7 Things You Might Not Know About The Shade Under the Mango Tree
- A small, short journal I unearthed from a box in my garage inspired me to use the epistolary device to tell much of the story.
- I’ve made the mango salad in the story using a Vietnamese recipe for green papaya salad, substituting green (unripe) mango for the green papaya.
- I usually situate my stories in places I’ve lived in or have visited. But I’ve never been to Cambodia, where half of the action takes place. To learn about Cambodia, I interviewed a young man who grew up in Cambodia and lived for a while in the west. I also read books and online articles about its current society and traditions, as well as the experiences of survivors of the Khmer genocide. I also watched a few movies.
- Two movies currently on Netflix depict the Cambodian genocide: Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father and a French graphic animation, Funan. Maybe, the first film ever made of it is The Killing Fields (1984), about five years after this particular holocaust ended.
- Towards the middle of writing the story, I switched the male protagonist’s profession from computer science to architecture as a tribute to my husband’s frustrated wish to be an architect. He became a clinical psychologist, instead.
- I interviewed an architect from one of my Facebook groups to learn more about the profession. I also took a brief online introductory course on architecture.
- The coffeeshop where the protagonists meet is also featured in Books 4 and 6 in the series, Between Two Worlds.
Evy Journey writes. Stories and blog posts. Novels that tend to cross genres. She’s also a wannabe artist, and a flâneuse.
Evy studied psychology (M.A., University of Hawaii; Ph.D. University of Illinois). So her fiction spins tales about nuanced characters dealing with contemporary life issues and problems. She believes in love and its many faces.
Her one ungranted wish: To live in Paris where art is everywhere and people have honed aimless roaming to an art form. She has visited and stayed a few months at a time.
Website or Blog: https://evyjourney.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejourneywriter/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14845365.Evy_Jour
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