Debut Author Interview: H.N. Khan and Wrong Side of the Court Giveaway and IWSG Post

Happy Wednesday Everyone! Today I’m excited to have H.N. Khan here to share about his YA contemporary Wrong Side of the Court. It sounds like a fantastic coming of age story that is told from a male’s POV, which isn’t seen enough of in YA books. I’m excited to read it.

Here’s a blurb from Goodreads:

Fifteen-year-old Fawad has big dreams about being the world's first Pakistani to be drafted into the NBA. A first-generation Pakistani coming-of-age story for fans of David Yoon and Ben Philippe.

Fifteen-year-old Fawad Chaudhry loves two things: basketball and his mother's potato and ground-beef stuffed parathas. Both are round and both help him forget about things like his father, who died two years ago, his mother's desire to arrange a marriage to his first cousin, Nusrat, back home in Pakistan, and the tiny apartment in Regent Park he shares with his mom and sister. Not to mention his estranged best friend Yousuf, who's coping with the shooting death of his older brother.

But Fawad has plans: like, asking out Ashley, even though she lives on the other, wealthier, side of the tracks, and saving his friend Arif from being beaten into a pulp for being the school flirt, and making the school basketball team and dreaming of being the world's first Pakistani to be drafted into the NBA. All he has to do now is convince his mother to let him try out for the basketball team. And let him date girls from his school. Not to mention somehow get Omar, the neighborhood bully, to leave him alone . .

 

Before I get to my interview with H.N., I have my IWSG Post.

Posting: The first Wednesday is officially Insecure Writer's Support Group Day.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

The awesome co-hosts this month with me are Janet Alcorn, Pat Garcia, and Shannon Lawrence!

I’m going to skip the optional question this month because I never dealt with this issue. I’ll just give a quick up on my progress on my manuscript. I’m writing the second chapter in a three-chapter climax. Then there can only be about three more chapters left after that and then I can say it’s done. It’ll still take a number of months for me to get there, but the end is in sight. 

It’ll only be the second manuscript I ever finished, so it feels like a big accomplishment. I’ll let you know when I finish.

Interview With H.N. Khan

Hi H.N! Thanks so much for joining us.

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

First off, thanks so much for having me Natalie. I have a lot in common with Fawad, or rather he has a lot in common with me. I’m a Pakistani-immigrant who grew up in a social housing project and was obsessed with basketball. And when I wasn’t playing, I was reading, which was my second obsession. Since middle school, I’d always journaled and wrote poetry but a gr. 12 Writer’s Craft course set me on the path of wanting to write fiction. The problem was I never got past a first draft.

It wouldn’t be until almost 10 years later that I’d get the desire to write fiction again in the midst of a major upheaval in my personal life. But this time, I was a little more resourceful and sought out the necessary help I needed to bring this story to life. From getting back in touch with my high school writing teacher to taking his advice and enrolling in a post-graduate correspondence program at a local college and meeting a mentor who changed the course of my life, I exercised grit and kept rewriting until I landed an agent who then helped land a deal with Penguin Teen. It’s been almost 5 years in the making but it feels great to have seen this project through and has given me a great deal of confidence for future works.

2. That’s great you got the desire to write again and found the help you needed to propel you on. Where did you get the idea for Wrong Side of the Court?

It all started when I finished “The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao” and for the first time experienced a novel that felt like a visceral gut punch and tackled all the confusion that comes with growing up in between two worlds. That’s when I started thinking back to all the confusion I felt as a teen, being pulled in myriad directions and never really feeling at peace with just having to pick one identity over an another but having to make do with a never-ending process of renegotiation between the different parts of myself. I had an inkling that had I read a book that had a protagonist that mirrored some of my experiences growing up, maybe I would’ve felt less alienated. And that’s when it became more about just writing a book but wanting to write something that might help even one immigrant teen more easily navigate their chaotic teenage years and feel seen.

3. You immigrated to Canada from Pakistan when you were seven years old. Share how your own experiences influenced your story.

A lot of my experiences influenced different elements of the story. Unlike Fawad, I grew up in a big family with six siblings but rather than make life too complicated for myself, I combined all of my siblings’ traits into his older sister Jamila. Similarly, growing up in Regent Park sometimes felt like an obstacle course and never knowing when you might turn a corner or go into the wrong alleyway or look someone the wrong way and have things turn sour, which is something I try to convey in the book. I was always pretty academic but always felt left out, it wasn’t until I discovered basketball, a sport I was actually able to get decent at, that I felt like I could get the social validation I was looking for and that drive to get better at it is something that Fawad embodies. I also had to deal with my mom being set on wanting me to marry my uncle’s daughter and like Fawad, wasn’t game, which wasn’t an easy conversation or process but a necessary one. We both also share a love for food and my mom’s home-cooked meals were unreal, just like his.

4. It sounds like you were able to draw a lot on your own experiences and that your story is one that other immigrants can relate to. Did you plot out your story or write without an outline? How did that work for you and how are you changing how you write from that experience?

I initially wrote without an outline but increasingly started experimenting with and then sticking with the beats outlined in Save the Cat as guide posts on which to hang the rest of the plot as I rewrote each draft. In general, I try to keep the initial draft or two as loose as possible again with those beats as guide posts, before really getting into the nitty gritty and deconstructing what I wrote and putting the story and characters back together more thoughtfully before I let someone else read it.

5. I want to use the beats in Save the Cat for my next novel too. Fawad sounds like a fantastic character dealing with challenges kids can relate too. Share three of your favorite things about him as a character.

He was a lot of fun to write. My three most favorite things about him would be:

1.     His resilience in the face of great odds

2.     His passion for the game of basketball

3.     His willingness to take feedback, work harder, and aspire for great heights

6. Tell us a bit about your experience working with your editor. What advice do you have for other authors?

My advice for other authors is to cultivate patience. Lots and lots of patience. Especially after getting a deal, it’s easy to feel like you’re on top of the world and a priority but the reality is, everyone in publishing is working on concurrent projects and yours is just one of them and whether it’s your agent or editor, they’ll get to your manuscript when they can and are able to. I’m pretty fast with edits and rewrites and so found myself waiting weeks and sometimes months for feedback and the best way to deal with that is to start working on the next project.

7. Your agent is Stacey Kondla. How did she become your agent and what was your right to publication like?

Stacey at The Rights Factory is amazing and I’m incredibly lucky to have her as my agent. I became aware of her through Sam Hiyate who founded The Rights Factory and frequently runs workshops and speaks at different events in the Toronto community for writers. I’d met him a few times and pitched him my book idea in person and gotten some really good feedback which I incorporated into future drafts. At a query letter writing workshop during the time I’d been actively querying and being met with either no response or rejection, I got a chance to read the umpteenth draft of my querying letter out loud and it caught his attention.

When I told him I’d finished Humber School for Writers correspondence program and was mentored by Tim Wynne-Jones, he mentioned I should look into querying Stacey who at the time was just in the process of building her list and looking for YA authors and so I did.

She read what I sent over, loved it, we had a phone call a few weeks later and she’d been impressed by the amount of revisions and rewrites I’d already done through the Humber program and I got an offer of representation. We then spent more then a year going back and forth before she felt like the manuscript was ready but I followed her lead and eventually we got it to a point where she was not only confident in pitching it but in the end found a home for it.

8. That’s such an encouraging story of how you found your agent. You also founded QueryCat. Tell us about it and how it can help writers on their agent search.

I just hated going through these really outdated literary agency websites and using tools like QueryTracker. I have a background in UX design and tech and had been wanting to launch something of my own for some time when I figured why not try to scratch my own itch. The premise behind QueryCat is that it’s a far more aesthetically-pleasing experience to research and build lists of agents you want to query and track your progress. Plus, each agent page has a cover image of a cat and so while the Querying process sucks and can be all-consuming, I hoped it would make the experience a little more fun.

9. What are you doing to promote your book when it releases? What plans do you have to market it in the future?

I am becoming more active on Instagram and LinkedIn and looking to hop on podcasts and do both virtual and in-person events. Like other writers, I’m an introvert and I’ll be honest, this part of the process feels really, really hard.

 10. I’m an introvert too so I know what you mean. What are you working on now?

I am currently in the final stages of editing a manuscript for an adult RomCom that’s a bit like Bollywood meets Crazy Rich Asians. Stacey is hoping to start pitching it this spring and I couldn’t be more excited.

Thanks for sharing all your advice, H.N. You can find H.N. at:

https://www.instagram.com/_humayunk/

https://twitter.com/_humayunk

Giveaway Details

H.N. has generously offered an Amazon ebook of Wrong Side of the Court 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 March 19th. If your e-mail is not on 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 your blog and/or follow me on Twitter, 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 giveaway is U.S. and Canada.

Upcoming Interviews and Giveaways

Monday, March 7th I have an agent spotlight interview with Chelsea Eberly and a query critique giveaway

Tuesday, March 8th I’m participating in the Let’s Get Lucky Giveaway Hop

Monday, March 14th I have a guest post by debut author Sonja Thomas and her agent Ronald Gerber with a giveaway of her MG contemporary Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence and a query critique giveaway

Wednesday, March 16th I'm participating in the Chasing Rainbow Giveaway Hop and have an agent spotlight interview with Alyssa Eisner Henkin with a query critique giveaway

Monday, March 21st I have a guest post by debut author JC Peterson with a giveaway of her YA rom com Being Mary Bennett

Monday, March 28th I have an interview with debut author Ann Fraistat and a giveaway of her thriller/horror What We Harvest

Tuesday, April 5th I’m participating in the April Shows Giveaway Hop

Hope to see you on Monday!