Chasing Halley

 

A MEMOIR BY EDDIE LAU

 

 

 

In 1986, I chose sleep over Halley’s Comet. It took cancer, an autistic son who speaks in rolled napkins, and forty years of chasing the wrong light to finally wake up.

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ABOUT EDDIE

 

The Book

 

Chasing Halley   |   59,000 words

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Genre: Literary Memoir

Status: Seeking representation

About the Book

 

In 1986, eight-year-old Eddie Lau’s father tried to wake him to see Halley’s Comet from his grandfather’s house in Malaysia. Eddie looked up for three seconds, saw nothing worth losing sleep over, and went back to bed.

Forty years later, diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer at forty-seven, Eddie is finally awake. Chasing Halleytraces three generations of a Malaysian-Chinese family through the lens of a comet that returns every seventy-six years.

At the memoir’s center is Nathan, Eddie’s eleven-year-old son, diagnosed with Level 3 autism and largely nonverbal. For years, Nathan has rolled napkins into white cylinders and traced arcs through the air. Eddie didn’t understand what his son was making until he was dying: comet tails.

The Three Acts

 

Act I: The Seduction (1986–2010)
A boy in Malaysia misses a comet and spends the next decade chasing American dreams to prove he has curiosity after all.

Act II: The Enslavement (2010–2025)
The empire of properties, contracts, and credentials grows while the man inside it shrinks. His son is born silent.

Act III: The Liberation (2025–Present)
Poison becomes clarity. His son becomes his teacher. A comet waiting 36 years away becomes the only deadline that matters.

 

About Eddie Lau 

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The professional story: 

Eddie Lau is a Malaysian-Chinese American writer based in Lafayette, Louisiana. He holds a Doctor of Education and spent nineteen years in corporate learning and development before a cancer diagnosis reordered his priorities. Chasing Halley is his first book.

 

 The human story:

I came to America in 1996 with three distinctions on my SPM results and my family’s expectation that the eldest son would make good on their sacrifice. I spent two decades doing exactly that—degrees, properties, contracts—while sleeping through everything that mattered. My son Nathan, who doesn’t speak the way the world expects, taught me what my father tried to teach me at eight: some light is worth staying awake for.

 

 

The Story Behind the Memoir

In 1986, my father pulled me from bed to see Halley’s Comet from my grandfather’s house in Malaysia. I looked up for three seconds, saw nothing worth staying awake for, and went back to bed. His words followed me for forty years: mei you hao qi xin—the boy lacks the heart for wondering.

Chasing Halley is the story of three generations of Lau men watching the same comet return every seventy-six years—and what it takes to finally look up.

 

Get In Touch 

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For literary representation inquiries or all other correspondence:


 

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