Hi everyone! Today I have a really exciting post for you: a Q&A with my favourite author team, Katie and Kevin Tsang. You will all know that I am a huge Katie fan from how often I ramble on about her debut Wing Jones and last month I also fell head over heels with the new MG Sam Wu series these lovely people have written. You can find my review of Sam Wu here but for now, sit back and enjoy!

Hi Katie and Kevin! I’m so pleased to have you featuring on my blog to keep the Sam Wu celebrations going! Where did the idea for Sam Wu come from? What inspired the idea of his character?

Katie: I first had the original idea for a MG book about a boy who had to face different fears while I was working at the reading charity BookTrust. But I knew it wouldn’t be a project I could do on my own because it was so different from what I usually write. So I pitched the idea to Kevin, and together we came up with Sam Wu! Originally his name was Sam Xu (Xu is pronounced Shu in Chinese) but we then changed it to Wu. 

Kevin: If I’m honest, I was a little bit of a scaredy cat growing up! So it was easy to channel some of that while we were writing Sam. 

Haha, very honest, Kevin! Did you always know you would like to collaborate and write something together or was this a surprise to you both?

We’d never talked about collaborating before this, but we’re so glad we did. SAM WU was the perfect project for us to collaborate on. We’d love to do more books together in the future. Definitely more SAM WU books, and we might have a few other ideas for new projects too 🙂 

New projects?! TELL ME MORE! How did the writing and creative process work with there being two of you writing this story?

We spend a LOT of time brainstorming and outlining, so by the time we sit down to write, we have a really good idea of the story. We take turns writing the text and work on everything side-by-side. 

Sam Wu is not afraid of ghosts or sharks! But what are Katie and Kevin not afraid of?

Kevin is NOT afraid of sharks, and Katie is NOT afraid of heights! 

Katie, I’m also NOT afraid of heights… If you had to sell Sam Wu in just 5 words, what would they be?

Funny, Fears, Family, Friends, Butterbutt.

Perfect! If Sam Wu was allowed 2 fictional characters as sidekicks to beat his fears, who would you choose and why?

Sam would definitely choose Spaceman Jack and Captain Jane, the heroes in his favorite TV show Spaceblasters! Whenever he gets scared, he imagines what they would say or do if they were with him. 

I think they would love to have Sam on board! What has been the best part about the Sam Wu journey so far?

Seeing young readers relating to Sam! 🙂 

I bet that’s just a dream come true!

A huuuuge personal thanks from me to Katie and Kevin for taking part in this Q&A. I loved reading their responses and I hope that you do too. If you haven’t already, grab yourselves a copy of Sam Wu, especially if you have young ones, they will adore Sam and his friends. Sam Wu is out now!

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Sam Wu is NOT Afraid of Ghosts

Author: Katie Tsang, Kevin Tsang

Illustrator: Nathan Reed

Genre: MG, Contemporary

Publisher: Egmont UK

Publication Date: February 8th 2018

Format: Paperback (224 pages)

Goodreads  |  Amazon  |  Waterstones  |  Book Depository

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Sam Wu is NOT afraid of ghosts… What are you NOT afraid of?

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