Mike Chen: On Making Connections in Impossible Circumstances
Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood, Here and Now and Then, Light Years from Home, and other novels. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, Tor.com and StarTrek.com, and in a different life, he’s covered the NHL. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter and many rescue animals. Follow him on X (Twitter) and Instagram.
Mike Chen
Photo by Amanda Chen
In this post, Mike discusses how he explored many different forms of storytelling for his new science fiction novel, A Quantum Love Story, how and why he chose to infuse the story with romance, and more!
Name: Mike Chen
Literary agent: Eric Smith
Book title: A Quantum Love Story
Publisher: Mira Books
Release date: January 31, 2024
Genre/category: Science Fiction, Romance
Previous titles: Here And Now And Then, We Could Be Heroes, Vampire Weekend, Star Wars: Brotherhood
Elevator pitch: When strangers Mariana Pineda and Carter Cho get stuck together repeating the same four days, finally reaching Friday might mean having to give up the connection growing between them. Along the way, Carter and Mariana help each other through grief, decisions about unfulfilling jobs, and confronting difficult pasts—all the while eating lots of great food since their bank accounts and cholesterol reset with every loop. But the longer they stay in the loop, the more they realize that getting out of it, might mean they’ll have to give up the feelings growing between them that’s slowly leading to love.
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What prompted you to write this book?
This book existed in a few different forms—first an IP pitch, then a graphic novel pitch, and finally a full adult novel. Many of those details and specifics got stripped away, but the themes and tone remained, making it easy to shape into this. But what really crystalized it was the period of 2020-2021, when the initial shock of COVID gave away to a sense of both “What will happen next?” and “How long do we wait?”
During that extremely dark time, my young daughter met one of her best friends who just happened to live across the state. They built this deep friendship over Zoom, and the idea of finding each other in impossible, never-ending circumstances … well, I think I wrote about that theme as a way to process my own trauma.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
As I mentioned, this existed in some form for different pitches dating back to 2018. I really started working on it in early 2022, right after finishing Vampire Weekend. One of the big changes early on was the decision to make the slow-burn romance between Mariana and Carter central to the story. I shy away from romance and I treat it as a B-plot in most cases, if at all. But I wanted to challenge myself and make that longing for interpersonal connection to be at the heart of this book, in a way that family or parent/child or friendship didn’t (since I already covered that ground).
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This book’s origins date back to 2018, and its pitch/outline got adapted into so many different formats, so it goes to show you that no story idea is ever truly dead. During its journey, it had IP characters, wrote for a different age range, wrote for a graphic novel format, and had a completely different tone. The funny thing is that each iteration added a layer that still made it through to the final version.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I got to a point where I felt a little stuck because if only two people remember a time loop, there are extreme limitations to who they can talk to. I remember thinking that they just needed someone else in the mix, and I jokingly thought up “Well, what if David Bowie was in the time loop with them?” (I am a huge Bowie fan.) It sparked my brain into movement and then I realized the answer was an AI assistant based on him (and a very particular point in his career).
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
This idea really crystalized during the peak of COVID, when uncertainty and fear just seemed everywhere. But even in those times, some things changed in our lives for the better—for me and my family, it meant the new connections I formed in the most unexpected ways, and I hope readers take that with them.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Write fan fiction! It’s the perfect sandbox for perfecting any element of your craft because the characters, voices, and worldbuilding are already there. And the fan fiction community can give you immediate feedback to let you know if your experiments worked.
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