Kehinde Fadipe
The Sun Sets in Singapore
(Mainstream Women’s Fiction, October, Grand Central Publishing)
“Three Nigerian women living in Singapore find their lives turned upside down when a suave, handsome lawyer moves into town.”
Singapore (currently), London (soon). I had just given birth to my son and completed the first draft of a different novel, which was much heavier in content and tone. I wanted to write something lighter that captured the different types of people I was meeting in Singapore, so I started a series on my then-blog, Black Girl In Spore, posting a new chapter every week. I got really excited by the responses in the comments and decided to commit to crafting a fulllength manuscript. I wrote this book on and off for seven years! I made a list of all the books in my genre … I thought this book would need a few months of editing before going out on submissions to publishers, given how many years I’d worked on it. When my agent sent me her first draft of edits, I felt like crying … We ended up doing major edits for the next 18 months before selling the book. … although it was very frustrating at the time, I’m extremely grateful for it and for an agent who put in that amount of work without any guarantee of a payoff at the end. I think my agent sold the book to the right people and that made all the difference … I feel so lucky to have worked with two different editors, each writing their comments in the margins, and the comments got funnier with each draft! It’s been a wonderful experience so far—I can’t think of a single thing I’d do differently. Try to find a writer’s group, even if you have to pay to join one or start one yourself. The critique, support, and encouragement you get is invaluable, and once you start seeing other writers getting published, you start to taste the possibility—then there’s no turning back. I’m working on my second novel, which is set on the same street in Lagos and has a little more bite to it. I’m looking to produce my second short film—and looking for funding.
