The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Sophie Go's Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim A new heartfelt novel about the power of loneliness and the strength of love that overcomes it by critically acclaimed author Roselle Lim. Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud—she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast. In dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon a secret club within her condo complex: the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. Somehow, she convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're going to another great podcast.

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So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a

great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book where refined books are sold. Today we have another amazing accomplished author on the show. She's the author of the book that will be coming out August 16th, 2022. And she's the author. This will be her third book that she's done. Sophie Goes Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim. She's on the show with us today to talk about her new book. And she's the critically acclaimed author of Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune, Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop, and the upcoming book we just mentioned. She lives on the North shore of Lake Erie and always has an artistic project on the go. Welcome to the show, Roselle. How are you?

I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for coming and congratulations on the new book. These are always fun. So give us your dot coms, maybe where people can find you on the interwebs or wherever to get to know you better. On Twitter and on Instagram, I am at Roselle Writer. There you go. The website is rosellelim.com. There you go.

So give us an idea of what motivated you to want to do a third book. Is this a book in a series? Are these three books a series? They're not in a series, but they're set in the same universe. The first book is about a chef the second book is about a matchmaker or sorry a clairvoyant and the third book that's coming out is about a matchmaker ah yeah there you go so give us an overview if you would of what the book's about the book is about a matchmaker who went to Shanghai to get her education. And when she came home, her mother basically outed her at a big event and said that she didn't graduate. So to salvage her reputation,

she has to, she decided to take on hard clients, which happened to be seven 70 something Chinese bachelors. Oh, wow. Well, then she's got to matchmake them? Yes. Well, that's got to be fun. At 70? Yes, at 70. Guys aren't doing that well at 70. That's when we really start breaking down.

It's actually really interesting because in my research, when I spoke to a matchmaker, they said that seniors are quite like a demographic that they service. It's a growing demographic. Really? Wow. Wow. I mean, everyone needs a date in the old folks home, I guess. I don't know.

Why did she pick 70s? That's the demographic. Because if you think, well, in the building that she lives in, and if you think about it, if you can match 70, 70-year-old bachelors, I mean, if you want street cred, it's a pretty good start. There you go. That's gotta be a tough thing to do. So I imagine she goes through a bunch of adventures to accomplish this. And I can't imagine the scenarios. They must be hilarious. Yes. Cause each one of them has, when you get to be that old and, you know, you still you want to be with someone still single, there's bound to be some sort of fatal flaw. You mean baggage from them or baggage from the people they're dating or both? Both.

Like for one of the bachelors, she never refers to any of her clients with their real name. So she basically has a code name for them. One of the bachelors is called Mr. Durian, and I don't know if you've ever smelled the fruit. Yeah, I've never smelt it, but I've heard about it. It's a biological weapon, basically. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, he likes to eat durian. And if he likes to eat this stuff, how many people, potential partners do you think want to hang?

You've got to find a woman who likes durian. Yeah. Durian cologne. I like jackfruit, but it's not the same for me. Yeah, jackfruit smells pretty heavenly compared to durian. Yeah, I've never opened a durian. Oh, I read about it and I was like, no, I don't think so. But even jackfruit is pretty nasty with your knives and everything like you have to wear gloves basically and i i just make a whole

scene and throw it all out because it sticks to everything the uh so she goes on adventures what made you kind of choose uh writing about someone in her field it's it continues on from the second book but it's also like i've i'm i grew up being close to my grandparents and like i was completely at ease with them and i wanted to write basically a love letter to the city of toronto and to my grandparents who i don't have anymore like none of them are living i lost them i think close to two decades ago, like just not surviving. And I do miss them. And so you wrote, this book is set in Toronto or?

It is. It's set in my hometown. There you go. There you go. Well, that's always good. We love Canada, of course. Canada is the nicer half of the North American area. The nicer part of the area. What do you, is this,

is, so readers will be able to pick up the book and get the story. They don't have to be, they don't have to start from the beginning of your first book and go through them all. Is that correct? It is. There you go. There you go. What favorite characters did you have in the book that you really liked? Was there any that you, you know, I've had, I had some people on recently that the characters that were on the book were them. Maybe characters in the book that you really liked was there any that you you know i've had i had some people on recently that the characters they were on the book were them uh maybe characters in the book from friends relatives and other people my favorite character in this book like i liked all

of the all basically all of the old geezers in it but my favorite one of the bunch is mr porcupine who's basically the resident jerk ah and she's the code name mr porcupine because who's basically the resident jerk. Ah. And she's the codename Mr. Porcupine because he's the jerk? Yes, he's the jerk. The prickly. See, I'm figuring it out, yeah. So think about a guy who's gotten to his age and is very jaded about finding love or finding somebody else. I have that now and I'm 54. So I'm way ahead of my time, I think, or I don't know how that works.

So I manage a lot of different ventures. I guess you can't tell us the ending that, you know, who ends up with who or whatever. Can you tell us if she gets there all seven paired or do you want to keep this in suspense? I, most of my books have happy endings because i find for me i like the idea of just having kind of a stress-free it's like romance novels any romance novel it's just i i want to do that like yeah i mean tragedies great are great but like personally i like knowing that the people that i'm rooting for are intact and they get their happy endings at the end. There you go. As long as everyone gets a happy ending, that's the way it should always work out, I guess.

We're talking about seven single guys and Chinese bachelors. Is there an aspect, is Chinese culture pretty prevalent in the book? Is it something that is prevalent that people that are Chinese will recognize and have a, you know, love that sort of culture in the book? Or is it something that's adaptable to everyone, do you think? It's both. I write about my own background, like I'm Filipino Chinese. And if you think about this book, if you think about, you know, the movie Turning Red. I didn't see it.

It's basically a love letter about a teenage girl who's Chinese-Canadian living in Toronto. And she turns into a panda when she hit puberty. Oh, wow. But it's a really good marriage of magic and culture. It's kind of like the same thing that I have with my books where I've got that like element of like ordinary magic in there because it's matchmaking but it's using like the Chinese the Chinese belief that people are connected with red threads what what is that about what is the red thread thing I've never heard of that before it's your soulmate like it's like the idea that, you know how in Greek, like for, I think for, it was a Greek belief that two people are carved in half or one person's carved in half.

And that's how you have the idea of a soulmate. For the Eastern belief, for Chinese, for the Chinese culture, it is like a red thread that connects you to your soulmate. Wow. So as a matchmaker, she's able to see these threads. Where is the thread on me? Because I need to find it. I need to find it. So she can see who the threads are?

So when she walks around, does she be like, that's the person with the thread that goes over here? In the case of single people, it's a little bit different. But if she's looking at people who are married who are already attached, you can see every thread has knots. Think about it. When you're married, it's not always smooth sailing. There's some troubles. There's some stuff you get over.

And that kind of materializes in knots in the thread that shows your relationship with the person. There's a lot of knots in my first nine marriages. Yeah. Yeah. And my first nine divorces. So, so somebody has a really knotted red thread and they got a lot of problems. Maybe they should see a counselor. That's, that's something that she could see.

Like it's you, when you're thinking about a matchmaker, you go. So think of them somewhat like they do take psych in my world. At least they take psychology in my world. At least they take psychology classes as well. You better handle to better, to better handle people. I would either have to take psychology classes to be a matchmaker, or I just have one of those things that, you know, a rolled up newspaper to swap people with. And I just be like, bad, stop, bad, bad, bad. Stop being so bad. I don't know what that means.

But when you wrote the book, was there anybody you thought of, maybe if this were already put into movie sense, maybe that would play some of the roles and parts? Were there any movie stars you thought of? I love Michelle Yeoh. If she can put her in this movie or whatever, that would be awesome, because I just adore her. Yeah, I know. There was one big film that has been a bunch of big films,

crazy rich Asians. That was hugely popular and successful. Yeah. Oh, she did that recent movie. Yeah. It's everything everywhere all at once. I haven't seen it yet,

but I, that one's supposed to be really good. Yeah. Yeah. I, I need to get out to the theaters more now that COVID's over. Uh, so anything more you want to tease out about the book and, uh, get people interested in it, yeah. I need to get out to the theaters more now that COVID's over. So anything more you want to tease out about the book and get people interested in it?

It also talks a lot about, like in my three books, I talk a lot about food because I love, I absolutely love food. I can't believe you. And in this book, it's heavy on Asian candy. Ah. So if you love to snack or you've got a sweet tooth, it mentions it all in there. And it's just, yeah, I really love just writing about food because for me, food ties you to culture. It ties you to family. It really does. I was looking at your website to pull up your bio, and I was like, what?

There's an eat section? And I was looking over the food here. I haven't delved into your Instagram, but I'm probably going to regret it because I'm trying to lose weight and I'm on an intermittent fasting diet, but no food, food really does connect culture and food. You know, I learned a long time ago from a friend, you know, the old concept of breaking bread together with people. When you welcome a stranger and you, you get to know each other, you do it over food. You break bread together.

And I remember Anthony Bourdain, you know, he used to go to so many different places and eat food with people, and that's how you get to know people, and it breaks down the barriers to everything. Yeah, I'm looking over your Instagram now. Okay, I'm hungry. So there you go. You got food, you got friends, family family all the good stuff you could want in a

book and it's going to come out august what was it august 16th 2022 anything more you want to pitch out before if it's i do warn people when they're reading this they think oh it's going to be like something really light there is a heavy there's a bit of a heavy aspect to it and that it involves parental abuse. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. We have to have some conflict, right? But in this case, it's more of, you know how sometimes you have cultural expectations? She wants to be the perfect kid, her parents, and she'll do anything.

And getting that approval can leave you vulnerable to abuse. Yeah. I mean, aren't some Chinese moms and dads a little bit, what do they call them, tigers? Sometimes a little tough on their kids. Which is honestly, in the first book, my debut, it was a really loving relationship. Second book, same thing, loving relationship. But in this third book, I wanted to show how it's very subtle. And sometimes you don't recognize the science of what it's like to be in that, especially if you have both parents that are complicit.

Because if you have, let's say, in Sophie's case, her mom is pretty unbearable and is always rough on her. Yeah. But her dad would excuse the mom's behavior and tries to be the good guy. Yeah. It's these dynamics that you don't really think about. And you think, oh, no, there's just one clear bad guy. It's my mom. Right.

But then when you think about it, it no the father is enabling the behavior of your mom interesting dynamics it is especially when it's asking for little things like oh honey can i have a little bit of you know money for your father's treatments you know you don't want him to feel sick and like she's already spread stretched thin but it's like no you got to do it for your dad yeah guilt the gift that keeps on giving right yes a lot of it is that a lot of it is got guilt tied into it and shame and trying to get your parents approval it's it can get pretty heavy in that but i made sure that there were enough funny and light moments to balance the light and the dark in the book yeah and that's the beautiful part

of a novel balancing the uh light in the dark and conflict and resolution and and happy ending those are always the good ways to do it well give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs. I am RoselleLim.com. And again, on Twitter and Instagram, it is at Roselle Writer. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on, Roselle. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

And thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com for Jess Crisvoss. YouTube.com for Jess Crisvoss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go order the book. Pre-order the book. August 16th, 2022. Be the first in line.

Sophie's. Sophie Goes. Lonely Hearts Club. You can order it wherever fine books are sold. Remember, stay on the Zallyway Bookstores. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.