Episode #5: "I'm Writing a Book, I Swear!"
with Mia P. Manansala and Lyn Liao Butler

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On this episode, we're excited to bring you Mia P. Manansala in conversation with Lyn Liao Butler.

Mia P. Manansala is a 2021 debut author of the acclaimed Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series, Arsenic and Adobo and most recently, Homicide and Halo-Halo. She is the winner of the 2018 Hugh Holton Award, the 2018 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, and the 2016 Mystery Writers of America/Helen McCloy Scholarship.

Lyn Liao Butler has lived several lives as a concert pianist, ballerina and now, as a yoga instructor, mother, wife and acclaimed 2021 debut author of The Tiger Mom's Tale and most recently, Red Thread of Fate.

Mia and Lyn’s discussion offers a frank look into the world of debut writers, where they learn to ward off impostor syndrome, practice self-care to improve their craft, plot new ways to embed their passion for traditional Asian food into their books…and mostly avoid writing steamy sex scenes in their novels.

Read Along!

Death at a beauty pageant turns Tita Rosie's Kitchen upside down in the latest entry of this witty and humorous cozy mystery series by Mia P. Manansala.

Things are heating up for Lila Macapagal. Not in her love life, which she insists on keeping nonexistent despite the attention of two very eligible bachelors. Or her professional life, since she can't bring herself to open her new café after the unpleasantness that occurred a few months ago at her aunt's Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie's Kitchen. No, things are heating up quite literally, since summer, her least favorite season, has just started.

To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila's little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago—a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case—because it looks like one of them might be next.

In the wake of a tragedy and fueled by guilt from a secret she's kept for years, a woman discovers how delicate the thread that binds family is in this powerful novel by Lyn Liao Butler.

Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin Mia are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela. With no other family around, Tam has no choice but to agree to take in the girl she hasn’t seen since the child was an infant.

Overwhelmed by her life suddenly being upended, Tam must also decide if she will complete the adoption on her own and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. But when a long-concealed secret comes to light just as she and Angela start to bond, their fragile family is threatened. As Tam begins to unravel the events of Tony and Mia’s past in China, she discovers the true meaning of love and the threads that bind her to the family she is fated to have.