Elaine Lui didn’t always want to be a writer. It wasn’t until she started her now famous blog, LaineyGossip.com, that she really considered it as a profession. In fact, one of her earliest career objectives — at age 10 — was to become Miss Hong Kong, an expressed desire to which her mother responded, “Miss Hong Kong is a whore.”
Sounds like an extremely harsh parenting style, and it was, Lui admits, but she says she owes every success she has since earned, including publishing her first book, out this month, to values like hard work and determination that her mother impressed upon her.
Listen to the Squawking Chicken is Lui’s homage to a mother she describes as “a force and a legend.” The impetus for the book came about when the elder Lui fell ill in 2010 with a rare medical syndrome called POEMS. During the months Lui spent in the hospital by her mother’s bedside, she felt a growing need to record the lessons and stories she had been told as a child. But this isn’t the first time she’s written about her mother.
Fans of LaineyGossip.com will recognize the Chinese Squawking Chicken (a nickname Lui’s mother earned as a child) from frequent references on the blog.
“In writing about young, wayward celebrities, I started imagining what my mother would say to them, and her voice found its way into my writing,” Lui says. “She became a recurring character, and people really responded to her, they related. They wrote to me telling me they had a Portuguese Squawking Chicken or a Jamaican Squawking Chicken of their own.”
In addition to writing a book and a blog, which she updates daily, Lui is also a TV personality. “I only sleep about four to five hours per night,” she explains. She’s been a reporter on CTV’s entertainment show eTalk since 2006 and recently signed on as a co-host for the network’s daily talk show The Social. Similar to Barbara Walters’ brainchild The View, the new show features a panel of four female co-hosts discussing current events. Lui is rounded out by Melissa Grelo, Cynthia Loyst and Traci Melchor, whom she insists are great friends, despite their differences of opinion on the show.
“We love each other,” she says. “Traci and I had a grown-up sleepover last week at the Thompson [Hotel in downtown Toronto] after a party there … and I have more pictures of Cynthia on my phone than of myself.”
This most recent gig brought Lui back to Toronto, where she grew up, after living in Vancouver for 13 years. Now settled into a new home with her husband and dogs in the Beach neighbourhood, she says she finally feels like a “real Toronto resident.”
“I love the neighbourhood I’m in. It’s far enough away from the hustle, but there’s still so much going on.” She can often be found hitting the gym at the Balmy Beach Club or eating at one of her favourite locals (Lui claims that No Bull Burgers is even better than the Burger’s Priest).
Elaine Lui will present Listen to the Squawking Chicken on April 29 at Airship 37 (37 Parliament St.).