Book Smarts! Great Expectations

Not even a ’tween yet, Anna Sze is DB’s newest, published author, and it’s probably the tip of the iceberg. Elizabeth Kerr reports www.richardgordonphotography.com=">www.richardgordonphotography.com</a>">Lantau is overflowing with authors. Anna Bella Sze – A.B. Sze – joined the scene in mid-November last year when her first Young Adult fantasy novel, The Lore of the Foe was self-published. There’s one minor detail that sets Anna apart from her peers: she’s 11. To arrive at this Starbucks on a weekday afternoon before Christmas for the first stop on Anna’s publicity tour, for lack of a better word, you have to rewind to when her family arrived in Discovery Bay when she was around five. Her parents, Anita and William (who’ve vanished to do some shopping after setting Anna up at a table), had been working in Beijing and Singapore, but relocated to Hong Kong when Anna’s rare eye disorder, Dissociated Vertical Deviation (DVD), finally demanded surgery. DVD certainly hasn’t gotten in the way of Anna’s life. She jokes about doctors not letting patients leave their office “until they’ve told you something terrible,” and about her vast array of eyewear: three sets of contact lenses and multiple pairs of glasses. And lest you forget she’s 11, she can be a first-rate prankster. “Sometimes, when I don’t notice, my eyes will go in different directions. My friends just say, ‘Your eye…’ but sometimes I can control it, and I’ll do it on purpose to troll people,” she says with a sneaky giggle. She’ll need one final operation when she’s closer to 18, but that’s years away. She’s also aware things could have been much worse had she not gotten a huge hand from her Discovery College Year 1 teacher, Ms Dunn, who kept her current on classes while she had three surgeries. “I’d probably be in Year 5 right now if I didn’t.” Which takes us to Discovery College Year 5, and 10 months of writing. To hear Anna describe it, she started for the fun of it; her earliest career aspirations were in law. But she started making solid narratives out of her daydreams – her words – and her debut novel grew from there. “It wasn’t really a book to start. I was writing and just went with the flow during my free time. I’m not a big planner,” she laughs again. “The characters are based on my friends mostly because I can’t make up names. I forget my daydreams really quickly, so they’re lost if I don’t write them down. I wrote and wrote and my English teacher found out – Mr Steed – and he helped with my grammar and stuff when I first started. He was kind of my editor.” Anna jokes about her lack of planning backing her into a corner. Upon review of one story, she discovered two characters were distant cousins; she has pages upon pages of semi-complete work stored on Google Docs, and she admits to cheating if she finds herself struggling to express something. “I brush it off like it’s not that important.” But don’t think for a second Anna is flailing around aimlessly. Ask her if she’s a good student and she shrugs. “I guess so.” She prefers English and drama, and has some strong views on other subjects. “I don’t believe in history, because it’s written from one person’s perspective. Harrow teaches philosophy so maybe that got me thinking about it. It’s interesting, yes, but it’s hard to believe.” Then she starts talking about books. Regardless of her fondness for writing it, she wonders if her time with high fantasy has passed. She’s bored with Harry Potter and The Hobbit, ironically doesn’t hate historical fiction, but finds romance “cheesy”. “I like layered stories but I find detective stuff quite boring. The reader knows everything but the characters are mindlessly looking for clues. I get frustrated and I want to tell them what to do,” she argues. She’s a fan of science fiction for its connection to the present and complicated stories. “Fantasy takes place in the past when it was all swords and tents. I’d like to change that,” she says, arguing there’s no reason not to have mobile phones and “another level of magic” in the same book, and referring to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series as an example. Also on her recent reading list is Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone, and Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. She’s getting pushed out of her room by her books. Which brings us to Starbucks. Currently a boarder at Harrow International School in Tsuen Wan, Anna has no idea how she got in. “I’m in Year 6 again, because my birthday is November 29.” Barely 11, right? She has set her sights on writing as a career, which doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. Christopher Paolini published Eragon at 15 and he’s still going strong. The Lore of the Foe follows 12-year-old hunter Willow and her companion Prince Solace on their mission to avert a war in Alanoria between mythical griffin-type creatures and human hunters. There’s a magical gem that’s the key to stopping the fight, and all the trappings of solid fantasy. A pair of Amazon reviews called the book graceful, captivating, heartwarming, and a “cool puzzle”. Both marvelled it was written by a 10-year-old. Still, Anna nitpicks over typos, formatting glitches and cover art, but she’s engaged about the publishing process (it took about four months), promotion – and what exactly a trade paperback is. At a time when art that speaks to specific groups is in demand, why not have a book by an 11-year-old for 11-year-olds? Anna’s not so sure, and she’s not sure things will change drastically any time soon. “When I look at the authors on my own book shelf, 25% of them are dead, and almost all the rest are over 30 years old. And I feel awkward writing characters that are older than me. I’m 11! I can do one that’s 12 – or a million years old. The adult characters in The Lore of the Foe are very minor, and most are based on my mom. I know kids,” she pauses. “I don’t know if anyone will take me seriously when I’m 14 or 15.” Until then she plans to concentrate on finishing the semi-sequel novella to The Lore of the Foe and doing some actual planning for her much more ambitious first series (it involves a heist). But what is Anna doing when she’s not at school or writing? “Reading!” she declares, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Okay, so if she’s not at school, writing or reading? “Plotting out characters.” In reality she plays netball, piano and the classical Chinese erhu, and will put in some time on Nintendo or Minecraft. She expects the books will come together during the Christmas break the family, which includes her nine-year-old sister, is taking in Harbin. “I’m visiting my grandmother and my chickens. My sister and I got them in the summer and now they’re huge. They literally play in the snow.” They’ll dabble in the city’s snow festival and do some skating. But Anna’s committed to some serious multi-tasking. “It’s, like, minus 30 degrees up there. I’m going to spend most of the time inside, in the heat, writing, and with my granny.” She does an eye trick and chuckles. “And the chickens.”