Book Launch Talk with Mike Chen

Alexia: This week we’re talking about book launch tips. And who better to ask about the subject than someone who celebrated a book birthday last week—welcome back, Mike Chen! 

Two years ago you joined the blog to answer some questions and talk about WE COULD BE HEROES, a story about friendship. And this January 30th A QUANTUM LOVE STORY released, a book about love on a time loop. Did you go into writing this one knowing the theme would center on your character’s love story?

Mike: This story went through several iterations as different places requested proposals, but through that the heart of it was always these two people, Carter and Mariana. When I had the chance to have more direct control over the tone and age range, I decided to make their slow-burn love story more of a focus in the book – this was mostly a personal challenge to myself, as I feel like I’d written about many other types of interpersonal relationships but always felt intimidated by having a romance be the driver for the story. It’s as close to romance (the genre) as I will ever get.

Alexia: I love recommending your books to people, especially those who aren’t science fiction fans because you make sci-fi accessible via personal relationships. Your publisher must share the same sentiment because MIRA Books is proud to display you as one of their authors. How have their publicists been involved with A QUANTUM LOVE STORY’s release?

Mike: They’re always helpful and supportive; Justine Sha has been my publicist since my second book and she’s probably the fastest email responder in all of publishing. I think everyone at the imprint understood that from a marketing perspective, there was an opportunity to reach a broader audience with this title and they got to work very early on to make sure the foundation of outreach hit that. It’s really fantastic to get interest reflective of this book’s broader identity.

Alexia: Romance is the top grossing fiction genre, and now you’ve got a release with that tag. How do you view romance as a genre? Do you ever read romance, or do you read genre fiction with romantic elements? 

Mike: I don’t read romance in terms of the genre, but I am very aware of its standard story beats and sub-genres. In terms of romantic elements that appear in genre fiction, I that that’s more of using a character focus, because a romantic arc is always as much about self-discovery and acceptance as it is bringing two people together. I am also a huge fan of romantic choices in video games and I will talk endlessly about Liara T’soni AKA my “blue space wife” from the Mass Effect games.

Alexia: You’ve picked powerful themes for your stories. The effect of time on relationships, trauma, friendships, family relationships. When you pitched A QUANTUM LOVE STORY, had you thought ahead to how you’d utilize the romance theme to reach new readers? 

Mike: I knew right away that I wanted it to be a combination of slow burn and the understanding of opportunity. That’s different from standard romance beats, which is why we picked “love story” for the title – it’s not a romance novel per se. It was always about two people fighting just to have a chance for happiness, and I think that struggle is universal. I wanted to have characters that readers could root for individually and as a couple, so when they get that moment of “maybe they’ve got a chance,” it would really connect with readers in a different way than with friendships or family.

Alexia: You’ve covered the gamut of relationship themes in your work. Are there any that have been burning a hole in your brain, begging to for you to explore? Or is there a theme that you loved writing so much you want to hit it from a new angle? 

Mike: The fun thing about playing in science fiction is you can mix and match sub-genre tropes and types of interpersonal relationships to come up with all sorts of unique stuff. I have a few things simmering, but I need publishing to hurry up and do its thing before I can say anything.

Alexia: There are hundreds of angles one can take on promoting a book release. What is your go to marketing tool, the one thing you’ll do with every book release either because you love it or you can’t ignore its ROI?

Mike: Funny enough, I feel like I’ve released enough books that I realized that authors can’t move the needle too much on their own – it’s really a team effort. So I just try to be open, honest, and accessible in every avenue possible, whether that’s in-person events, Zoom book club meetings, or answering questions on social media.

Alexia: We’re all stronger together. And speaking of ROI, one of Jeffe Kennedy’s topic suggestions for the year is ‘worst ROI ever’. I’d love to pick your brain on that topic, and, well, every other topic we have. You should just join us! 

Mike: Like I said, there doesn’t seem to be a formula that always works! So the best thing you can do in the long run is be a nice person and be engaging rather than constantly hawking your wares.

Alexia: I couldn’t help myself, I had to throw that out there because I honestly admire your writing and find your thought processes fascinating. Thanks again for joining me on the blog, Mike. A huge congratulations on the release of A QUANTUM LOVE STORY! Many wishes for its success! 

Mike: Thank you for bringing me back!

About Mike:

Mike Chen is a critically acclaimed science fiction author based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. His debut novel HERE AND NOW AND THEN was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice, CALIBA Golden Poppy, and Compton Crook awards. His other novels include A BEGINNING AT THE END, WE COULD BE HEROES, LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME, and STAR WARS: BROTHERHOOD. He has also contributed to the STAR WARS: FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW anthology and covers geek culture for sites like Nerdist, StarTrek.com, and The Mary Sue. In previous lives, Mike worked as a sports journalist covering the NHL, DJ, musician, and aerospace engineer. He lives with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals.

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A Quantum Love Story

The only thing harder than finding someone in a time loop is losing them.

Grieving her best friend's recent death, neuroscientist Mariana Pineda’s ready to give up everything to start anew. Even her career— after one last week consulting at a top secret particle accelerator.

Except the strangest thing a man stops her…and claims they've met before. Carter Cho knows who she is, why she's mourning, why she's there. And he needs Mariana to remember everything he’s saying.

Because time is about to loop.

In a flash of energy, it’s Monday morning. Again. Together, Mariana and Carter enter an inevitable life, four days at a time, over and over, without permanence except for what they share. With everything resetting—even bank accounts—joy comes in the little a delicious (and expensive) meal, a tennis match, giving a dog his favorite treat.

In some ways, those are all that matter.

But just as they figure out this new life, everything changes. Because Carter's memories of the time loop are slowly disappearing. And their only chance at happiness is breaking out of the loop—forever.

To Feel or Not To Feel

I just finished a well-written sci-fi thriller, Mindwalker by Kate Dylan. While reading you’ll feel the main characters confusion, tension, brief moments of relief, and hunger for rightness. If you hadn’t guessed, I highly recommend this read! 

The inverse of tapping into all those character’s emotions as a reader is our topic of the week: do you have to feel the exact emotion you’re writing? 

I’d love to do a mini study on this and interview authors of books that I emotionally connected to as well as authors of books whose plot sucked me in. I’m curious to see if there’s any correlation to their writing process and my connection to the book. Of course, any study done by anyone on this would be skewed by the scientists’ views and personal preferences. Still, it would be interesting. 

I’ll put that idea on the back burner, but for now I can look at my own writing and compare to what readers have told me.

Step 1: Looking back at the books that I’ve written, my most emotional scenes do trigger the same emotions my characters are feeling. I do experience the anguish, the nervousness, the heart palpating fear—albeit to a lesser extent. And maybe that’s why writing is emotionally draining and I’m tired afterwards! 

Step 2: Review comments provided by readers (listeners for TMS and feedback on my other manuscripts). Interestingly, the readers/listeners experienced grief, and some tears, during the major loss scenes. Readers/listeners also reported sharing sweaty palms and pounding heart with the intense action scenes. And, yesssss, they were swept into the romantic moments with one listener saying “now I understand why people read these books”. 

Step 3: Comparison: My readers/listeners shared the deep emotion scenes with my characters, which correlates to the emotions I felt while I was writing those scenes. 

Conclusion: For me, I do experience emotions as I am writing. I put myself into my characters shoes because I want to feel what they’re feeling and be able to sense my way through the scene. Is it necessary? No, there have been plenty of times I write with a more technical goal in mind…and I bet you can pick those parts out. 

Maybe I don’t need to do a study on authors and emotions since I know for myself I will experience an echo of my characters emotions as I write. I believe it makes my stories better, but then again, I’m an emotional reader and want to be sucked in that way over the plotting. 

Are any of you, dear readers, like me in this? Do you also need some yoga and/or meditation after a good writing session?

Book Club Love

I miss my book club. If you know me, you know my book tastes don’t run with the typical book club types. Which was why I started my own with the goal to read fiction and introduce a wide variety of genre fiction to our members: Fictively Reading!

One of my favorite book club reads was Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik. Only one other person out of our group of eight had ever read science fiction before. It was one of the best discussions because they were all blown away by how much they got into the story and the characters, which also meant I got to geek out about space operas and what they are and why this one hooked us all so well. 

I think being in my self-created book club was such a good fit because I picked a few books and let everyone else vote on which one they wanted to read next. Had I actually read some of them before hand? Yes, but I wanted to be sure they were really good! There’s nothing better than suggesting a book to someone and they fall in love with it, come back to you and gush about it. And in our book club we all got to do that together! 

Another huge plus of being in a book club: you get out of the house and actually talk to people. As writers we don’t get a lot of face time IRL. And as introverted as I am, I still need connections with people. Meeting for book club was in part excuse to introduce SFF and romance to new readers, but also for our group to get together and catch up on everything that is life. 

*sigh* The good ol’ days. Unfortunately, the pandemic put an end to our book club meetings since we couldn’t actually meet in person. I have been asked by a few of the members if we’ll ever start back up. And you know what, we really should! 

Are you in a book club? 

Spotlight on Author Mike Chen!

 

Alexia: I love this week’s topic because it gave me an excuse to reach out to one of my auto-buy authors and fangirl! And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect because my guest’s newest release kept me from going insane while I was stuck in bed with vertigo—which was definitely not fun, but the audiobook WE COULD BE HEROES was beyond exciting! Welcome, Mike Chen! 

Mike: Thanks so much for having me! And shoutout to Emily Woo Zeller, who narrated the audiobook. She did my previous one (A BEGINNING AT THE END) and when I found out she’d signed to do this, I messaged her and asked her to bring some of the chaotic disaster energy from her lead role in STAR WARS: DOCTOR APHRA. Game fans will recognize her from the recent Cyberpunk 2077 -- like my wife, who loaded up the audiobook and said, “Hey, it’s Panam!”

Alexia: Yes—Aphra! Emily was the perfect voice for this superhero tale. I like to think books have saved me from a lot of things over the years, but never have I been so sure of that statement than the past couple of years. I don’t get a choice about having a chronic disease and when it flares up or its tagalongs wreck havoc on my head, books—more specifically audiobooks—save the day! Mike, have you ever had a book be your lifeline? 

Mike: Not directly, but various creative arts felt like that to me as a teen. I can count on various songs and musicians that I would lean on as lifelongs. But I would use books as a means to feel accepted and seen, specifically Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Timothy Zahn's Star Wars books -- Zahn's came at a time when being a nerd wasn't socially acceptable and it made it feel okay to love those things while Anne Rice fed my inner teen goth angst.

Writing rules for your sci-fi/fantasy worlds

Rules…rules…rules were meant to be broken? 

Close, but our topic of the week is: What’s a rule of your world established in a precious book that complicated things for you later on?

And I consider myself lucky in this because so far I’ve only written books numbered one! But I’m aware of the danger of writing yourself into a tight corner because of world building/magic system, yes that came from Jeffe and her oh-so-handy posts over the years..and again this Sunday.

So I’ve used that advice…but mostly for my fantasy books because my sci-fi books I write as stand alones. Anyone out there write in different genres and treat the world building differently? 

For my fantasy books, one is Regency fantasy and the other is high fantasy.

High Fantasy: stories that take place in a completely fictional world with its own rules.

Regency fantasy is basically a historical with some magic thrown in. That meant I had to trade world building with historical research. Rabbit hole alert! Then the magic came into play and it was fantastic! Difficult physical challenges, magic! Weapons that met their mark as long as you’re close, magic! Clandestine meetings cracked by eavesdropping wind, magic! 

But all the while I already knew what would happen in book two and mostly in book three. Since I knew the future (ha! if only) I could work in hints and abilities/restrictions that I needed for book two. 

I used the same guidelines when world building my high fantasy. The magic system for this series took a year to formulate and over that year it morphed, like it was alive. Which it is, in the books. And like the Regency fantasy I already knew what would happen for my heroes and villains in book two so some of the secondary character’s magical abilities are the basis for the various main characters to come. 

After thinking about all of this I’m wondering what would happen if I wrote a book one without knowing anything about book two! I listened to Jeffe’s June 5th First Cup of Coffee where she interviewed author Grace Draven. During their coffee date Grace mentioned she wrote Phoenix Unbound without knowing what book two, Dragon Unleashed, would be. 

That blew my mind. I don’t—I don’t know if my brain could handle writing like that. Thank goodness for the beauty of this craft, that each of our paths are different and how we go about writing is different. And who knows, I could find myself in that predicament someday…and then I might have to borrow Jeffe’s tactic and lie my way out.

Too bad I’m not a proficient lier.