The weather's become much colder, with freezing temperatures as I walk my kids to school. On a sunny winter's day (which I'll admit is rare where I live), the view of daybreak peircing the mist that rises from the fields near my home, as we walk, is sometimes enough to make you believe in magic! Almost enough to ignore the cold penetrating your boots, gloves, jacket, etc.

Rather than bore you with word counts as I work my way to the end of Past Mistakes, I thought I'd mention the project that will most likely follow the conclusion of this book, and that's called Erasure, and it involves time travel.

If you haven't read the first instalment of Past Mistakes, what are you waiting for? It's over here.

Time Travel Complexities, Movies and Series

For many years, I didn't enjoy novels that used time travel as a mechanism. The reason was most often that I found they fell into two camps, neither of which I liked.

Either they weren't internally consistent. That is to say that their interpretation of time travel and its consequences made no sense, and seemed to warp and change to whatever the story required. This is like "soft" science fiction stories where physical impossibilities are explained away without any effort at internal consistency, or fantasy stories where the magic system is not properly explained and seems made up as the story develops.

Or... they were overly developed, like a science project, and the time travel aspect of the novel took precedence over characters, story or other aspects of world-building. To figure out what the author was on about, you needed a three-dimensional diagram plotting overlapping timelines.

That said, there are a number of excellent time-travel stories out there. The recent tour-de-force is Christopher Nolan's Tenet, which is great, but definitely needs to be watched multiple times to understand what on earth is going on. He's kind of in the second category, but such a great storyteller and director that he makes it work anyway.

Another is Predestination, which is a little dated but has a neat trick in its construction. Then you have the recent TV series The Peripheral, which isn't time travel per se, but plays with many of the same concepts. Finally, one of my favourite feel-good movies is About Time, although it's very British, so I don't know how it plays to an American audience.

No. The Adam Project doesn't make the list. Much as I love the humor of Ryan Reynolds, it's not (at least in my opinion) a great example of creative use of time travel in storytelling. Fun to watch, but doesn't really leave a mark.

Erasure - My Approach

My next project is called Erasure (let's say that's a working title), and it's about a man who goes back in time to kill someone, in a deliberate attempt to alter the timeline because he cannot accept how things have turned out.

But in my version of Time Travel, you don't have a "many worlds" theory where going back in time results in a new timeline, making everything in the original timeline irrelevant (because nothing you do after you travel through time will affect those other versions of the people you know).

In my conception of it, if you travel back in time, everything you do has consequences on the future of everyone you know. I think actions have consequences is an important starting point for most stories.

In addition, travelling back in time is very dangerous, painful and usually fatal, so you have to have a very compelling reason to go to be willing to put yourself through that. It's also very illegal, given the consequences on the future of people messing with even the most trivial causal events in the past, so it's hard to do.

Cue the opening scene of my book. A man appears in the middle of a road in northern England, in a forest, at night, having travelled from the future. He knows that this has most likely cost him his life, but it's a trade he was willing to make. He's very damaged by his journey, suffering from radiation poisoning and massive disorientation. What's his reason? What are his intentions? How did he manage to find someone to send him back in time? Who does he want to kill?

The book will follow the events before he travelled, and the events after he arrives, in parallel... and that's as much as I'm willing to tell you right now. But I'm quite happy with the way it's shaping up. Above is a little concept art for the opening scene.

Don't worry, it's on hold until Past Mistakes is completed.

Recommended Read

Every newsletter provides at least one recommended read, and this edition I'd like to suggest try the work of Nicholas Woode-Smith.

I didn't reach out to Nicholas for a swap by accident. When I sent out the first three chapters of Past Mistakes to a group of readers, two people provided feedback that if you liked the Kat Drummond series by Nicholas Woode-Smith, my book was likely to appeal to you. If it works in that direction, it most likely works in the other direction too, so if you liked the premise of Past Mistakes, you're likely to enjoy this prequel...

Soul Bound by Nicholas Woode-Smith

If there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s the undead.

So, just my luck that I’ve got a ghost living rent-free inside my head…

When I was just a kid, my parents were sacrificed by a necromancer. I survived. Barely.

But, the ordeal left me hating two things – necromancers and the undead they bring into the world.

Fast forward years later and I’ve been possessed by a ghost! But, Treth of Concord isn’t just any ordinary ghost. He’s proud, chivalrous and a knight from another world.

Now, with his counsel and some cheap swords I bought on the internet, I hunt the undead of Hope City. For honour, for vengeance, and maybe just a hefty bounty.

Click Here to Download "Soul Bound"

And now I must leave you. I got up at 4am this morning and it's not doing wonders for my concentration.

See you in two weeks.

Nick.

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