Alain Chancé is a co-author on Quantum Chemistry and Computing for the Curious with Keeper L. Sharkey. We got the chance to find out about his author journey and experience of writing with Packt. Find below:
Q: What are your specialist tech area(s)?
Alain: Quantum chemistry and computing
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Alain: I accepted the opportunity that the lead author gave me to be her co-author.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Alain: I had sufficient knowledge and experience particularly with Qiskit to be a co-author.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Alain: Working with the lead author who is eight hours behind my time zone.
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Alain: Read the book and chapter 6, Beyond Born-Oppenheimer. It is a spoiler to answer this question.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Alain: You can run your own experiments with the companion Jupyter notebooks.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Alain: A new understanding of the need for accuracy in quantum chemistry calculations.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Alain: You have to make your own journey.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Alain: Not yet.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Alain: Twitter, Qiskit slack
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Alain: Eventful. Yes.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Alain: Phys.org, Nature
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Alain: Yes
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Alain: Regular conference calls with the lead-author.
Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Alain: Be yourself.
You can find Alain and Keeper’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here.