1.- Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
I’m Makana Yamamoto! I’m a multiracial nonbinary lesbian from Maui, Hawaiʻi. The joke answer I give is that I write sci-fi about lesbians getting messy in space. The more formal answer is that I write sci-fi about QTBIPOC characters navigating the future as marginalized people, which until recently sci-fi has largely ignored.

2.- What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil—my parents still speak fondly of a story I wrote about my cats going on an intercontinental adventure. My grandfather was also an avid storyteller, and I grew up listening to his stories and reading his works. Creative writing took a back seat in college where I spent most of my time on academic writing, but I returned to it through fanfiction after graduating. I was inspired to write original fiction when a friend organized a romance writing club, and writing became my pandemic hobby.

3.- How did the idea for Hammajang Luck appear?
A tweet, if you can believe it! It was something along the lines of “childhood friends to enemies to lovers hits different.” In my mind it collided with my love of heist movies and coalesced into the primary relationship dynamic: two childhood friends turned partners in crime, forced to work together on One Last Job after one betrays the other.

4.- Would you say this book changed much from its inception to the final manuscript?
I would say so. I didn’t actually know how the book would end until very late in drafting—endings usually come last to me. I wasn’t sure if the main characters would end up together or not, and there were two versions of the story for the longest time.

5.- Could you tell us more about the process of querying until you found your agent?
Hammajang Luck is the second novel I queried. I did a mix of cold querying and pitch events on Twitter. I identified agents who I was interested in through authors I liked who had similar styles to me, QueryTracker, and MSWL. I sent out my queries in batches, sending the next round after most of the previous round had rejected or requested. Ultimately I found my agent through APIpit, though most of the interest I got was through cold querying.

6.- What challenges would you say there are when writing a novel?
Finishing it! It’s truly a marathon experience, and there will be lots of moments when you want to give up. There were multiple points where I wanted to shelve Hammajang Luck. But I always returned to what I found fun and inspiring about the book. Whether that was revisiting media I found inspiring, seeking reassurance and positivity from my critique partners, or reminding myself of the parts of the book I was particularly proud of. I always say: first get the story out, everything else can be fixed in post.

7.- What messages do you hope people will take from your book?
I didn’t really write Hammajang Luck with a specific message in mind. I was more interested in writing a fun story about people like me doing things they don’t often get to do. That said, the story is infused with themes of diaspora and culture, family and relationships, gentrification and displacement, loss and healing. The cool thing about storytelling is that what a reader takes from it is largely dependent on what they bring to it. I hope that readers can resonate with these themes and form their own takeaways, because a conversation between writer and reader is something I find so exciting about sharing my stories with others.

8.- What pieces of media (books, tv, films etc) would you recommend to people that loved Hammajang Luck?
A lot of Hammajang Luck was inspired by heist stories. I watched a lot of the Oceans movies, The Italian Job, The Sting, Leverage, and more. A heist book I loved was Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li. I also read lots of cyberpunk, including The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel, The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan, and classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick and Neuromancer by William Gibson. I also drew on the aesthetics of cyberpunk movies like Blade Runner and anime like Ghost in the Shell and Akira.

9.- What might we expect from Makana Yamamoto in the future?
My next book is another set in the same universe! It follows Malia, the hacker of the crew, three years after the events of Hammajang Luck. It’s full of hacking, cyborgs, car chases, and more. I’m experimenting with structure and tone, so this book is darker and twistier than Hammajang Luck. There will be some familiar places and people for readers of the previous book, but it’s also intended to be relatively standalone. 

Hammajang Luck was released today by Gollancz. You can order it using this link.