Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EP. 110 Tracy Badua on motherhood, Cali and first book!
10 Plays2 years ago
Tracy Badua is a Filipino American author of books about young people with sunny hearts in a sometimes stormy world. According to her grandmother, Tracy inherited this love of the written word from her great-grandfather, a school teacher in the Philippines. To Tracy, this means writing is in her blood, and she continues this family tradition by telling stories with her own spin in an accessible, heartfelt way.
By day, she is an attorney who works in national housing policy and programs, and by night, she squeezes in writing, family and pup time, and bites of her secret stash of candy. School and work brought her from California to Washington, DC, and back, and she now lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, family, and photogenic Maltese.
On the podcast Tracy talks about motherhood, writing as an attorney vs middle grade, story building, and her first book (Freddie vs the Family Curse)
Website: https://tracybadua.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracybaduawrites/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tracybwrites
Buy Freddie vs The Family Curse: https://tracybadua.com/books/
Recommended
Transcript
Parenting a New Negotiator
00:00:00
Speaker
You're catching me on an interesting day because I was actually just talking to my mom about it, but the fact that my daughter has recently learned how to say things like, I don't want to. And she says no, but she says no, thank you. So it's little things where like, like, oh, this was really cute at first, but like, I know you don't want to, you know, brush your teeth or, you know, you, you can't wear shorts today. It's going to be like 50 something degrees out this morning. Like the fact that I have to, I'm more at the point where we have to negotiate with her
00:00:30
Speaker
And I was like, oh, I'm not ready for this. I'm so tired.
Meet the Authors
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm Disha Filia, and I'm the author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
00:00:42
Speaker
a collection of nine stories about black women, sex, and the black church. My name is Jerry Kraft. I'm the author and the illustrator of the graphic novels New Kid and Class Act. My name is Anne Winter and I am an author of children's books. I live in Austin, Texas.
00:01:02
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Gary, so much for having me on. This is a huge pleasure. My name is Andre Fenton. I'm a young adult, author, and poet, spoken word artist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hi, Gary. Thank you so much. I am Andrea Wang. I write books for kids and most recently my picture book, Watercress, and my debut middle grade novel, Many Minutes in the World.
00:01:33
Speaker
It's personal. All right, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of It's Personal. I have an amazing guest today. Just like all of my guests, I have such a hard time with time and all the time changes and the time zones. This person has been so lovely to me, so I really appreciate her so much this morning. My morning, I guess, for afternoon.
Juggling Roles: Author, Attorney, Parent
00:01:58
Speaker
Can you introduce yourself?
00:01:59
Speaker
Hi, everybody. First of all, thanks for having me. My name is Tracy Badua. I am an author of books for middle graders and young adults. Tracy, how are you this morning? And I say that with like, you know, the most grace in the world because there's so much going on in the world. And at the same time, you are just from what I know about you and the books that you write are amazing. And I know that take a lot of effort. Then on top of that, you are, I want to say an attorney, but am I exactly sure?
00:02:24
Speaker
Yep, you got it. So I work full time and I do write when I can, which is, I feel like less and less these days, but you know, hopefully I'll build in some more time. And then I do have a toddler and a dog also keeping us busy. And that's what I was gonna say. It's like you are, you wear so many different hats. So I just, again, appreciate you being so flexible and seem to be so organized, which is like awesome for me.
00:02:54
Speaker
You know, it's, it involves a lot of, you know, Google calendar plus Outlook, plus we have a paper calendar where I write down where everything is because we're always juggling so many people's schedules. So, you know, I mentioned like I am a lawyer, I work full time plus the kiddo plus the writing. And I feel like none of that is really possible unless you get some like real substantive help. So,
00:03:22
Speaker
I'm really lucky that my parents live maybe about an hour and a half, two hours. I'm in California, so I was like two hours, but with traffic it could be more. I feel like other folks who deal with traffic will know exactly how long that takes. But I'm lucky because they, you know, my parents are close-ish and they're here often and my mother-in-law also lives nearby. So when I do need time to really sit down and focus on something,
00:03:45
Speaker
Like, like writing or, you know, like this past month, I was doing promo for my book. Like I, I have help though. I don't want to give people the smallest impression that like, I get all this time in the world. And then I get eight hours of sleep. Like none of that is true. It just makes sense to me. I think we talked about it earlier. Um, do you spend born and raised in California?
00:04:03
Speaker
Um, then you said you spent some time in Washington. Can you tell me a little bit about California growing up for you and what that
Cultural Diversity and Relocation
00:04:09
Speaker
looked like? Yeah, you know, it's, this is like something that, um, it's kind of sad jokingly, but, you know, again, born and raised in California, did not realize I was a diverse individual until I moved out of California. Um, and, you know, walking into, I went to law school in Washington, DC, and you know, I walk in, I was like, oh, oh, there's not as many Asians here as there were.
00:04:29
Speaker
in, you know, outside of Los Angeles, where I grew up, where, you know, I could just if I wanted to go, you know, a couple 10 minutes down the road to go get, you know, some Chinese food, I passed by like Korean restaurants and like, you know, Vietnamese open owned places and like the, you know, Mexican on grocery store, like it's so there's so much and I feel like I kind of took that for granted until I left and realized like, okay, so not not everywhere is like this.
00:04:55
Speaker
Um, and it's different to live in that atmosphere where it was, um, I didn't, and this was a big deal for California. I didn't have a car. So even though there was stuff in and around the DC area, I couldn't get to it. Like there's a really big, um, Korean, uh, community outside of the Washington DC area that I know once I had a car and was able to access grocery stores and Korean barbecue, I was like, okay, okay, we can do this. We can do a couple more years here.
00:05:19
Speaker
That's awesome because I think it's so, I don't know. I think it's nice for people to, you don't necessarily have to move or live in a different place, but at least this is one of the reasons why I just like to love travel so much is because it allows you to experience new things and it opens up so many.
00:05:34
Speaker
ideas
Travel and Perspective
00:05:35
Speaker
and thoughts and beliefs and values within your own systems and your own biases and stuff. So I love that you mentioned that. And it's just something I truly try to live by as well, just to try and explore, see different people, different places, different perspectives as much as possible. And those are the situations that kind of allow you to do that. I always push young people to not necessarily move out, because they'll think it's for everyone. The parents are like, turn this podcast off right now, you're staying home.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's good though like I agree like the it's there's something to be said it's one thing to visit and it's really fantastic when people do have the opportunity to do like you know kind of vacation travel and see the world but like when you're when you're stuck somewhere and you know it's different I really want salt and vinegar potato chips where am I gonna find that you have to go
00:06:20
Speaker
It's so true. It's so true. And I think like for us, like we're in the Philippines and we've lived in a few other countries. Like it's interesting, but it's so funny. Like you mentioned salt and vinegar chips and it's like something that both me and my wife like, and we're from Canada. So it's something we could always get anywhere we wanted to. And like, we're in the Philippines and like, if you see them on the shelf, like you need to get them like today because they'll be gone tomorrow.
00:06:42
Speaker
And like, you won't tell any of your ex-pat friends because they're like, they're going to buy all of it. And then they won't get it for like two months and we won't, we won't have salt and vinegar. So I had some relatives that, um, you know, were here in California and they moved back to the Philippines for a while. And it's funny, the little things that they wanted were just like taco, taco seasoning packets.
00:07:01
Speaker
like little things where it's just like you don't realize like the little stuff that you miss and it's not clearly not the end of the world like everywhere you go there's fantastic like flavors and new things to try but once in a while you just want those salt and vinegar chips. Agreed, agreed and it's and we'll like we're being here in this moving from Singapore like there's so many different things that we miss from each place
00:07:21
Speaker
Um, but I think the experiences in themselves are just like, you know, they're just so, um, I guess the word is more just so impactful on like so many other things in your life and like what you continue to do with life because you've had those experiences.
The Art of World-Building in Writing
00:07:34
Speaker
Um, and I guess my next question for you is like, how has that transition from California to Washington in the back, like influence some of the things that you kind of go through being a writer, being a lawyer, being a mom, et cetera.
00:07:47
Speaker
I mean it's interesting because as we were just talking right now I started thinking about it more of like talking about the value of travel and living different places. I think you know the nerdy part of me is like oh like you know it really helps when you're thinking about setting and for example like one of the big things and when you're setting up your book is the world building. So for example if you're doing like a sci-fi or fantasy book you have to explain the magic system or if they're in a kingdom like what
00:08:13
Speaker
who's in power, why are they in power and that kind of thing. And sometimes folks forget there's a lot that you have to do with just, you know, regular fun old contemporary novels too. You have to world build because me growing up in California is not the same as somebody growing up in DC, for example. So like if I'm, if someone is used to taking public transportation everywhere, I have to explain that I am so reliant on my car. Like I have to, you know, oh, we can't leave right now because it's rush hour. We're just going to sit here until that's over.
00:08:41
Speaker
So there's like little things like that you have to kind of interrogate every little bit that goes into your book to make sure that you're describing that way of life. You can't just assume that your reader is gonna come from the same background or know the same experience. So that's interesting. Like now I'm curious as to like the ways in which I do that in my middle grade, my young adult of like, I wonder what parts I just assume folks know what I'm talking about. Like, or do they not know that if you leave during rush hour, it'll take you three hours instead of, you know, one.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I think a lot of it, and for me as a reader, I love the, it's one of the reasons why I like reading so much is that like what you're doing and what you're talking about, it also allows the reader to kind of give their own interpretation of what that looks like. And sometimes based on who the author is, you can't always get a sense of what they're saying or what they're thinking about based on what they're writing. But I think it sometimes allows you
00:09:34
Speaker
to envision some of those things and that's I think that's the beauty of writing because you don't have a visual of it um so you kind of have to put those pieces together as well and I think that's for me at least that's like a cool part of reading it is because like you are putting a puzzle together like okay there's a store here but then there's like a pet shop over here and then there's like a like there's so many things you can put together in your mind
00:09:55
Speaker
And then if you do see it on film or you hear an author talk about it, you're like, oh, okay, now you can put it together a little bit better. So I think that's really, I think that's really cool and a cool way to put it because I think kids do sometimes need, you know, just like they need to use their imagination to get there themselves sometimes as well. That's also the tricky part is especially with middle grade, like kids are going to get super bored if you're spending an entire chapter describing, you know, someone's room.
00:10:20
Speaker
you're like they just they can they can fill in the blanks you can just say like okay they've got like you know a messy bed or a messy desk or something and they can imagine what that looks like so yeah you have to leave a little bit of room for imagination but again with little important world building detail if they like if they're really important to you for some reason like you can try to work those in yeah yeah trice i want to hear more about because your toddler's young how old is your very
Toddler Independence
00:10:44
Speaker
She just turned three. Three years old. How's that been? Because I think I have a younger cousin who has, I would say a newborn. I think he's like two years old. And I've been seeing so many changes with him just in regards to like his facial expressions and like he's walking more. He's like trying to talk. He's like now finally eating different types of foods. Like what are some of the changes you've seen? Some of the joy that you've seen in being a mother?
00:11:11
Speaker
You're catching me on an interesting day because I was actually just talking to my mom about it. But the fact that my daughter has recently learned how to say things like, I don't want to. And she says no, but she says no, thank you. So it's little things where like, like, oh, this was really cute at first. But like, I know you don't want to, you know, brush your teeth or, you know, you can't wear shorts today. It's gonna be like,
00:11:34
Speaker
50-something degrees out this morning like the fact that I have to I'm we're at the point where we have to negotiate with her and I was like uh I'm not ready for this I'm so tired just like a hundred percent getting whatever she wants so you know
00:11:49
Speaker
And I think that we're not parents, but I see what that struggle could look like, especially as a new parent who is trying to just value what they're saying so much and listen and really try and give them. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, you actually have to put your pants on right now. There's not a choice.
00:12:09
Speaker
So I, this, you know, kind of slightly bringing it back to writing, you know, I'm a very, you know, kind of structure-based person. So when I'm writing, I go to like craft books and I figure things out. So obviously my first idea when my daughter started kind of asserting her personality is the nice way I'm going to say this. When she started doing that, I was like, we need a book or we need, we need some sort of like concrete guidance that will tell me how to get what we want without like being terrible people.
00:12:38
Speaker
You know we sign up for the parenting courses. We're trying to do all this like we'll give her choices give her do all these things Okay, this is I love it. I love learning a whole new thing that I was not prepared for like little things. How do you teach someone how to blow their nose? Wow, I
Teaching Basic Skills
00:12:56
Speaker
don't know. We're still figuring out. She's three If anyone if any listeners have tips feel free to find me
00:13:20
Speaker
you've always known how to, but yeah, you aren't born with those skills. Great. And it's just like, you just blow out of your nose. But then if they don't understand the concept of like, oh, it's just like, oh, then I mean, there you go. If you want some world building challenges, like writing, writing prompts, describe how to do something very basic, like how to blow your nose.
00:13:39
Speaker
That is awesome. Chazie, do you find that she is, are you seeing personalities within you and your partner or is this just still kind of like vague in a sense of she's still trying to figure it out. We're still trying to find those things or do you see them already? Well, so we're, you know, I like to think like, oh, she's super smart. So of course that comes from forever. I think what's more interesting is the fact that I'm, you know, for better or for worse, I'm seeing parts of my mom in me.
00:14:04
Speaker
in the way that I interact with her, which is getting my mom is wonderful. So it's, it's fine, but I'm like, Oh, this is exactly something my mom would say, or this is how she would react to her as like, Oh, this is I needed, I need to sit down and I need to think about that. Like, Oh, this has been internalized over, you know, 30 plus years. This is
00:14:23
Speaker
You know, we need to dig into this a little. And I think it's almost impossible, right? Like as humans, growing up in certain environments for X amount of time, or not growing up in those environments, like our experiences influence so much of what we do and what we value. And I think as much as possible as new parents, as friends, as professionals, like we have to remind ourselves all the time about those things that we have internally.
00:14:49
Speaker
just kind of thought about or put out into the world because like it's not everyone's philosophy or values or beliefs right so I could totally see that as well and it just it just makes sense and I guess as a lawyer like you were probably thinking about that all the time like
00:15:06
Speaker
You can't really say like you're helping someone. I think I want to say you were, I want to say it was like, I was saying, but I can't remember exactly again. Yeah, no. So I do, um, you know, my day job outside of, outside of the writing and everything is I, um, I write housing policy and programs and I give out, you know, the office that I work for gives out grants. So I don't get to go into any courtrooms or anything, which, you know, is good, but, um,
00:15:30
Speaker
It is dealing with a lot of writing in a different way. So that's where that kind of hyper analytical brain comes in. And like the way that I negotiate and like, you know, we argue, we argue with our colleagues, we're always trying to like write things a certain way. And like, this means this. So it's using a whole different side of my brain and that kind of writing.
00:15:48
Speaker
Wow, that is such a, it's crazy that you are able to do that because I've talked to other authors that are into law. It is definitely bled over like the kinds of writing where I will, I mean, and this is, you know, I will hype up the importance of having good critique partners or like, you know, writing buddies is that they'll let me know if like my middle grade work is getting like, oh, this sounds a little bit too, you know, too technical or something. Like you kind of need to make this a little more kid level, a little more interesting.
00:16:17
Speaker
Um, and in my work emails, I've started using, you know, exclamation points more, which is not, you know, wonderful calling. So everyone is like, always, you know, everyone takes it and takes all that nicely. But I know there was a time when there were, you know, you take a business writing course and they say, don't use the emoji. Don't use this. Don't use this. Start everything with good morning or good afternoon. It's just like, no, now my middle grade voice has kind of worked its way into it, but it's all right. They've learned to expect that from me.
00:16:45
Speaker
me it's fine good and i think that's i i don't know i personally think that's okay and it just shows personality too like i don't think everything has to be so serious especially if it's an email like i think there's a time and place for certain emails of course but yeah i'm not going to email like the big boss with like exactly
00:17:01
Speaker
Here's a gif of something that's relevant to this. Like, no, it's, it's, but it's, I think part of it is also because we have been in such weird circumstances in the last couple of years with a pandemic that like, I think all of us, at least in my office, we're like, look, we don't get to see each other and we're missing that personal connection. And we now know that everyone is at home, like juggling everything. I can see someone's cat, like walk across their keyboard, or I can see someone's kid walk in the room. Like it's, it's fine. Like you can be people, you can be people now.
00:17:30
Speaker
It's fine. I agree. I agree. And I don't know. I think I don't want to say most people cause I don't know, but like, it's like the world is still going through a lot. Right. So it is. And I think that the more we can, um, continue to extend grace to the people around us because like, Oh man, yes, there is a lot going on. And just because you're catching someone like at a certain time in a certain way, you know, you lose.
00:17:55
Speaker
It's always, at least for me, I try to err on the side of maybe there's stuff that's going on. I'm not going to hold like a weirdly toned email against them or something like that. I agree. And speaking of grace, I think I always ask this question because I think it is important. I think it may be a little harder for you because I know that you are extremely busy, but what are you doing right now for
00:18:15
Speaker
grace or joy whether it is spending time doing a podcast and I know that this is taking time out of your day or whether it's like listening to a podcast or trying to read a book because I know you don't have a lot of time just based on listening to you and
00:18:29
Speaker
I think just being a parent, I know it's just like extremely difficult. And it just comes with a lot of challenges. So I just know that that takes a lot of your life. But what do you what do you do? What do you like to do for for joy or for grace? So I mean, it is tough because I am coming off of, you know,
00:18:46
Speaker
I'll say like debut month so debut in terms of my first book came out earlier this month and it's been such a whirlwind of like let me do where I can let me try to do bookstores and this and this and this all while trying to like stay safe and masked and keep our our toddlers safe and let's let's try to go to this festival but also like stay away from everybody so it's been a little bit of a
00:19:06
Speaker
It's been a little bit of a challenge but I think now that it's kind of slowing down, um, you know, I'm going to enjoy kind of getting back to, like, it's silly but like, there is some joy and routine where like, okay, maybe I can put in a couple hours of, you know,
00:19:21
Speaker
at work and then I can log off and then I'll go pick up my daughter and at night we can maybe maybe there's something cool to watch on like Disney Plus or maybe there's something just like relaxing to do. One of the good things is like so I'm here in San Diego so weather here is always fantastic so even on weeknights if it's gorgeous out well you know there's a lot of places here that have like craft breweries that have outdoor space
00:19:45
Speaker
So we can bring our kid and sometimes they'll have music or a food truck and we can just sit outside. So little things like that. We're like, you know, we'll do what we can. We're not really in the days yet where we can, we're comfortable bringing her everywhere just quite yet, but we try to make do. And then a perfect afternoon for me sometimes is, you know, if my mother-in-law is not busy, my husband will take the toddler up to her house. She lives about, you know, 30, 40 minutes away. And then I get
00:20:12
Speaker
Like, then I just get time to sit and then just watch things on TV or like catch up on stuff that I need, you know, on fun books because that's even hard because when you're a writer, you have the, you sometimes tend to analyze the stuff that you're reading and you're like, this is not as fun when it becomes homework. But like once in a while, you'll get a good book and a free afternoon. You can open up a window, get a breeze in. It's good.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, I love that a lot of your things are, excuse me, some of the like just very, the mundane, just, you know. Yeah. I just want to sit. We don't have to do something special. I don't have to go spend like a thousand dollars at a spa. I can literally just like sit and go get like a nice milk tea from somewhere. I love that. That can be it. I love that.
00:21:05
Speaker
new book, really great reviews. I think in regards to like what I see as a middle grade book, and something I've just been similar to what you said like analyzing and thinking about. I'll let you talk about it, because I think it was done very, very well. And the concept in itself, I think is I don't know where you came up with that. But I love the concept as well. Can you share a little bit about the
00:21:28
Speaker
It's, um, so the book that, uh, was just released earlier this May was my very first ever published book. It's called Freddy versus the family
Debut Book: Freddy vs. the Family Curse
00:21:36
Speaker
curse. It's a middle grade contemporary fantasy novel that centers around this 12 year old Filipino American boy, Freddy, you know, from the title. Um, he has a curse on his family that they will just have bad luck. And when he finds an amulet, he thinks that amulet could be what turns it all around that they can finally.
00:21:54
Speaker
you know break this curse and and live his best you know middle grade life um but turns out of course because authors are horrible mean people that the amulet just makes everything worse and he has much worse luck and the amulet also carries the ghost the ghost of his great grand uncle and if they don't break the curse in 13 days he's going to get trapped in this amulet with his great grand uncle forever so think of somebody you don't you find kind of annoying
00:22:19
Speaker
and you get stuck on a road trip with them. It's like that, but, you know, forever. So Friday definitely, definitely needs to break this curse. I love that. And I was super attracted just because of the title on itself, because it just, I don't know how you think of those titles, because it's such a title that like would grab the reader's attention right away. And then the cover is just beautiful as well. But how did you come up with the title? The cover, first of all, the cover is gorgeous. And I, you know, I major, major thanks to my publisher for what, before they even, you know, kind of
00:22:48
Speaker
started coming up with cover concepts and everything they asked me like you know um when they present the way it works is they they present me with a couple of different artists they think would be good for the book and they were all like filipino filipino american artists and i like i really appreciated that little touch of like okay all right they get it they get it um the title i am terrible at titles
00:23:07
Speaker
Um, but another plug for having good writing partners and, you know, critique partners is that sometimes like you'll find one that's really good at that. So like, just like lean in and go, go ask that person for, for some help. So that's why I, that's how I ended up with like a more dynamic title is I kind of crowdsourced it a little bit.
00:23:26
Speaker
I love it, I love it. And you are, are you winding down in regards to the book tour stuff now? Or how do you, I guess summer's coming too. So maybe a little bit tricky in summer too. That's, I mean, that's also kind of the tricky part is especially with middle grade where it's geared more, you know, obviously like readers can pick up the book anytime, but like when you want to engage with schools and libraries, you kind of, you kind of got to stick to the, at least here, like the American academic year where it goes, you know, September to May or June. So, um,
00:23:54
Speaker
Hopefully, you know, things will be slowing down, but that'll maybe give folks a chance to, you know, have my book be the thing that they relax with by the pool over the summer. So that when they come back to the school year, they, you know, it's something that they could bring to the kids. Yeah. But I've got like one or two more library visits and like little things, but again, looking forward to kind of the boring routine of it all. Yeah. Yeah. I want to thank you for all the work that you do.
00:24:19
Speaker
And again, I'll say it because I think it's important that you do so much already. It's appreciated. And I thank you for spending time with me. I think this was awesome. I wish you and your family just like, you know, grace and time and love and all those things, because you do a lot for the world. You give a lot. And it's important that you take the time to, you know, give yourself those things as well. So I appreciate you.
00:24:44
Speaker
I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks again for having me. I have the podcast for you. Oh my gosh. No, I think.