Travels with Tori--Sending Her Sleuth on A Journey

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We’ve all had to stay close to home these days, and of course, doing most of our travel through books. This horrible pandemic has certainly changed book tours, that’s for sure, but at least now we can see our favorite authors on zoom. (And that’s pretty amazing, you have to admit.)

But safe on the pages of the book, of course, authors can take their characters anywhere. And the fabulous dear friend of Jungle Red, nationally best-selling author Tori Eldridge, knew it was time to take her Lily Wong on a trip!

So now, Lily has taken a journey on paper, and Tori has taken her book tour journey on zoom. And that’s where our story begins.

Taking an L.A. Sleuth to Hong Kong

TORI ELDRIDGE: Unless a book series protagonist is a roaming lone wolf or an action hero in an international thriller, they usually fight crime in their home-base city. Not so with Lily Wong. After establishing my ninja sleuth in Los Angeles with The Ninja Daughter and The Ninja’s Blade, the time had come for me to take Lily Wong across the world to exotic Hong Kong. And now I’m on tour for The Ninja Betrayed, and it’s funny that that same questions keep coming from readers!

Had I planned this in advance?

Was it harder to write about a location so far from my own?

Were there tricks for switching cities mid-series?

And I’ve realized that in answering those questions, I learned some valuable things!

Lay a Foundation

The key to switching locations, mid-series, is to lay a foundation in previous books that lead the readers to a justifiable and expected transition.

In the Lily Wong series that balances action thriller, intriguing mystery, and cultural family dynamics, Lily’s choices are driven by her love and concern for her family. No matter how demanding the case, she always makes the time to connect with her parents and grandparents. Therefore, the driving motivation for Lily to switch cities had to come from family.

Tori Eldridge in Hong Hong

In The Ninja Daughter, Lily’s grandparents exert their influence from Hong Kong by holding the deed to her parents’ home, pressuring Lily to fulfill her mother’s failed filial obligations, and sending Lily a gift via Daniel Kwok, the perfect Chinese son. In The Ninja’s Blade, Gung-Gung and Po-Po visit Los Angeles, meddle in Lily’s budding romance, and argue about Hong Kong’s pro-democracy struggle. When Gung-Gung summons Ma, who is also the Los Angeles director of his Hong Kong International Finance company, for an emergency meeting in Hong Kong, readers are prepared for a new destination in The Ninja Betrayed.

Establish Strong Motivation

In a home-based book series, the protagonist needs a strong motivation to travel.

While readers expect a roving character like Jack Reacher to travel around the USA, a Chicago private eye like Cass Raines would need a darn good reason to leave her windy city.

Lily’s motivation is family. She escorts her mother to Hong Kong because her Norwegian father—a Hong Kong cuisine restaurateur and chef—cannot. His head cook is visiting relatives in Shanghai and he must stay in Los Angeles to run his Chinese restaurant. Lily must go in his place to support her mother through family and corporate attack.

Make it Relevant

The most vibrant settings intertwine with characters and plot so thoroughly the book could not take place anywhere else. Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic could only take place in 1950s Real del Monte, Mexico. Richard Chizmar anchored his remarkable metafiction, Chasing the Boogeyman, into his hometown of Edgewood, Maryland. J.T. Ellison wedded Her Dark Lies into a fictional island in Italy so vibrantly I wanted to book passage.

With The Ninja Betrayed, not only is Lily’s Hongkonger mother the Los Angeles director of Gung-Gung’s Hong Kong family business, but Lily and Ma arrive in the midst of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy struggle. During her visit, Lily copes with protest, riots, and black police while trying to protect an impressionable teen, the daughter of her grandfather’s driver, from ambitious political activists. My story could only be told in Hong Kong, and since it took place in September 2019, it had to revolve around H.K.’s pro-democracy struggle.

Personal Connection

Each of the afore-mentioned authors had a fascination or familiarity to their book’s location that added depth to their stories—Chizmar’s hometown, Moreno-Garcia’s home country, Ellison’s birthday trip to Lake Como and her vivid impressions of a tiny island called Comacina. Their personal connections came through in their writing and brought those places to life.

My connection to Hong Kong is bound by blood.

the new family!

In a serendipitous coincidence, our eldest son fell in love with a co-worker in Oregon while I was writing The Ninja Daughter. I had already established Lily Wong’s Hong Kong heritage, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that his future-wife was from also Hong Kong! Years later, I have a beautiful ten-month-old granddaughter with the same maternal roots as my protagonist.

My husband, younger son, and I celebrated their engagement by traveling to Shanghai, where they live, and on to Hong Kong to meet my daughter-in-law’s family. What a dream this was for me, as a mother and an author, to experience this wondrous city with people who knew it best.

Have you been to Hong Kong? What city intrigues you the most?

HANK: OH, I’ve never been to Hong Kong! Hmm. Where would I like to go? Whitbey’s Island. Or Venice. How about you, Reds and Readers?

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Things get personal for Lily Wong in The Ninja Betrayed, named one of “Five Fall Mysteries You Shouldn’t Miss” by the Los Angeles Times!

Tori Eldridge is the Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards-nominated nationally-bestselling author of the Lily Wong mystery thriller series—The Ninja Daughter, The Ninja’s Blade, The Ninja Betrayed—and the upcoming dark Brazilian fantasy, Dance Among the Flames (out May 24, 2022). Her shorter works appear in horror, dystopian, and other literary anthologies, including the inaugural reboot of Weird Tales magazine. Her screenplay The Gift was a Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist. Tori holds a fifth-degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts and has performed as an actress, singer, dancer on Broadway, television, and film.