📚Kyla’s Musings: NEW BOOK DEAL!!!! :')
Making my Young Adult debut... with a historical fiction novel!
Hi friends!
I am so so so happy & thrilled & incredibly grateful that I get to share with you:
I AM RELEASING A NEW BOOK!!!!
Another announcement:
As a Young Adult historical fiction novel, Heirs of Infamy marks two firsts for me!
The Fraud Squad (2023): Adult contemporary
Valley Verified (2024): Adult contemporary
May the Best Player Win (Sept 2024!!): Middle Grade contemporary
Heirs of Infamy (Fall 2026): Young Adult historical
As you can tell, I don’t really have a consistent author brand… but I’m honestly so excited to be writing for different age groups and in different genres. :) And I’m very grateful to my publishing team for having enough trust & faith to let me explore these different domains.
(And I’m super psyched I get to bring you guys along in my exploration!)
The origin story
The story goes back to May 2023, when I visited Las Vegas during Memorial Day weekend. It was a sweltering three days in the desert, and I quickly realized that as someone who doesn’t drink or gamble, Vegas just isn’t quite the place for me.
(Though this was also the trip where I discovered Cirque du Soleil and fell in love with their shows. But I digress.)
On the last day, it was so blisteringly hot that I couldn’t stand the thought of staying outdoors. So I decided to spend my last few hours in Vegas inside—at a museum. And an online travel guide recommended the Mob Museum, so I figured, Why not?
And that trip sent me down the most fascinating rabbit holes. When I returned home, I went to the library and checked out every single book I could find about underworld groups.
When my agent submitted Heirs of Infamy to my publisher, here’s the author’s note I included:
Heirs of Infamy - Author’s note
When I visited the mob museum in Las Vegas last year, two things stood out to me.
Firstly, the fundamental base of an underworld group is family. A mob is a tight-knit, insular group, whose genesis is rooted in self-protection: early immigrants in the 20th century arrived in America not speaking English and not knowing anyone else but their countrymen; for survival, they banded together and formed enclaves in big cities.
This us-versus-the-world mentality fascinates me as a psychology major. That’s one thing I wanted to explore further: how a group of immigrants managed to create their idea of a found family, shaped and maintained by strict rituals and rules. An underworld family supersedes even one’s blood family; if your boss asks you to murder your own brother, you cannot say no.
The second thing that caught my attention at the mob museum is a “wall of fame” detailing all the most famous mob members in history. None of them were women. How is it that an organization built on family—a concept historically intertwined with women—bear such little female presence?
Over the past year, I’ve read any books I could get my hands on that explore the American underworld in the 20th century. Subconsciously, I gravitated towards stories of the Chinese groups in San Francisco—drawn to them by a common heritage and homebase.
As I delved into the rich history of San Francisco’s Chinese gangs, the few stories I could find about women portray them as mere sidekicks: they are wives, mistresses, mothers, sisters, and daughters, but they possess no established merit of their own. e’s trying to make sense of her position in a world where she’s supposed to play only a supporting character, but she carries aspirations far bigger than staying on the sidelines.
The deeper I ventured into this fascinating ecosystem, the more I wanted to write a story centered on a figure who’s been glossed over in the history records—a teenage girl. A Chinese teenage girl. One who’s still learning how her gender intersects with her ethnicity to impose even more constraints on the kind of person she can be.
HEIRS OF INFAMY tells her story—built on the history of Chinese gangs in mid-20th century San Francisco, and driven by my protagonist’s complex ambitions and relationships with her family (in both senses of the word).
She’s separated from me by almost a century as well as vast differences in our background and upbringing, but in many ways, her dreams are mine too.
I’m super excited to share more about Heirs in time to come! If you want to stay updated, subscribing to this newsletter and adding the book on Goodreads helps.😊
My middle grade book comes out so soon!
May the Best Player Win — I describe it as a family-friendly version of The Queen’s Gambit. Here’s a brief synopsis:
The game is on in this fun-filled middle grade debut about chess, girl power, and performance anxiety in sports, perfect for fans of Kelly Yang and Celia C. Pérez!
The clock is ticking for May Li, whose middle-school chess team just earned a victory at the state championship—and with it, a ticket to nationals. What’s even more exciting is that May got an award for being the top female player and a splashy feature in the biggest chess magazine in the country.
May should be thrilled. But some of her teammates, including her supposed-to-be-friend Ralph, aren’t too pleased with the attention she’s getting—and they’re even questioning her skills. Backed into a corner, but not one to back down, May makes a move as bold as any of her chess tactics: She bets Ralph she can win the school’s internal tournament and be chosen as team captain for nationals.
The crown is May’s for the taking . . . except she’s starting to crumble under the weight of everyone’s expectations. Anxious feelings begin to affect her performance and, what’s worse, eat away at her love for the game. Now May is left to wonder: Can you still play for fun when you’re playing to win?
And it comes out in September! It’s not too late to preorder it, and preorders help authors so much. :)
And a big thank you to all the readers who have been so supportive of Valley Verified! I love hearing from you guys about which parts of the book resonated. Please continue spreading the word and telling your friends/book clubs/libraries/bookstores about them.😊
That’s all from me, friends! If you’re going through a heat wave right now like I am, stay cool. And take care :)
Love,
Kyla
I'm so excited for this! My great-uncle was a part of the Chicago mob, so it has always fascinated me too!