Thank you so much Tracy for agreeing to the interview! I enjoyed The Takeout and can’t wait to read more books.

Interview

What was your inspiration for The Takeout?

I wanted to work on a story involving food! I’m not a fantastic cook myself, but my tv is almost always set on Food Network, and I spend a lot of time gleefully planning my next meals and restaurant outings. This eventually morphed into a food truck story with a possibly-villainous-celebrity twist. I also wove in some Filipino magic and folk healing aspects to stay in that contemporary fantasy space I love so much.

How did you choose which character to focus the story?

Food trucks don’t tend to be owned by kids (though that would be amazing to see what concepts they’d come up with), so I had to develop a character close enough to the restaurant business to care if it was being threatened. This was the beginning of Thea, who is the daughter of the Banana Leaf food truck’s co-owner and is a budding chef herself.  

What was your process for writing for The Takeout?

After developing the idea and a basic outline, I got to do the best part: the food research! Writing The Takeout was the perfect excuse to order in delivery and convince friends and family to cook up some of their favorites. I drew inspiration from my parents’ Filipino cooking and my mother-in-law’s Indian cooking, and I got help with the restaurant operations and terminology (and even a few recipe ideas!) from a friend whose family owns Mogul, an Indian restaurant in Houston, Texas.

What drew you to writing children’s fiction?

There’s something wonderful about approaching the world from the perspective of younger characters. The things that are important to them are often so different from the things that adults stress out about, and their methods of problem-solving can be much more creative and unconventional. For this story, it was fun – and challenging – to have a twelve-year-old try to save a restaurant. The adults would probably just hire some lawyers, and that’d be far less entertaining to write about.  

What is your approach to world and character building?

In contemporary fantasy, it’s all about balancing the real world and the magical. The Takeout is set in the non-magical world we live in, but with hints of spells and the otherworldly. Not everyone believes in the magic Mila and her family practice or would even look kindly on it, so there was lots of careful planning on how she would keep all these secrets. I have spreadsheets!

How would you describe The Takeout in five words?

Friends, magic, celebrities, and food trucks!

Did you have a favourite moment to write?

I will tell you my *least* favorite: anything having to do with the rat in the book (this is not a spoiler! He’s on the cover!). I find rodents so icky, and if you think that writing about a friendly, heroic one would make me like them, you are wrong.

What was your favourite book growing up?

I loved scary stories! I used to comb the library for every Goosebumps book I could get my hands on (which is hilarious to me now because I’m a total scaredy cat who changes the channel when a horror movie commercial comes on).

Do you have a favourite genre to read?

Lately, I’ve been devouring more middle-grade speculative fiction. I just finished The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, and it’s wonderful.