Mike Chen stands and ponders his next novel.
How do you decide that to write?
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, covered the NHL. Forbes chatted with Mike Chen about his writing career path and future fantasy novels he’s also working on for the future.
Goldie Chan: Hi Mike, thanks for joining us. What has your career journey been so far?
Mike Chen: I have a technical background with an engineering degree, but I've always been arts-inclined. In college, I always pushed myself to take one extra humanities course per quarter – history, literature, etc. This led to a theater minor, but the most important class I took senior year was creative writing. My teacher Wendy Sheanin, who is now an executive in publishing, told me that I "wrecked the curve" and to "keep writing."
Which I did. I veered off for a bit – I took my engineering degree and then went into technical writing, which then lend to freelance copywriting and sports journalism. I covered the NHL for about ten years and I stopped that around the time I wanted to really focus on fiction again. I also broke into geek media at the time, which I still freelance for from time to time. That led to signing with my agent Eric Smith in 2015; I sold my debut HERE AND NOW AND THEN in 2017, and that released in 2019. I've had at least a book a year since.
And since everyone asks – yes, I still have a day job. I live in the Bay Area with a mortgage and a family medical condition, so corporate life will basically always be part of my work.
Chan: You’ve now released a few novels. What has been your favorite novel that you’ve worked on?
Chen: It's easy to say that STAR WARS: BROTHERHOOD was the most fun to write, because despite the tight turnaround of three months for a full initial draft, it always felt like play and never work. If it wasn't for sleeping, I would have finished in half the time. But I think I will always have a soft spot for A BEGINNING AT THE END, my second novel which was about a pandemic and launched literally weeks before COVID-19 became a real pandemic. I wrote the initial draft circa 2010-12 and it was my first dip into "science fiction with feelings" that has kind of became my trademark. My agent thought the bones of a great story were there but he said I needed to blow it up and rebuild it from scratch, which I did over about 1.5 years. The result went from two POVs in a linear story to four POVs in a narrative filled with flashbacks and historical documents. So those characters have been with me a very long time and seeing them come to life and embraced by readers is probably the most meaningful thing in my career.
Chan: With so many stories that you’re telling, who are some of your favorite storytellers and why?
Chen: That’s a big question! My biggest influences in my teens and young adulthood are Anne Rice (blending genres, evocative prose, world building) and Nick Hornby (characters and dialogue). I marvel at the creativity of Neil Gaiman, Peng Shepherd, and Kat Howard, and I think a lot about the way Fonda Lee brings together character and action – she’s a modern master of that. I love the way David Lynch simply does not care about audience expectations and will use symbolism as part of his narrative. And I think song lyrics are stories too, even when they’re not narrative songs – they’re still “about” something and derive an emotion. In that regard, my favorite songwriter is Tanya Donelly. Her lyrics have gotten me through so many difficult times in my life.
Chan: Now that you’ve had your latest success with STAR WARS: BROTHERHOOD, what projects are you currently working on?
Chen: A number of things! Some of which aren’t announced yet, so I can’t really talk about them. But my next novel is VAMPIRE WEEKEND, which comes out in January. I jokingly call it the most wholesome vampire story ever told; it’s about a woman named Louise who immigrated to America as a child in the 1950s and faced the culture clash that happens when you’re a child of immigrants. And she dealt with that by diving into punk rock in the 70s (which is something I very much identify with), and then she gets turned into a vampire. So she has this otherness to her in her vampire life and also her personal history, and it’s never really been resolved until she encounters a long-lost teenage relative in present time, who is also seeking solace in music.
The other project I can tell you about is that I’m writing a time-loop story, which is as close to romance as I can get. I’ve focused on many different types of relationships in my books: siblings, parent-child, friendship. But I’ve always found writing about romantic relationships uncomfortable, so I wanted to challenge myself with it. I’m still not done, so we’ll have to see how that goes!
Chan: Who is a collaborator that you’d like to work with?
Chen: Anyone on my favorite storyteller list!
Chan: What do you believe is the most important element of a story?
Chen: I think this is different for every writer and every reader. But for me, it’s always character. I want to know what makes them tick, and I find characters most fascinating when we get a little slice-of-life moment among a fantastical situation. I really appreciated that the Star Wars team hired me for this specific reason, to write a character-driven story that explored who Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi were at a very specific transitionary period of their lives. I know some people prefer a focus on plot or world-building and it’s all personal preference, but for me, without character as a reader or a writer, it just doesn’t work for me.
Chan: Any last branding or career advice for aspiring writers?
Chen: I think there’s this pervasive thought among unagented writers that 1) they have to be published by 30 and 2) there’s some sort of fast-track trick to getting published. And honestly, both are false. Almost everyone I know got their agent through the old-fashioned way of sending a query letter. And to actually get published, it’s simply a matter of just sticking to it if you really love it. Every writer I started out with around 2010-ish has either gotten an agent/published or they decided that they wanted to pursue other passions. It’s as simple as that. There’s no trick to catching an agent’s eye or jumping the line, the standard methods are tried and true.
