Interviews

November 2021 - Interview with uxecila

Interview conducted by AnshaBhatia

Hi,

We are very pleased with the fact that we get to showcase your book, Diavolo, and Interview you as the author of that book. 

Can you tell us more about yourself, and how your life is, outside of Wattpad?

Hello! My name is Alice. I was born in Taiwan and currently live in the US. Outside of Wattpad, I used to work as a K-12 Chinese language teacher and later became a program coordinator at a university. Now, I'm a stay-at-home-mom with a wonderful hubby and tiny Godzilla (a.k.a. toddler). I've always been an introverted book nerd at heart, and I finally decided to try my hand at writing because the craziness of 2020 was stressing me out, and writing was a nice way to escape reality and play in my characters' heads for a while, haha.

Your book, Diavolo, has been selected as the Book of the month, how do you feel about this?

I'm so humbled and thrilled to have "Diavolo" selected as the Book of the Month. Thank you so much. I couldn't have done it without the support that my real life friends and family and my writer and reader friends on Wattpad have given me. I wouldn't have found the motivation or inspiration to finish this book otherwise. Honestly, you guys are the best!

What was the thought process behind Diavolo?

"Diavolo" started out as a fun project that wasn't supposed to be taken too seriously, lol. The inspo came after I watched "365 Days" for the first time. I could totally understand the appeal of the dark mafia romance genre, but I wanted to redo the genre my way by throwing two people who weren't supposed to thrive in mafia world together, an independent, moral-minded surgeon forced to marry into mafia and a spoiled mafia princeling forced to be capo, and see what might happen...

As I wrote more and more of Elyse and Alessandro's love story, it became important to me to create flawed, complex leads with a flawed, complex relationship that go through a dynamic growth arc together, and I wanted the sexual side of their relationship to always reflect the emotional and mental state of their relationship. Hope that came across!

I also started seeing opportunities to insert some feminist themes as Elyse tried to navigate her way through a misogynistic and patriarchal institution, like the mafia, without losing her sense of self and identity.

Her struggle to hold onto morality and honor in a world without much morality or honor fascinated me as well. I liked the idea that everyone possessed an angel and a devil inside that could be brought out depending on fate and circumstance.

Most of all, I wanted to show that the power of love and one's strength of character could triumph at the end of these struggles. I'm definitely a sucker for happy endings after putting my characters through hell, haha.

Mafia is an extremely common genre with thousands of books, how did you make such a unique and seat gripping concept come to life?

Thank you very much for saying so. Honestly, I wish I was one of those authors who had a clear game plan, but I actually don't map out my stories before I start writing them. I just go with a gut feeling for the tone ("I want to write dark, steamy mafia romance!") and let the themes reveal themselves as I got to know Elyse and Alessandro better (woman surviving in man's world, honor in morally gray world, love conquering all) with each new chapter I wrote.

Once the themes became clearer to me, I tried to nudge the plot in a direction that would highlight and support the ideas I wanted to explore, and, whenever possible, I always attempted to heighten the tension in each conflict instead of giving my characters the easy way out. Oftentimes, by the end, I was as surprised as the readers by the twists and turns in "Diavolo."

Some of your other works also qualify for the adult fiction profile, and that says a lot about your style and preference. Is there a reason why you predominantly write adult stories?

I've always loved reading angst, steamy romances, so my personal preferences as a reader probably influences everything I write. I like writing adult stories because there's freedom to explore darker and more complex themes and character development in between the steam and romance. As a writer, I get a lot of inspo from the ups and downs I've experienced throughout different parts of my life as a kid, teen, student, working adult, wife, and mom, and, in a weird way, I find it therapeutic to be able to find answers for the questions and problems I couldn't resolve for myself through my characters and stories.

Adult fiction deals with problems faced by adults. The complexities every character feels in your books, feels so real. How do you manage to capture such real emotions and mindsets in your stories?

I try to bring in a bit of gritty realism to balance all of the over-the-top romanticism in my stories. Many of the emotions and mindsets my characters experience are inspired by real life. For example, as much as I love my kid and love being a mom, I admit, I went through a mini-identity crisis a while back of not knowing who I was anymore outside of being a mom, so I tried to channel that feeling of losing one's old self and struggling to find one's new self in Elyse (on a much more dramatic and exaggerated level, of course, lol) when she lost her identity as a surgeon and became "the capo's wife." These little day-to-day struggles of mine tended to make their way into my book to inspire some of my characters' struggles.

Apart from writing about mafia stories and mature romances, is there something that you haven't tried yet, but want to try in the future?

Hehe, I think I'll always want to stick with the romance genre, but I hope, with each new book I write, my storytelling skills will improve little by little. I love trying out new writing styles with each new book—whether it's writing in first or third person point of view, present or past tense, using more simplistic language vs. more flowery prose, or creating new characters that are very different from the ones I've already written. I love being creative, and I'm so happy to have found the Wattpad community. It has been such an incredible outlet for me to express my thoughts and emotions through my stories and connect with some amazing, lovely people online.

And you can read more about Diavolo in our November Book of the Month, here.