The L.O.V.E. Club is an immersive novel following the friendship of three estranged high schoolers who are pulled into a mysterious video game after the disappearance of their fourth friend.  Can you tell us a little bit about where the idea for this book came from?

Some years ago, I learned that something had happened to a girl I’d grown up with, who had, at various points in my life, been one of my best friends. This got me thinking about a lot of the girls I grew up with, most of whom I am not in contact with now. As a kid, I constantly compared myself to these girls, many of whom shared the same ethnic heritage and (in my mind) outperformed me when adhering to and fulfilling that heritage’s standard of girlhood and then womanhood. This feeling eventually evaporated when I came to the realization that the friction between us was almost entirely self-manufactured. But the wounds that I’d given myself and then reflected back onto those relationships remained, and I wasn’t sure if or what could heal them. The L.O.V.E. Club is my attempt at an apology, but more intrinsically it’s an attempt to unravel the behavioral patterns we’d repeated through our generation, and which remain (and perhaps have even strengthened) in the generations that have come after mine. Or more simply, how misogyny embedded in tradition is passed down as a curse.

The shorter but maybe more true answer: I woke up from a dream with tears in my eyes and immediately knew that what I’d just dreamed would become the keystone scene of whatever I wrote around it.

Following your acclaimed debut Beating Heart Baby through the contemporary world of art and music, your sophomore novel The L.O.V.E. Club ventures into the world of video games and science fiction. What interested you about writing within the SFF genre for this novel?

Having now met a lot of children’s authors, I hear a lot of them say, “I wrote this novel for my younger self”… My younger self would not have picked up Beating Heart Baby! The stories I’ve been drawn to the most throughout my life have all been genre fiction. That baseline, combined with a scholarly interest in video game storytelling—how video games as a set of mediums can be applied structurally to the novel— pushed me into writing The L.O.V.E. Club as a genre novel. Beating Heart Baby was an extension of my working life as a music journalist; The L.O.V.E. Club is pulling from a much more foundational part of my person.

Which video games or other media influences do you feel inspired the creation of The L.O.V.E. Club and the world of Morning Glory?

The biggest influence on TLC is a subgenre of magical girl anime that I would broadly label as

“psychological horror mind games.” I would not recommend these to first-time anime watchers: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Wonder Egg Priority, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, From the New World, Land of the Lustrous, Sonny Boy. I would recommend these though: Witch Hat Atelier (actually a manga), Cardcaptor Sakura and its follow-up Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. I also thought a lot about the films Paprika and Annihilation.

As far as video games go, I actually don’t play many (or any actively). But I drew inspiration from video game-adjacent books like the novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, the essay anthology Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, and the scholarly work Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen.

Our main character O has been struggling with Elle’s disappearance and the estrangement of their remaining best friends Vera and Liberty before they are transported into a video game world.

What do you think O’s greatest strengths are that support them through the trials of Morning Glory?

There’s a meta-narrative throughout the book about tapping into creativity as a way to imagine a future that seems impossible now. O doesn’t know this at the start of the story, but the way she perceives the world—closely, with an attention that’s borderline obsessive—is a quality that allows her to see the bigger picture of Morning Glory on macro and micro levels. She’s the kind of person who notices patterns and sees how they fit into larger designs: a very useful skill for artists in any medium.

Flowers and Elle’s love for them are such a key element that we see throughout the story. Why were you interested in using botanical motifs in this narrative?

My relationship to the natural world changed when I read Jenny Odell’s low-key manifesto How To Do Nothing. Among other things, it helped reorient my attention to seasonality and locality. I started paying attention to neighboring flowers and trees and started seriously gardening, like, growing veggie starts from seed and using raised beds and keeping a fertilizer schedule serious. I even worked in the floral department of a local grocer for a while… Not just for research purposes but also, kind of. 

What truly solidified the botanical background of the story, and became an anchoring image in The L.O.V.E. Club, was when I learned about a type of flower mutation called “fasciation.” I had this moment of, “Every single person in the world should know what this is,” and the floral imagery really bloomed forth after that. 

The L.O.V.E. Club thoughtfully explores the complexities of the relationships between the four lead characters through racial identity, gender expression, sexual identity and class. Why was it important for you to write this YA narrative with a focus on queer Asian American friendship?

This is maybe the one thing that The L.O.V.E. Club has in common with Beating Heart Baby… The short answer is that I pay attention to Asian American kids out in the world and observe how this broadly classified demographic has, and hasn’t, changed in behavior and beliefs from my own childhood. One of the biggest barometers of change in the past couple of decades is if/how gender and sexuality are openly expressed and accepted in “the culture.” Both of my books attempt to thread the needle of giving a lay of the land now, while offering a way forward into deeper understanding and acceptance.

Each of the characters plays a different role in their friendship as they do with the classes they play as when they game together (tank, archer, healer, thief). Why do you think they are best fit for these classes and what class do you think best aligns with you?

The classes came before the characters and helped define their personalities and arcs. I picked the class archetypes that make up a well-balanced fighting/exploration team and fragmented Chinese

American femininity through them, then crystallized those exaggerated qualities in the characters. One example: the tank, the brute strength enforcer, isn’t equated with soft interiority. This characterization might work for a fighting game but it immediately expresses something different when the vessel is a teenage girl who plays sports, particularly a teenage girl whose cultural background values a narrow aesthetic of strength and power in women. 

The qualities that make up a well-balanced fighting team don’t necessarily make for the qualities that make up well-balanced friendships. Much of The L.O.V.E. Club is spent clarifying who the girls actually are versus how the girls act when they’re with each other and in the world out of habit, and then, how do their true selves work together? Can they work together anymore? I’ll leave it at that. 

As for myself, it’d be so sick to be a sorcerer but in a world with magic, I’m gonna keep it real and say that I probably wouldn’t have powers. Maybe I’d run an inn, keep a garden and feed wayward travelers.

Without giving away any spoilers, what was one of your favorite scenes in the book to write?

The first time I unlocked the crane scene, I knew I’d be able to do the rest. That alone makes it a favorite.

What books are currently on your nightstand?

Jamie Hood’s Trauma Plot, which I won’t recommend casually, and Dean Spade’s Mutual Aid, which I think should be injected directly into the brain stem of every person in the world.

Lastly, we have to ask – what are you working on next? Without giving too much away, can you give readers any hints as to what they can expect from your next book?

Idols, illness, and eco-terrorism :^)

Will you be picking up The L.O.V.E. Club? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Lio Min, Author of ‘The L.O.V.E. Club’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Sometimes, a book to review pops up on my kindle that I’ve never heard a single peep about—and in very rare cases, that book turns out to be an all-time favourite. Readers, Beating Heart Baby is one of those books. In this debut, we follow artistic and sensitive Santi, who arrives at a new high school where everyone in the wildly talented (and lowkey famous) marching band welcomes him with open arms—except for one prickly musical prodigy called Suwa, who doesn’t think Santi has what it takes to be part of the band. But what neither Santi nor Suwa know is that they share painful pasts that they’ve both tried to forget for years. As they slowly open up to each other, a tentative yet fiercely loyal friendship begins. When one of them realises just how connected they really are, can Santi and Suwa find a way through the pain and let go of old anger and resentment to create a future together?

There’s something so…alluring about Beating Heart Baby. I want to attribute it to the engaging writing or the compelling protagonist Santi, but really there’s a magic to this book I just can’t put into words. While it’s hard to talk about the plot without spoiling a few big revelations, I do want to point out what makes this book so addictive to read.

This story explores heavy topics such as past trauma and generational abuse—but it also highlights the importance of found family and the utter magic of the right person saying the right thing to you at the exact right moment, or offering a shoulder to cry on just when you need it but don’t know how to ask for it. It’s a heartbreaking read because characters in this story aren’t flawless—everyone makes mistakes. From saying the wrong things to acting out of anger or fear or even shutting others out because of truths you can’t really accept yet, all of the characters are imperfect but what makes this such a wholesome story is that they all grow as time passes. They learn from their mistakes, they intend to do better and then they try again. There’s much to be said for perseverance and inner strength and finding a way to love yourself when you’re scared others won’t and all these emotions are wrapped into Beating Heart Baby.

What I think is another highlight in Santi and Suwa’s romance is the sheer vulnerability that is displayed. Santi and Suwa have a lot of baggage to work through but they do it in this honest manner that just makes you clutch your chest because you can feel their pain and want them to be happy, no matter what. Their tentative friendship as they open up to each other after a rocky start is like watching a flower blossom—whenever they do something that benefits the other, the flower grows, whenever they lash out or hide away, the flower wilts. They’re put in incredibly tough situations but somehow, they emerge victorious, if somewhat disillusioned as they learn that dreams are sometimes not as achievable as they seem. It’s this disillusionment paired with the ambition to still make a name for yourself in whatever way you can which makes Suwa and Santi so perfect for each other.

Beating Heart Baby is also driven by music. From Santi becoming a part of the marching band at his new school to the song his best friend Memo sends him that causes Santi to lose his best friend’s trust, music can both heal and hurt in this story. Min somehow puts into words how music can build long-lasting connections between people but also somehow perfectly explains the utter devastation of a song that means the world to you not being heard the same way by others. Music can be this all-encompassing experience and even when hundreds of thousands of people scream the same lyrics, they might relate to them for hundreds of thousands of different reasons—somehow, Min made this book feel the same way. You might not have your heart ripped out and somehow glued together by this book for the same reason than the next reader—but trust that it will happen, regardless.

All in all, there is so much to love about this—the tender depiction of second chances, the way gender and sexuality discussions are handled, the inclusive cast of secondary characters who have so much personality, the geeking out over favourite animes and the love letter to internet friendships and how they can save you from yourself sometimes are all elements that are sure to keep you flipping the pages, holding your breath to see where Santi and Suwa will end up.

If you like angst, pining, anime, music and found family, Beating Heart Baby is the book that will make you cheer, weep, laugh and pine for your own internet friendship transforming into a happily ever after this summer!

Beating Heart Baby is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 26th 2022.

Will you be picking up Beating Heart Baby? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Lio Min’s Beating Heart Baby is a “dizzying, sexy, and utterly heartfelt” (Mary H. K. Choi) love letter to internet friendships, anime, and indie rock

When artistic and sensitive Santi arrives at his new high school, everyone in the wildly talented marching band welcomes him with open arms. Everyone except for the prickly, proud musical prodigy Suwa, who doesn’t think Santi has what it takes to be in the band.

But Santi and Suwa share painful pasts, and when they open up to each other, a tentative friendship begins. And soon, that friendship turns into something more. . . .

Will their fresh start rip at the seams as Suwa seeks out a solo spotlight, and both boys come to terms with what it’ll take, and what they’ll have to let go, to realize their dreams?

The post #ReadWithPride: Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min appeared first on The Nerd Daily.