find Van at https://www.authorvanhoang.com/, https://www.instagram.com/iamvanhoang/, and sign up on her newsletter at https://iamvanhoang.substack.com/. 

Giveaway Details

Van is generously offering a hardback of Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon for a giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower of my blog (via the follower gadget, email, or bloglovin’ on the right sidebar) and leave a comment by May2 nd. If I do not have your email (I can no longer get it from your Google Profile), you must leave it in the comments to enter the contest. Please be sure I have your email address.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites and/or follow me on Twitter or Bluesky or follow Van on her social media sites, mention this in the comments, and I'll give you an extra entry for each. You must be 13 years old or older to enter. This book giveaway is US.

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday is hosted by Greg Pattridge. You can find the participating blogs on his blog. 

Upcoming Interviews, Guest Posts, and Blog Hops 

Monday, April 27th, I have an interview with Gareth P. Jones and a giveaway of his MG Solve Your Own Mysteries 

Wednesday, April 29th, I have an agent spotlight interview with Erica Bauman and a query critique giveaway 

Friday, May 1st, I’m participating in the Come What May Giveaway Hop 

Wednesday, May 6th, I have an interview with Dana Mele and a giveaway of her YA The Beast You Let In and my IWSG post 

Monday, May 11th, I have an interview with Sarah Marie Jette and a giveaway of her MG One Fair Share 

Wednesday, May 13th, I have an agent spotlight interview with Andrea Colvin and a query critique giveaway 

Saturday, May 16th, I’m participating in the Moms Rock Giveaway Hop 

Monday, May 25th, I’m off for Memorial Day 

I hope to see you on Monday!