Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker, an artist, and a woman of letters. She is the author of Goodbye Earl (Grand Central Publishing, 2023), Half-Blown Rose (Grand Central Publishing, 2022), This Close To Okay (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), So We Can Glow (Grand Central Publishing, 2020), Whiskey & Ribbons (Hub City Press, 2018), and Every Kiss A War (Mojave River Press, 2014). Her next novel is As You Wish, forthcoming from Tiny Reparations Books in 2025. She was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. Half-Blown Rose received 2022 Coups De Cœur recognition from the American Library in Paris, and was the Amazon Editors’ Spotlight for June 2022, the inaugural pick for Amazon’s Editorial Director Sarah Gelman’s Book Club Sarah Selects, and the Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick for June 2022. This Close To Okay was a Goodreads Choice 2021 Nominee for Best Fiction, a Book of the Month Early Release Pick for December 2020 and a Book of the Month Book of the Year 2021 Nominee, the Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick for February 2021, and the Marie Claire Book Club Pick for March 2021. So We Can Glow was listed as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. The novel Whiskey & Ribbons was longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and listed among Oprah Magazine’s “Top Books of Summer.” Every Kiss A War was a finalist for both the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction (2012) and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2012). She lives in Kentucky with her high school sweetheart husband and their two children. Find more @ LeesaCrossSmith.com.

Tell us about As You Wish. What was your inspiration and what was the moment the story “clicked” for you?

As You Wish is a story about friendship, love, and adventure, with a dash of magic. Three young American women move to Seoul to become au pairs and all three of them make a wish under a full moon. The next morning, everything has changed. The story follows the girls as they wrestle with their feelings about their wishes and as their friendship and their relationships with their love interests bloom. My inspiration was Seoul and my love of Korean culture, K-dramas, and K-pop. I love K-dramas so much and there’s something so magical and special about cozying up with a K-drama and watching people slowly fall in love, eat delicious food, live in adorable apartments in their adorable pajamas, all the while dealing with their life/family/friendship drama. I love everything about K-dramas and find them comforting and charming and they have a huge influence on how I told this story. BTS was a big inspiration for me too because I love them so much. Setting the story in Seoul was exactly what I wanted to do and being able to include K-pop playlists and K-drama tropes and my love for BTS in the book was a super added bonus. When it comes to writing a book, the story has to click for me very early on or I’ll be wasting my time, so when it came to As You Wish, as soon as I decided I wanted to set a book in Seoul and I thought about the young women and their deepest desires, and the fact that they were all au pairs for wealthy families who were also best friends, the idea just got cozier and cozier in my brain so that writing it all down to tell the story to myself first was inevitable. I wanted to write a sweet, healing, heartwarming book, so that’s exactly what I did.

Many writers want to set a book in a place they love. What were the biggest challenges and joys of making Seoul feel like a character in the story?

I really didn’t have any challenges making Seoul feel like a character! I feel like when the story backdrop is a huge city with plenty of people and things to see and do…so vibrant and exciting…really all I have to do is put the characters in the city and surround them with that excitement and the food, the smells, the lights, the music, the art, the possibilities…the city comes alive on the page in an easy way. The joys abound! I stayed in Seoul for about two weeks so I happily got to experience firsthand so much of that excitement and immersion that I put in the book, too.

Your novels are often praised for their sensory detail (particularly food, fashion, and setting). Do you have any tips for writers on how to bring texture and atmosphere to their pages without overloading the prose?

I really wouldn’t worry about overloading the prose, honestly! I can’t imagine writing stories without adding all of that sensory detail because it’s just how I write and how my brain works. My brain is always very busy re: those details and I’m highly sensitive so I can get easily overloaded in real life by my own senses, but that doesn’t happen to me on the page, really. Some readers don’t like all the extra details, but so many readers do! When I’m reading a book, I love to linger and hear all about what the characters are eating, what they’re wearing, what their love interests’ necks smell like. If a writer wants to include those things, they should! Those are some of my very favorite parts of books…those descriptions. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that had too many, in my opinion! So much of it is personal taste. I say go for it! That’s what I do!

You’ve published novels, short stories, and essays. How has working across different forms sharpened your storytelling instincts? Do you recommend writers stretch across genres?

I started with poetry in college, then began my career with short stories. After that, I wanted to see if I could write a novel and almost all of my essays have just been in support of my fiction writing, so there’s been a sort of melting into different forms that just happened naturally for me. In terms of storytelling sharpening, being able to hold back in a short story and keep it contained is important and of course, very different from stretching things out in a novel. I don’t consider myself an essayist, but I was able to learn how to put my feelings down in that way, which feels completely different from writing fiction and uses a different part of my brain. I think writers should stretch out if they want to try using a different part of their brain, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I’m content writing fiction and fiction only and enjoy writing both short stories and novels…they’re the same, but different.

What’s a piece of writing or publishing advice you had when you were just getting started?

Most importantly, just to hang in there. The publishing business is rough and you have to stay tough and believe in your work even when people are telling you no all day and night. You really have to train yourself to not care about that if you want to hang in there. That was something I just picked up from watching others and I trained myself to do it very early on.

What writing hurdle do you face most often and what are some strategies you have for moving through it? (i.e. perfectionism, self-doubt, procrastination, imposter syndrome)

I really don’t face any real writing hurdles anymore because I’ve been at this for a long time now, but back at the beginning of my career the biggest hurdle was just overcoming impatience. With myself when I wanted to be done with a book and with the industry. Anyone who has ever had a book out on submission knows it can take years to sell a book and those years feel like even more years and it’s exhausting. It’s really best to keep working on something else/new if that’s what you want to do. It helped me move through it. Acceptance is also key. I accept that I have very little control over anything that happens in the writing world outside of sitting down and getting my work done. I do my job and make sure I do it the best I can. The rest…happens!

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer and what was your first meaningful step towards that dream?

I had dreams of being a writer when I was a little girl because I loved books so much and I used to cut out pics from my mom’s fashion magazines and make up stories about them. I loved doing that…it was kind of like Sims with my homemade paper dolls. (And makes sense because I still love playing Sims!) My first meaningful step towards making that dream a reality was majoring in English/literature and getting my BA in that because I wanted to study the classics and the books I loved so much…I wanted to get to know those texts better. Reading, studying, falling in love with the beauty of language and storytelling gave me the confidence to want to share my own stories and once I felt ready, I started submitting my own.

What does your writing routine look like?

I don’t really have a routine! When I’m working on a book, I just sit down and write until I get where I need to stop for the day. I always have a loose idea of where I need to be…like if I need to get to the end of a chapter or write to finish a scene…I just sit down and do it. I always get something down even if I don’t “feel” like it…I do it anyway. So I guess I could say my writing routine is simply to write, no matter what.

What is a book you read that changed your writing?

I don’t have one specific book! But I will say Jane Austen and Banana Yoshimoto make me feel at home and their writing is so comforting to me in the same way that I hope my writing can be comforting to the readers who find my work. Both of those authors have a keen understanding of what it means to be human and all that comes with it and I’m consistently inspired by how they write about love, family, friends, grief, and longing. They write with so much heart and that’s what I’m always aiming for in my work.

What are some of your writing desk essentials? (Drinks, snacks, music, ambiance)

Usually I’m writing on my bed! I don’t have a desk. My “desk” is the kitchen table. Sometimes I’m on the couch. And I don’t really need much besides my laptop and sometimes a pen and my writing journal. I usually can’t listen to music while I write…maybe period piece soundtracks with classical music/no lyrics, but only once I’ve gotten to a certain point in the story. If my house is busy, I put my earplugs in and write to blissful silence. And I’m very thankful my husband keeps me fed and watered so I can work. I eat a lot of tangerines, drink a lot of decaf tea. I also need a big window because I love the sunlight!

If you could write from anywhere in the world, where would it be?

If not my bedroom, maybe Paris? Seoul? Or somewhere in England with a window looking out over a big garden or California with a view of the ocean.

What are you working on next?

After seven books it’s rest time for me so I’m only working on my journaling/sketchbook ecosystem, watching K-dramas, and reading healing Japanese fiction for the next little bit!

As You Wish by Leesa Cross-Smith

Jenny, Lydia, and Selene are excited to au pair in Seoul and become better versions of themselves. When they wish upon a magical waterfall on Jeju Island, it seems like they’ve finally attained perfection. But Jenny’s unexpected romance leads these ladies back to the waterfall and the realization that the true magic was their everlasting friendship.

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