This story is true

One hot summer evening, back in 2008, Michael walked into a bar in Seattle to meet some friends for a short story reading group. When he saw a girl through the windows, he hoped she was part of the group too. She was.

They had a lot in common, it turned out. They had both recently returned from trips to Europe. They were both learning the guitar and attempting to write songs. They both had insightful and only somewhat pretentious things to say about the short story. Later that evening, Michael impressed Nicole at pub trivia with his random knowledge of useless facts. The short story group met every two weeks, and by the third meeting, they were officially dating.

After many adventures, such as living in Paris while Nicole got a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies, and living in New York City while Mike got a Master’s degree in art and technology, they’d had their fill of tiny, overpriced apartments and moved back to the Pacific Northwest to start their next chapter: parenting two very opinionated children.

Shortly after their first kid was born, Mike started having intense bouts of anxiety where his super-creative brain went into overdrive and he couldn’t stop worrying that he had accidentally poisoned their family. He was eventually diagnosed with OCD, an experience Nicole later wrote about in a New York Times Modern Love essay.

In December 2019, when their second kid was just over a year old, and they were more exhausted than ever, they thought it would be fun to throw another thing on their plate and write a novel. Mike loves speculative fiction; Nicole loves romantic comedies. They agreed to meet somewhere in the middle.

It quickly became their craziest, wildest adventure yet.