I remember the morning of November 8, 2023, Wednesday: I parked in my company’s parking lot after getting through traffic on the San Mateo Bridge, and saw a missed call and voicemail from my brilliant agent, Tricia Lawrence. Alvina Ling, Senior Editor of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, was looking to buy my picture book biography of Rainbow Grandpa in a pre-empt.

When it comes to acquisitions, there are two ways books are often bought: either a pre-empt or an auction. The best analogy I can think of is buying on eBay.

An auction is what it sounds like. Buyers (in this case, acquisition teams at publishing houses) put in offers to buy a book, and the highest bidder comes out on top.

A pre-empt is like hitting the Buy It Now button. An acquisition team will buy a book so that no other team can try to swoop in and take the deal from them.

I had no interest in hearing about competing offers. This is my dream editor, ALVINA LING! Little, Brown has one of the toughest acquisitions board in the industry, so of course I let my brilliant agent do her thang and close the deal for me.

Remember how in the querying trenches, there’s lots and lots of waiting? Haha, guess what? Even when you’ve got an agent and a book deal, there’s MORE WAITING. At least it’s comforting to know that my agent is handling the contracts and business side of things while I’m free to write as much as I want and focus on being creative (more like working at my day job and chipping away at never-ending-to-do-lists while also carving out time for writing…no way am I going to be a full-time creative anytime soon).

Oh, and while waiting to sign the contract, since this is a picture book, an illustrator had to be chosen! Usually picture books take longer to announce than novels, and also longer to publish than novels. I’m thrilled to say that my top choice among all the illustrators, Alina Chau, said yes!

I adore Alina Chau’s gorgeous use of colors, compositions, character designs, and style. On top of LOVING her works and style, she and I resonate on so many similar interests. Dogs, Edward Scissorhands, Pan’s Labyrinth, Sandman, Wizard of Oz, anime, Disney, astrology, and our shared cultural background? Heck yes! It definitely helps that she has illustrated other PB biographies before, including The Rise (and Falls) of Jackie Chan by Kristen Mai Giang, which I had the pleasure of reading when I was researching comps for my Rainbow Grandpa book. I cannot think of a better illustrator to bring this picture book to life!

Signed my contract about 7 months after the pre-empt deal closed, and a little over a month after that, 8 months later in total, it feels so good to FINALLY see the Publisher’s Weekly Children’s Bookshelf email pop up in my inbox!

The story behind this picture book is that I visited Rainbow Village (彩虹眷村) in November 2019, and loved the heartwarming story of a Chinese war veteran who saved his home through his art and creativity. I even got to meet Rainbow Grandpa himself! During the pandemic, I really got into reading picture book biographies, and thought Rainbow Grandpa would be a perfect subject to write about. Taiwanese-Chinese history and culture are subjects I hold dear to my heart thanks to my Taiwanese-Chinese heritage. I owe a lot of gratitude to Grace Lin, who I met at the inaugural AAPI Highlights Kidlit Retreat back in 2022, which she hosted with my agent sister, Debbi Michiko Florence! Grace and I connected over our Taiwanese-Chinese roots, and I have no idea how we got on the topic of Rainbow Grandpa and Rainbow Village, but when I mentioned I had a picture book draft, she told me that she’ll give Alvina a heads up once Tricia and I were ready to send it. Say whut. It did take about 1.5 years for the manuscript to be ready, but all that work was worth it, since Tricia submitted it out to publishers, and the book was bought in 3 weeks. In book publishing world, 3 WEEKS IS FAST.

I cannot ask for a better dream team. For real, I have my dream agent, dream editor, and dream illustrator! 🥳🎉🎊 Thank you everyone who has been a part of my journey! So excited for this book to come out in early 2027!