Straight From the Mouth of Women's Fiction Author Evy Journey


 7 Things You Might Not Know About The Shade Under the Mango Tree

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. The coffeeshop where the protagonists meet is also featured in Books 4 and 6 in the series, Between Two Worlds

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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

Purchase Information for The Shade Under the Mango Tree


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