What would you do if you woke up in the wrong body? In Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Know, Laurie wakes up with no memories, driving down an unknown highway, and promptly crashes the car. Thankfully, a handsome stranger named Gideon comes to his rescue. Things get strange when Laurie realizes he’s trapped in a girls body. Then even weirder when Laurie wakes up the next morning back on the same highway and runs into Gideon again.
From Calgary-based YA author Alex Ritany, this brand new young adult romance novel blends elements of time loop stories (think Groundhog Day) and body swap stories (think Freaky Friday) in a deeply felt exploration of love, identity, and what it means to move through the world in a body that is truly yours.
I had the chance to ask Alex about writing Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Know and putting a twist on time loops.
Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Know cleverly uses elements of speculative fiction to dive deeper into ideas about love and identity. What drew you to writing a time loop story?
Before this novel was anything else, it was a time loop story. I’ve always loved a good looping mechanism, but had yet to find one in media that tackled the specific issues of identity that I write about in YA. Pairing it with the amnesia trope and then tossing in my own twist on the “why” and “how” made a time loop the perfect recipe for the story I knew I wanted to tell.
When writing speculative fiction, I find I am constantly looking to find the balance between what is intriguing and what is frustrating. The wrong ending to a speculative story can sour whatever else the book may have been trying to say. I knew I needed to be intentional about the way the loop closed. Readers have called my work “unbearably earnest” and my resolution fits right in with that.
Messing with time can be complicated. How did you plan and prepare to draft this story?
I knew this one needed to be meticulously planned and mapped out. Naturally, I did not do that whatsoever and jumped in head first—I do not advise this. It was a major headache in revisions. It was such a “character first” concept to me that the nature of the time loop took some time to unveil itself.
My own revisions involved reverse outlining the scope of the loop day and making sure everything all lined up. Even so, my brilliant copyeditors still caught some glaring timeline issues we had to work out in the final stages of edits!
The story begins when Laurie wakes up with no memories, driving down the highway outside Nanton, Alberta. Why was this small Albertan town the perfect setting for a time loop story?
I first discovered Nanton several years ago while I was driving aimlessly south. While my drive was not quite as “dark night of the soul” as we see in the book, it was not a happy drive. Then I saw the sign for the Bomber Command Museum (the one referenced in the book). I’m really earnestly not a WW2 guy, but I am a museum guy, so I pulled over. Many writers will know the feeling of being bowled over by a novel—by premise, by characters, by a story that almost seemed to exist before you found it. That happened to me as I stepped into that museum. Ironically, it wasn’t Laurie’s story, it was an unrelated adult historical fiction that I have been working on ever since, but that project, which is set in Nanton, meant I had quite a few hours logged in the town by the time Laurie sprung up.
It’s very important to me as a Canadian author that all of my contemporary fiction be set in Canada. It’s further important to me to highlight areas of the Canadian landscape that don’t often get featured in media, and of course, Nanton is an hour’s drive from where I live in Calgary (and Laurie’s neighbourhood is based on the one adjacent to mine).
While stuck in the loop, Laurie meets Gideon over and over and over again. What did setting your story in a time loop help you discover about your characters that you might not have found otherwise?
With the story’s central pull being so strongly towards uncovering identity, I knew I wanted a structure that gave space for exploration and discovery. I believe every person is multi-faceted, and different sides of them will be visible based on who they’re talking to and what the circumstances are. I wanted Laurie to have ample time to discover the different facets of Gideon while Gideon was unaware, and of course, every interaction taught Laurie something new about himself.
There’s also a level of frustration that’s always central to a time loop (man shakes fist at sky, “why is this happening to me?!”) that I personally found closely mirrored my own experiences in my coming-of-age and that I thought readers would identify with. So much of growing up happens in a bubble that is completely out of your control, and the more “different” you are from the expectations set before you, the more stifling that bubble feels. That frustration, combined with the ticking time bomb of the countdown in this time loop, was exactly what I was looking for.
While Laurie’s experiences feel entirely unique, there’s also something universally relatable (and powerful!) about the concept of choosing to be yourself. What do you hope teen readers take away from Laurie’s journey?
If teen readers take away anything, I hope it’s the realization that nobody else has a manual. No one else is being told how to be who they are—it is a process of trial and error (usually a lot of error) and that the most important thing you can ever do for yourself is to take the leap. It takes a lot of bravery, but if Laurie can do it (and if I can do it) then you can too.
Before this novel was anything else, it was a time loop story. I’ve always loved a good looping mechanism, but had yet to find one in media that tackled the specific issues of identity that I write about in YA. Pairing it with the amnesia trope and then tossing in my own twist on the “why” and “how” made a time loop the perfect recipe for the story I knew I wanted to tell.
When writing speculative fiction, I find I am constantly looking to find the balance between what is intriguing and what is frustrating. The wrong ending to a speculative story can sour whatever else the book may have been trying to say. I knew I needed to be intentional about the way the loop closed. Readers have called my work “unbearably earnest” and my resolution fits right in with that.
Messing with time can be complicated. How did you plan and prepare to draft this story?
I knew this one needed to be meticulously planned and mapped out. Naturally, I did not do that whatsoever and jumped in head first—I do not advise this. It was a major headache in revisions. It was such a “character first” concept to me that the nature of the time loop took some time to unveil itself.
My own revisions involved reverse outlining the scope of the loop day and making sure everything all lined up. Even so, my brilliant copyeditors still caught some glaring timeline issues we had to work out in the final stages of edits!
The story begins when Laurie wakes up with no memories, driving down the highway outside Nanton, Alberta. Why was this small Albertan town the perfect setting for a time loop story?
I first discovered Nanton several years ago while I was driving aimlessly south. While my drive was not quite as “dark night of the soul” as we see in the book, it was not a happy drive. Then I saw the sign for the Bomber Command Museum (the one referenced in the book). I’m really earnestly not a WW2 guy, but I am a museum guy, so I pulled over. Many writers will know the feeling of being bowled over by a novel—by premise, by characters, by a story that almost seemed to exist before you found it. That happened to me as I stepped into that museum. Ironically, it wasn’t Laurie’s story, it was an unrelated adult historical fiction that I have been working on ever since, but that project, which is set in Nanton, meant I had quite a few hours logged in the town by the time Laurie sprung up.
It’s very important to me as a Canadian author that all of my contemporary fiction be set in Canada. It’s further important to me to highlight areas of the Canadian landscape that don’t often get featured in media, and of course, Nanton is an hour’s drive from where I live in Calgary (and Laurie’s neighbourhood is based on the one adjacent to mine).
While stuck in the loop, Laurie meets Gideon over and over and over again. What did setting your story in a time loop help you discover about your characters that you might not have found otherwise?
With the story’s central pull being so strongly towards uncovering identity, I knew I wanted a structure that gave space for exploration and discovery. I believe every person is multi-faceted, and different sides of them will be visible based on who they’re talking to and what the circumstances are. I wanted Laurie to have ample time to discover the different facets of Gideon while Gideon was unaware, and of course, every interaction taught Laurie something new about himself.
There’s also a level of frustration that’s always central to a time loop (man shakes fist at sky, “why is this happening to me?!”) that I personally found closely mirrored my own experiences in my coming-of-age and that I thought readers would identify with. So much of growing up happens in a bubble that is completely out of your control, and the more “different” you are from the expectations set before you, the more stifling that bubble feels. That frustration, combined with the ticking time bomb of the countdown in this time loop, was exactly what I was looking for.
While Laurie’s experiences feel entirely unique, there’s also something universally relatable (and powerful!) about the concept of choosing to be yourself. What do you hope teen readers take away from Laurie’s journey?
If teen readers take away anything, I hope it’s the realization that nobody else has a manual. No one else is being told how to be who they are—it is a process of trial and error (usually a lot of error) and that the most important thing you can ever do for yourself is to take the leap. It takes a lot of bravery, but if Laurie can do it (and if I can do it) then you can too.
***
Interview by Spencer Miller