Daryl Kho's debut middle-grade novel delves into familial struggles amidst dementia challenges. He shares with us his insights into his inspiration and journey, plus whether his daughter is a fan of daddy's work!
Throughout my childhood in Singapore, I cherished the love and presence of my grandparents. Their affection was a beacon of security in a sometimes uncertain world. My granny’s culinary adventures instilled in me a passion for diverse cuisines, while my grandfather’s protective gestures, like walking me to school and joining me on the playground, showed unwavering support. In their embrace, I found solace, knowing that their love was steadfast amidst life’s challenges, even as they battled early-onset dementia, a struggle that bewildered me as a child yet deepened my appreciation for the precious moments we shared.
Enter Daryl Kho’s debut middle-grade novel, Mist Bound: How to Glue Back Grandpa, now filling the gap for anyone impacted by dementia. This fantasy novel brings to the forefront the debilitating condition that impacts one in 10 people over 60 in Singapore. The story is a captivating adventure and a touching exploration of the impact of dementia on families. The book has bagged some serious literary awards, including the Hedwig Children’s Book Award, the Singapore Book Awards, and more.
We are grateful that Daryl Kho himself offered to speak to us and share more about his experience encountering his father’s struggle with dementia and also about his writing journey so far. He made me laugh out loud at times, and I know his heartfelt sharing and advice to all writers will be exciting!
Chat with Daryl Kho, author of Mist-Bound: How to Glue Back Grandpa
Tell us something quirky about yourself!
Daryl: I can waggle my ears simultaneously or individually. Like two mini satellite dishes. They may even be able to tune in to select radio stations. Here’s another bonus: I tend to pace around when I talk or think, which drives my family crazy and makes my wife nauseous.
How did you turn personal experiences into a successful novel? Also, what inspired the transition from corporate life to writing?
Daryl: Very accidentally, and it was thanks to a box. Rather than a switch, it was the start of a second job! It all started the day after my daughter’s fifth birthday. I was back in Kuala Lumpur (note: I live in Singapore), packing up my childhood bedroom. My parents were moving into an apartment as the stairs in their former house were no longer safe for my post-stroke, dementia-afflicted father to climb.
That’s when I stumbled on the box. It was filled with stuff from my student days. Back then, I was a prolific writer, mostly because I was either homesick, lovesick or both. I wrote poems, plays…even kung-fu musicals! But once I graduated and joined the rat race, that creative part of me got left behind at the starting line and forgotten. Fifteen years passed in which I didn’t even read, let alone write anything besides emails and PowerPoint decks (two exceptions: a marriage proposal song for my then-girlfriend and a lullaby for our newborn girl).
Re-reading my student writing re-awakened something buried somewhere deep. At that time, I was going through a rough patch at work, and I guess I was searching for direction and/or a distraction. My dad used to be who I’d go to for that kind of guidance, and I also lost that when I lost him to dementia.
Thanks to all that tinder, the urge to create started burning anew, and I wanted to write again. What to write came just minutes later. In her early years, I read my daughter to sleep, and fairytales were our favourite. I knew I wanted to write Alexis her own for bedtime. And as we’d just celebrated her birthday the day prior, the story around her birth sprang to mind:
Three months before Alexis was born, my father had a stroke. It semi-paralysed him and also caused vascular dementia. Suddenly, he was a pale shadow of who he used to be. As though most of my Pa had died without him passing away.
Those initial months of dealing with my father’s illness were extremely tough for my family. It felt like a long, dark winter (which is why the book is mostly set in that season). But we had one thing to look forward to: my daughter’s approaching birth. As that drew closer, even my father’s condition started to improve. Initially needing to be carried everywhere, through therapy, he regained his ability to walk; at first, he was delirious, then his mental state stabilised, and some memories even returned. To me, it was as if Alexis was her grandfather’s cure.
Once she was born, I chose the Chinese name “Rui Qing” for her, which means the first flower bud of spring. Because her blooming into our world signalled that our winter was over. When I thought about what to write, all these memories flooded back. Then the eureka hit me: my story would be about a girl named Alexis trying to save her grandfather’s memories. The cure? A magic potion called Memory Glue. And its key ingredient? Nectar from the first flower bud of spring!
Because my father’s memories left just before my daughter was born, it felt like the two of them had just barely missed each other on their way in and out of the world. So this book would be my way of introducing Alexis to my father — my best friend and my hero through childhood — as he was before he became the sick, silent Grandpa that she would only know him as. If not fully in life, at least they could meet on paper.
The book would also be a way for her to get to know her grandma (my mum) better. For her to know how amazing she is, how strong and tough, how selfless and full of love, because being Grandpa’s nurse, breadwinner and his rock, she was the true hero of our family’s story, just like in the book.
Life can be poetic. Back in university, I’d wanted to major in Creative Writing, to which my dad replied, “Words can’t fill your rice bowl. Study something practical and get a steady job. You can always find something to write about later.” I went along with that.
Ironically, after years of doing all that, he was the “something” I found to write about again later.
That’s how the book began. But starting was the easy part. Finishing it was a different matter. Work and life got in the way, so it remained a first draft for several years.
Until one day, my dad passed away. This book about him was written to be read to him by his granddaughter. But I’d taken too long, and now it was too late.
His death was a huge slap in my face, but it spurred me to finish the book for him finally. What helped was the idea that each time someone reads this book, it is a chance for my father to be saved, over and over again, by Alexis and Grandma. And in that way, he could live on forever.
Did you find it difficult to explain dementia in a children’s book?
Daryl: Mist-Bound is purely a fantasy about a grandpa’s memories being taken away by a terrible magic spell. I had absolutely no intention (nor qualification) for my book to explain dementia. In fact, the word “dementia” never ever appears in the story. All I wanted to do was to make my daughter a little paper bottle of memories filled with pieces about my parents and fragments from my childhood. A bedtime story that she could perhaps pass on to her kids and grandkids like a family heirloom of sorts.
I wanted her to get to know her grandpa, who used to take me for evening walks where he’d regale me with stories, especially snippets of his colourful past. One of my biggest regrets was that she would never get to go on those walks with him or ever hear his stories.
This quote by Amadou Hampate Ba perfectly captured what I was trying to do: “When an old person dies, a library burns down.” Dementia had burnt down my father’s shelves whilst he was still standing, and what I was trying to do was to save some stories for her before they turned to ash and were lost forever.
Rather than explaining the medical reasons and real-life implications of her grandfather’s condition, I wanted her to feel the joy of my father’s stories but also feel the resulting pain of losing them. And to understand why, through this book, I was trying to rebuild parts of Grandpa’s library and recreate those evening walks for her.
In telling our personal story, interestingly, what emerged after the book’s publication was that readers whose loved ones had been touched by the disease somehow saw themselves in it and felt less alone. Readers who knew nothing about dementia were able to walk in empathetic shoes for a while.
A friend of mine, Li-Hsian, introduced me to the concept of a Clinical versus a Narrative approach to medicine. While the former focuses on the scientific aspect of the issue, the Narrative approach does so from the human side of an illness. It approaches the illness as a human condition rather than a medical condition. Doctors typically focus on the medical side of the problem, e.g. scientific terminology, clinical treatment, and medical prescriptions.
But the human side is equally important, hence why support groups are so valuable. In these groups, people share their daily experiences of dealing with and living with dementia, sharing personal anecdotes, shared experiences, day-to-day advice and how to cope emotionally.
That helped me understand where my book fits in conversations about dementia. A clinical approach of using facts and figures, complex terminology or showing patient videos may be a bit too boring or in your face for the everyday person, especially kids. But putting it in a story form, I guess, is a different approach to opening their minds by first opening their hearts. Once their hearts are open, so are the gates for parents or teachers to have conversations with their children and help them understand why their grandma reacts this way. That’s how narrative explanations can be great bridges for clinical explanations.
Does Alexis enjoy reading your books? What has it been like developing the story with her as an inspiration?
Daryl: My daughter brought me back to reading and writing. She is the reason for Mist-Bound. Without her, this book would never have happened. Initially, my daughter was my first and only audience. This expanded to my family and eventually, in later drafts, to a “reader out there” as well. As its muse and star, Mist-Bound is her book in many more ways than one.
I explained how her birth and Chinese name inspired the plot. Besides some bits of her being in there (like her mannerisms or her dangly fringe, most obviously the protagonist’s name), she also directly contributed some story elements. For example, as a toddler, she used to call moisturising cream “monsterising cream.” So, that became a plot device.
She was my biggest cheerleader. She charged me $1 if I couldn’t complete a chapter a week to incentivise me to keep writing. Inflation came into play, and the penalty quickly increased to $5. At night, for bedtime, I told her portions as I wrote them, so she was my guinea pig. She was also my alpha reader, the first to read drafts hot off the oven. She wrote plot suggestions on Post-it notes, gifted me a waterproof notepad to pen down ideas in the shower, and even tried designing a Mist-Bound game when she was tinkering with Roblox programming!
Unfortunately, that all came at a price: because she’d read through so many drafts over the years, she was officially sick of it when the book was finally published. Also, she felt that she’d already outgrown it. When Mist-Bound was launched, she was already reading more “grown-up” stuff like the Hunger Games series, while my book didn’t even have any blood. That’s the cost of taking too long to write. I started writing a bedtime story for her as a child, but she was already a preteen when I finished it. I misjudged how long my father would live and how quickly my child would grow.
All is not lost, however. She picked it up again after growing into a teen, and she seems to have enjoyed it once more because right after finishing, she urged me to write again. Folks also tell me she will appreciate it even more if/when she becomes a mother or grandmother.
Could you share any reader feedback, especially from those impacted by your book’s portrayal of dementia and familial love?
Daryl: Reader feedback has been one of the most meaningful parts of my author journey. Some of the sweetest are obviously from kids. I’ve been sent drawings of their favourite mythical creatures from the book or photos of ones moulded from clay!
But what I found meaningful was feedback from teachers and parents that even non-readers had been devouring Mist-Bound.
Here are some snippets from the kids themselves:
After a school talk, a boy told me, “I have read your book three times since last week. I didn’t want to leave the world.”
On Goodreads: “I read my aunt’s book five times over and then made her buy me a copy for my 11th birthday. It was the best gift coz it’s my favourite book.”
I was especially surprised to get so many responses from young adults. For example, several “bookstagrammers” posted photos of their grandparents and reviews of Mist-Bound because it made them remember and miss their grandparents. Or a young lady from our region who posted an Instagram reel of her screaming out how she finally felt “seen,” being able to see herself represented in a book.
But the ones that hit hardest were from adults who found escape in the book whilst burning out as dementia caregivers or who had lost loved ones to the disease.
Comments such as these have been touching:
“My granddad died from Alzheimer’s, and this story was like little me trying to save him.”
“The chapter ‘Misted Windows’ reminded me of my own grandma’s moment of clarity whilst suffering from dementia. She suddenly held my hands and said, ‘I’m so sorry for forgetting you. I don’t want to, but I just can’t seem to find you.'”
Have you advocated or raised awareness about dementia in other ways beyond your writing?
Daryl: As children’s fiction featuring dementia is rare, nonprofit and corporate organisations have partnered with Mist-Bound for social outreach activities such as fundraising, awareness campaigns and media talks. I speak at events, on media (like this one now!), and particularly in schools to grow awareness about the disease and encourage kids to borrow books from their grandparents’ minds while they are still around.
Some organisations I’ve worked with and/or have supported me include Dementia Singapore, Alzheimer’s Disease Foundation of Malaysia, TOUCH Community Services Singapore, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Singapore & Malaysia and more.
A highlight was my partnership with The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Malaysia, which helped raise significant funds for dementia caregiver training. During this campaign, Mist-Bound branded daily planners were sold at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlets around Malaysia for a few months, with all proceeds going to a worthy cause.
Looking ahead, what can we expect from your future projects?
Daryl: For some reason, Mist-Bound continues to keep me plenty busy!
I’ve been personally involved with expanding it into more markets and languages. Last month, Mist-Bound launched in bookstores across Indonesia, in Bahasa Indonesia. In Q2, it will do so in China (Chinese), Vietnam (Vietnamese) in Q3, and Korea, potentially at year-end or 2025, with more in the works.
The Korean edition is being translated by the International Booker Prize 2022 and US National Book Award 2023 finalist Bora Chung of Cursed Bunny fame, who, after reading it on a flight, reached out during transit to ask me if she could translate it for her home country. I continue to pinch myself about it to this day. I recently signed with an American literary agency, BookEnds, to handle Mist-Bound’s rest-of-world international representation.
In addition, Mist-Bound is currently in development for an animated movie adaptation. It’s still in the early stages, but I’m more hands-on with this project than the usual author, working alongside my producers, B&C Content, to speak to potential partners and investors. B&C is a Seoul and Hollywood-based production & management company. It’s quite crazy to be partnered with them because their usual roster of clients/partners includes A-listers like actor-producer Don Lee (Train to Busan, Marvel’s ETERNALS, THE ROUNDUP Franchise), actor Jun Kunimura (Kill Bill, Naked Director), director/showrunner JQ Lee (All of Us are Dead) and more!
It’s all exciting because books that are locally published rarely travel from Singapore/Malaysia out into the world. Usually, it’s the other way around. Because of its unorthodox journey, Mist-Bound was recently featured by the prominent regional publication Nikkei Asia!
Creatively, though, let’s just say I’m currently in the process of collecting sand.
This comes from a quote I love by author Shannon Hale, who reminds herself in the early stages of writing that she is “simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”
I may end up only burying myself in the dirt, but hopefully, I’ll get to build some castles eventually!
Do you have any advice/tips for other parents who are passionate about writing?
Daryl: My biggest advice is to write first and foremost for yourself — or your loved ones, too, if you’re writing for them — instead of writing for some imaginary public, fame, riches, or the New York Times bestseller list.
A statistic commonly cited in publishing is that almost everyone dreams of writing a book (81% of Americans, per a survey). Still, of the ones who do start writing, 97% give up. Only three percent finish it. And only 0.6% end up publishing it — basically half a percent.
I’ve been unable to locate the exact source, but it gives a sense of the long, hard and often lonely road from a blank page to a bookshelf. Hence, if a make-believe fan club in your head is your main fuel, there’s a 97% probability you’ll quickly run out of gas. You’ll need something much deeper to push you through the commas, breaks, and full stops you will inevitably face. That’s why I say forget all that external stuff.
Write even if you’re never going to be published. Even if you ultimately never finish.
Write for your child to help her dream at night. Write for yourself because you have a yarn yearning to be turned into a string of sentences or some deep sorrow screaming to be laid bare on a sheet.
Write because it makes you happy, or perhaps more importantly, less sad.
It’s funny, Mist-Bound — this story I wrote about a cure for my dad ended up being a cure for me instead.
I was going through depression throughout many of the years that I was writing it. Thanks to career roadblocks, rounds of corporate restructuring, and then my dad’s passing.
This book project became my little refuge, my escape hatch. It reminded me that I could still make something of value. That I myself still had value. It became an outlet for me to deal with my grief over the loss of my father, who also was my best friend, and my guilt for not being a better son.
They say, “Grief is Love with nowhere else to go.” For a while, at least, I could turn it into black ink to pour into this book. Fantasy books aside, humans have a true magic power within them. This power allows us to take in dark, hurtful, and sad things and transform them into something beautiful and meaningful.
That magic is art.
So, go make some magic!
Many thanks, Daryl, for sharing your insights and inspiring journey! You can find Mist-Bound: How to Glue Back Grandpa in bookstores and online, and keep up with Daryl Kho on Instagram.
