As You Wish
by Leesa Cross-Smith
Interview by Ellen Birkett Morris
What would you wish for if you could wish for anything? Would getting what you think you want have unexpected consequences? In As You Wish, Leesa Cross-Smith’s seventh book, Lydia, Jenny, and Selene, are working as au pairs in Seoul and dreaming of careers, love and family connections. During a vacation with their host families, the women visit an enchanted waterfall and make wishes that change everything. Cross-Smith shares her journey creating her latest novel.
AUTHORLINK: Tell me about your apprenticeship as a creative writer. Did you have a mentor who offered advice that you can share with us?
CROSS-SMITH: I am a voracious reader and that was most important when it came to building my creative writing career. First, I read everything. I began by writing short stories and I read stacks of short story collections, then worked up the courage to try my hand at writing a novel. My first novel was built on a short story I’d written and had published. Before all of this, I took a few creative writing classes in college, but most of those were poetry classes. The poetry classes helped me so much because I love digging in for beauty on a sentence level and when it comes to language and rhythm, poetry is a brilliant place to start. I didn’t have an official mentor but I learned so much from reading and searching the publication credits of the writers I admired. One word of advice one of my creative writing teachers offered up that wasn’t even specifically about writing was to not be afraid to ask for things and that’s very true in this life, in this business. If you want something or want to know something, ask!
AUTHORLINK: What writers/television shows/music influenced the writing of As You Wish and how?
CROSS-SMITH: As You Wish was heavily inspired by Korean dramas and their original soundtracks and also, K-pop. I really wanted to inject a lot of intimacy and comfort into this book because that’s what K-dramas give to me. The friendship between the three young women in As You Wish is the core of the book the same way friendships play an important role in K-dramas. There are intense love stories in K-dramas too, just like in As You Wish. I wanted the book to have a playfulness and lightness to it, but not completely unrooted in reality. The young women have their feet firmly planted in the real world, but there is a bit of magic afoot. I loved playing around with that and I love seeing that delightful mix in the dramas I watch. There’s a real coziness to the soundtracks too and the repetition of the songs makes everything feel so familiar. I added playlists to As You Wish because I want the reader to be able to immerse themselves in the book that way too if they’d like.
AUTHORLINK: James Dickey said the idea for Deliverance came to him as a vision of a man standing alone on top of a mountain. His job was to get the man off the mountain. Where did the idea for As You Wish come from?
CROSS-SMITH: I love Korean culture so setting the book in Seoul was an easy idea and I love writing about girl friendships! I don’t write a lot of magical realism but writing a book with some magic sprinkled in really interested me. I love writing love stories and romance too, so writing a book about friendships and romance, dipped in the magic of wishes and K-dramas was such a win for my brain and heart. I spend years on my books so I also knew I wanted to work on something I wouldn’t tire of easily. I went to Seoul and can’t wait to go back. I took Korean lessons and am continuing my studies. And I will love BTS forever and ever, so I knew As You Wish would be a book I’d enjoy working on for a long time.
AUTHORLINK: Make a wish is a very old story trope. What did you do to make it fresh?
CROSS-SMITH: It is and I love it every time! I love the familiarity of the make a wish trope because there’s something so comforting about it and it’s something that I’d say probably every person from the beginning of time has imagined at least once in their life…making a wish and having it come true, so I love how relatable that is and always will be. But also, I threw in some surprises that I cannot list here because they are spoilers! I wanted the book to feel both familiar and fresh! Most of my books are set in the American south and I have one set in Paris, so setting As You Wish in Seoul added so much sparkle and newness for me and telling the stories from three different points of view that are all connected in some ways, but not in others was exciting for me too. I also loved writing about how the characters do and don’t wrestle with be careful what you wish for in their own way.
AUTHORLINK: Talk to me about the structure of the novel and the choice to shift between the points of view of Lydia, Jenny and Selene. How does this structure best serve the story?
CROSS-SMITH: In As You Wish there are three young women with three very different wishes and all three of them play out in different ways with some unexpected twists and turns so I knew the book had to be written from all three points of view. That made it fun for me to write and my hope is that it’ll be exciting and fun for the reader too. Each young woman is an au pair for a different family and all three families are very close friends, so I wanted the reader to get a peek at all of the individual family dynamics and to have that intimacy with the characters. Each young woman has a different reaction to the effects of her wish too, both in her inner thoughts and how she relates to the other young women, so I wanted the reader to get inside all of their heads as they dealt with their wish emotions, their romantic relationships, and their friendships with one another. I can’t imagine writing it any other way!
AUTHORLINK: Writing magical realism can be hard to pull off. What advice do you have for writers who are trying it for the first time?
CROSS-SMITH: This is my first real dip into magical realism so I wouldn’t dare say I have advice for writers who are trying it for the first time! But I will say that I am very stubborn about doing whatever I want when I write my books. If I want to include playlists, I do that. If I want to include emails, I do that. If I want to make one chapter much longer and one chapter much shorter, I do that. I have my own style and voice and I protect that ferociously. I wrote the magical realism in this book the way I wanted to…my goal is for it to be blended seamlessly into the story, which is set in the real world…the real world with magic. I chose not to spend a lot of time explaining the magic, allowing the reader to make their own decisions about how or why it works. I believe magic can be whatever we want it to be.
AUTHORLINK: What was your greatest challenge in developing As You Wish?
CROSS-SMITH: As You Wish is my seventh book so having been here plenty of times before, I really didn’t have huge challenges when it came to sitting down and getting the book written. I knew what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. Honestly, the biggest challenge this time around was finding the right team to work with and I’m very thankful to my agent for that bit!
AUTHORLINK: I’m wondering what advice you offer to apprentice writers about either craft, or staying encouraged in the face of rejection, or both.
CROSS-SMITH: My one piece of important advice is to finish your story. It’s so easy for us to talk about what we want to write and to workshop bits of it and go back and revise the beginning over and over again, but you really have to make sure you actually finish your story. Sit down and write it from beginning to end so you can have a finished project. Staying encouraged in the face of rejection is very important too of course! I lost track of my rejections very early on and believed in myself and my work enough to continue working and submitting, no matter what, even when it was exhausting. Recently I saw someone use the word audacity when referring to how artists move through the world and I think that word is perfect. You have to stand firmly behind your work and believe in yourself…even if you’re faking it sometimes. Publishing is such a difficult business and it hasn’t been easy at all for me, but you have to find encouragement somewhere inside yourself and keep working no matter what, if this is what you want. It’s okay if it’s not what you want, though! There are a lot of ways to live a life!
AUTHORLINK: You are a mother, wife, and successful writer. How do you find time to write?
CROSS-SMITH: When my kids were little, I wrote for quick, small windows while they were watching PBS or playing together, but I didn’t have much time and I didn’t get much done. I didn’t start writing books and having them published until they were both in school. I’ve been writing for a long time so now my children are grown and it’s not an issue anymore! I always like to point this out in case moms think I was writing book after book when my children were little! Some moms do this but I did not! I was a stay-home mom and I didn’t have time for that at all until my children were in school. I don’t want moms feeling bad about themselves if they can’t find time during their busy days to write entire books! Please be kind to yourself! I didn’t even read very much when my kids were tiny and I didn’t care about that either. There’s a time for everything!
AUTHORLINK: Discuss what you are working on now.
CROSS-SMITH: I’m not working on a book right at this moment and it’s glorious because it’s time for a break! Instead, I’m working on my watercolors and my journaling ecosystem.
Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and the author of seven books. She was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her third novel, Half-Blown Rose, received the Coups de Cœur recognition from the American Library in Paris and was the Amazon Editors’ Spotlight pick for June 2022. It was also the inaugural pick for Amazon Editorial Director Sarah Gelman’s book club, Sarah Selects, and a Barnes & Noble Book Club pick.
