Kindling Past & Kindling Present: Influences, Pre-order Gifts, and News!
On Kindling influences, from Seven Samurai to A Bug's Life, plus a pre-order gift reveal!
Dear Reader,
Hello, Reader, and Happy New Year! First things first, we’re six weeks out from the publication of Kindling, which has a brand-spanking-new release date of February 27, 2024, and I’m thrilled to reveal the pre-order gifts I’ve been cooking up for you!
With your purchase (or library request) of Kindling made before February 27, 2024 at 11:59pm PT, you can receive three beautiful “Polaroids” of the seven kindlings, featuring art by Naomi Giddings! Orders made through Linden Tree Books in Los Altos, CA will also arrive with a special Kindling bookmark. Submit your receipts + your name and mailing address exactly as you’d like them to appear on the envelope to: chee.preorders@gmail.com. Offer open internationally until 02/27/24 at 11:59pm PT or while supplies last.
I love the “found object” feel of these prints, and I’m so tickled by the idea that they all happened in this little sequence of events, as the kindlings notice they’re being photographed and seize the camera for a selfie. Naomi’s renditions of these characters make me smile every time, and I’m so excited for you to hold them in your hands!
Linden Tree Books | Bookshop.org | Barnes & Noble | Amazon | Indigo
Kindling Influences: From Seven Samurai to A Bug’s Life
On how I first encountered Seven Samurai and all my favorite things about the way this story has been told and retold
The first time I saw Seven Samurai, I was nineteen, working at my local movie theater, which was an awesome job. We only had three screens back then—no air conditioning in the lobby but incredible murals in the largest theater from its old days as a playhouse—so in between intermittent flurries of selling snacks and sweeping the floor and refreshing the popcorn in the popcorn machine, there was always plenty of time to talk about films.
My boss was a huge movie buff, and one of my coworkers was a film student at the time, and their love of cinema was both abundant and infectious. At one point, I even asked them to compile for me a master list of foundational films, which, being an eager lifelong learner, I immediately and enthusiastically began to consume. This was back in the days before streaming services, but our local video store offered 24-hour rentals for a dollar apiece, so I could get in 2-3 movies on my days off and have tons to talk about when I went back to work.
As you might expect, I watched a lot of films in those three months, including the blockbusters we ran for weeks (hello, Spiderman 2—I can’t count the number of times I swept the theater to Dashboard Confessional’s song “Vindicated”) and the indie films my boss showed every Thursday evening, but none have stuck with me more than Seven Samurai (1954) and its American remake, The Magnificent Seven (1960).1 I watched them back-to-back over the course of a couple days, and I was floored. The premise was so simple, and so beautiful in its intimacy—an unlikely group of champions protecting a village from a band of marauders—and the structure was so elegant—three leisurely acts of the heroes gathering, the preparation of the defenses, and the tragic and climactic battle at the end. Most of all, I loved how romantic these characters were, not in the way of literal romance but in how they seemed like they’d been pulled out of some heightened romantic age: these wandering loners, these warriors with their hearts of gold, these people of violence, searching, in a lot of ways, for peace.
Since that time, I’ve been delighted to come across a huge variety of Seven Samurai and Magnificent Seven retellings, from straightforward remakes to inventive reinterpretations. You’ll probably recognize them, even if you didn’t know they were riffs on Seven Samurai! Here are some notable ones:
A Bug’s Life (1998), in which a group of circus bugs helps to save a hapless ant colony from a band of bullying grasshoppers
Rogue One (2016), in which a rag-tag band of rebels sacrifices themselves to steal the plans for the Death Star
The fourth episode of The Mandalorian Season One (2019), when Mando and former shocktrooper Cara Dune defend some shrimp farmers, including Eugene Cordero (The Good Place, Loki) from raiders
The Magnificent Seven (2016), directed by Antoine Fuqua, with standout performances from Denzel Washington as U.S. Marshall Sam Chisholm and Ethan Hawke as former Confederate sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux aka the Angel of Death2
Some of these can be hit or miss depending on your taste, but what I love about them is that their inspirations are so unmistakable, featuring the same premise, the same structure, and the same romance that struck me so much in the original. Those are the touchstones I tried to retain in Kindling, with seven former soldiers gathering to defend a little mountain town, even as I aged them down and gave them magic and made sure none of them were men, so I hope there’s plenty to love if you’re a fan of the films, but plenty of new ideas and new themes and even some surprises as you head toward the end.
In case you missed it
Kindling is garnering some positive attention, with Junior Library Guild making it a Gold Standard Selection and Kirkus Reviews calling it “a mesmerizing fantasy adventure and a haunting meditation on shared trauma” in a starred review.
We’ve also completed casting for the Kindling audiobook, and I’m so pleased that we have an all-AAPI cast of seven stellar narrators to bring this story to life!
Leum: Catherine Ho
Amity: Jeanne Syquia
Ket: Amielynn Abellera
Emara: Joy Osmanski
Ben: Allison Hiroto
Kanver: Erika Ishii
Siddie: Ferdelle Capistrano
What I’m into these days
What I’m reading: Made in Asian America by Erika Lee and Christina Soontornvat. I know I’ve recommended The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee before—it’s a stunning, sweeping history of Asians in the Americas, spanning centuries and social movements, and it changed so much about the way I think about myself and my community and our lives in this country. Now, Lee and Soontornvat are adapting Lee’s incredible text for middle grade readers in Made in Asian America, out April 30, 2024, and after reading an early copy, I’m thrilled to share that it’s just as life-changing as the original! As award-winning author Supriya Kelkar says, “This book is the missing piece—a book I desperately needed as a child, a book that would have given me a sense of place in the world, a feeling of belonging, the comfort of connectedness,” and I wholeheartedly agree.
What I’m eating: Matcha Latte Cookies on NYT Cooking. I’ve never cared much about frosting. (I’ve always been more of a whipped cream kind of gal.) But now my heart is changed, and ermine icing is my new favorite thing! Sweet, creamy, smooth, delicious—if I could get away with just eating this icing, dashed with sprinkles for color and crunch, I absolutely would, but Eric Kim’s matcha latte cookies are a pretty amazing vehicle for the frosting and well worth making. Pro-tip: The higher grade the matcha powder, the more pronounced the color and flavor will be.
Although, to be fair, a close second is Before Sunset, directed by Richard Linklater, which I saw with my mom one of those Thursday nights. I didn’t know it when we saw it, but Before Sunset the sequel to Before Sunrise (1995), starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in which two young people meet on a train in Vienna and agree to walk around throughout the night, stopping in bars and empty parks, until Hawke’s character’s flight leaves in the morning. Before Sunset is their story, nine years after that night, and it’s filled with long, leisurely conversations between Hawke and Delpy as they wander around Paris, filling in the gaps of what happened to each of them in those nine years. (My mom fell asleep during the movie, but I absolutely loved it. It’s my favorite of the Before trilogy, which culminates with Before Midnight (2013), following the same characters nine years after the events of Before Sunset.
Isn’t “Angel of Death” an amazing epithet for a sharpshooter? Longtime readers will know I adore a good epithet, and there are plenty to find in Kindling, which features a character with dozens of epithets, including but not limited to “Deathbringer,” “Fist of Amerand,” “Thunderhead,” and “Red Death.” Her name is Amity, and she’s amazing.