At only 23, Kyla Zhao is living the dream of every aspiring writer: the rights to the Singaporeans’ first novel, The Fraud Squad, was acquired by Berkley Books/Penguin Random House and is slated for publication in January 2023. 

When Kyla speaks about the events of the past year, she still sounds incredibly happy at times, incredulous at others – which is perhaps not all too surprising because when she started writing her book, it was never with the intention of letting other people read her story, let alone getting it published.

Born and raised in Singapore, Kyla moved to California, the United States, to attend Stanford University. She graduated earlier this year with a master’s degree in Communications and a bachelor’s in Psychology. 

“My whole life, I have been doing a lot of non-fiction writing,” Kyla explained. “I did some editorial internships with magazines and newspapers, like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and also in the field of communications, but I never thought I was creative enough to write fiction.”

But the pandemic hit hard. Far away from her family in Singapore, not knowing when she would be able to see them again, Kyla felt isolated and lonely. Writing became a welcome distraction, something she did for herself to take her mind off the pangs of homesickness.

“I didn’t tell anyone about it for the longest time. In fact, I only told my family that I was writing a book after I reached 50,000 words,” she said. “I didn’t make a big deal out of it, and no one had any expectations, so I was under no pressure.” 

Living the dream: The rights to the Kyla Zhao's’ first novel, 'The Fraud Squad' has been acquired by Berkley Books/Penguin Random House and is slated for publication in January 2023. (Courtesy of Kyla Zhao) (Personal collection/Courtesy of Kyla Zhao)

Kyla’s unconventional way of writing a novel created a few problems down the road. “Since I didn’t plan the story at the beginning and I was figuring out the plot and the characters gradually, there were many things I had to go back to and fix during the editing process. But still, I was not expecting too much of myself because I didn’t think I’d ever get this published.”

When Kyla showed the draft to some of her friends, they immediately were intrigued by the story: The main character Samantha comes from a working-class background. An avid reader of high society fashion magazines that provide her with an escape from her own life, she dreams about writing for one and enlists the help of socialite friends to infiltrate Singapore’s high society to convince the editor of one of these magazines that she has what it takes to be writing for them. 

“But gradually, as she moves up the social hierarchy, Samantha gets swept up in the glamour and loses sight of what is most important to her, where she came from,” Kyla says. “After a few twists and turns, she learns the hard way that not all that glitters is gold, and she has to find a way to reconcile her true background with her ambitions.”

When Kyla wrote the book, the world was filled with much negativity and bitterness. She was going through a tough time emotionally and channeled her angst, frustration and loneliness into The Fraud Squad – but the story did not become negative. In fact, it was quite the opposite. 

“I wanted the world that I created to be as fun, glamorous and light-hearted as possible,” she explained. “Although it does address some serious themes, I wanted people who read this book to be able to escape and lose themselves in this world of glamour, fashion and parties.”

While knowing the industry firsthand through her internships obviously helped Kyla fill in the details of the story, she consciously avoided inserting herself into the main character: “Creating a sort of distance from my character helped because I wasn’t afraid to make her imperfect and believably flawed.”

After her friends encouraged Kyla to try and get her book published, she began to seriously consider the idea and researched the different paths of getting published. Since the big publishing houses usually only accept submissions through an agent, Kyla channeled her energy into finding literary representation first. A few weeks before her graduation in March, she sent her novel to several agents.

“I didn’t think I’d be getting a lot of interest because they were all agents based in the US and my book is set in Singapore,” Kyla recalls. “But amazingly, I received nine agent offers, and I chose the one who really understood my story and connected with me on both a personal and professional level.” 

Living the dream: The rights to the Kyla Zhao's’ first novel, 'The Fraud Squad' has been acquired by Berkley Books/Penguin Random House and is slated for publication in January 2023. (Courtesy of Kyla Zhao) (Personal collection/Courtesy of Kyla Zhao)

As the next step, Kyla’s agent Alex Rice sent out The Fraud Squad to several publishers. Even though Kyla was settling in for a long wait, it only took a couple of days for some of the publishers to signal interest – and since there was more than one interested party, Rice held an auction, where Kyla’s book eventually landed in the experienced hands of Berkley Books/Penguin Random House.

The writing process also coincided with a time when a lot of anti-Asian racism reared its head in the US and around the world, and she recalled reading about new incidents on an almost daily basis. Warned by her parents to stay indoors and feeling lonely in her ethnicity also prompted Kyla to want to write about characters she could identify with. Still, she emphasized, her book was not about racial issues.

“It wasn’t driven by race, and it’s not meant to be tackling prejudice or racism head on, but I still wanted to write about a cultural setting that was familiar to me – it was my way to hold on to comfort and not to feel too alone,” she says.

On a grander scale, however, Kyla hopes to add to the diversity of the global literary landscape.

“I think a lot of Western readers think of the Asian diaspora as a monolith,” she explains. “They just put us under one Asian label without recognizing all the nuances in our experiences, and how different our backgrounds are.”

When people think of Asian literature, they think of Joy Luck Club or Crazy Rich Asians – and while they are both valid portrayals of the Asian experience, she continued, it was only a portrayal of one particular subset. 

“The more books there are written by Asian authors, focused on Asian characters, the more facets of the Asian experience we can show, the more we can highlight what colorful, vibrant lives people of color lead. At the moment, we don’t have enough options out there.”

Looking ahead, Kyla will have her hands full. After finally being able to find some time at home in Singapore with her family, she is now back in the US and has just started a new job in Silicon Valley. She is also contemplating her second book – after all, she signed a two-book deal with Penguin.

“I have no idea yet what my second book is going to be about. It could be a sequel, it could be a spin-off, it could be completely unrelated – I don’t know,” she acknowledged. “It’s a very different feeling now because for the first book, I was only writing for the sake of writing, but for the second book, I’ll be writing on contract. But I’m also trying not to get ahead of myself and take one step at a time.”

Follow @kylazingaround on Twitter or @kylajzhao on Instagram.