Breaking Out: Ann Liang

We first connected with Ann Liang during her debut novel's publication and featured her in our September/October 2022 issue's Breaking In column. Now that her next publication is out on shelves, we're reconnecting with her for a quick Q&A.

I spent roughly two months writing the first draft while travelling around China, and then another two months revising it with my editor, Maya.

In many ways, yes. When I signed the deal for my debut novel, I was this wide-eyed writer who had never even met anyone from the publishing industry in real life before—almost everything I knew about publishing, I knew from Google. Since then, I feel like I’ve experienced so much, having transitioned not just from a new writer to an author of six books, but also from a college student to a 20-something-year-old. The biggest change is that I actually feel more grounded now; the pressures of publishing are still there, but I try not to let it consume me the way it used to. At the same time, the thrill of getting to hold my own published book in my hands hasn’t changed at all.

From when the book was announced, I started hearing readers referring to Never Thought I’d End Up Here as “the new Ann Liang book” or “another Ann Liang romance” instead of just the title of the book itself. It might seem a bit silly, but it came as a shock to realize that people already associated my writing with something, that there was an existing idea of what a book from me would look like.   

Since this is a travel romance and it’s set across different cities in China, I really wanted the setting to feel as vivid and immersive as possible, so I put a lot of thought into crafting the descriptions. I can only hope that has come through in the writing.    

I like to think that each book reflects a different stage of my life as a person and writer—almost like a time capsule—so if there were something I wanted to change about the book now, it would simply end up being a different book.

This applies both to writing and just in general: be patient with yourself, fight for the things you care about, give yourself permission to have fun, and remember that challenges or setbacks are inevitable in every story, but they’re necessary for character development.   

My next book is called I Could Give You the Moon—it’s a standalone spin-off to my debut, If You Could See the Sun, and it’s a speculative enemies-to-lovers novel which follows Beijing’s ‘it girl’ Chanel Cao as she races to outsmart the mysterious new student at Airington International Boarding School and prevent a terrifying vision of the future. It’s one of the books I’m most excited to share with readers, and it’s coming out next year!

You can always find me hiding from my deadlines on Instagram @annliangwrites and TikTok @annliangauthor.