Although Timely Persuasion has a science fiction premise, I really wanted to ground the story in reality as much as possible outside of the time travel. Thus I knew I wanted to send the narrator back to save Kurt Cobain, but I also knew that his mission would ultimately have to fail. The physics of…
Category: Behind the Scenes
Commentary 4: Four Hours In Washington
Going back in time to save Kurt Cobain was one of the first inspirations I had while brainstorming. This chapter sends the narrator to Seattle with this goal in mind, while the underlying narrative purpose is really to flesh out his musical background and further along his time travel discovery process. It’s a sort of…
Commentary 3: Gimme Three Steps
This is the first of many introspective/exploratory chapters where the narrator is trying to piece together exactly what is happening to him. High on stream of consciousness, low on dialogue. I’ve always hated writing dialogue, which is probably one of the many reasons I abandoned my screenwriting training and wrote a novel instead. Most of…
Commentary 2: Two Of Us
A bowling league felt like a neat place to kick off the journey and was a setting I hadn’t seen explored in literature before. It also allowed me to include a few nods to bowlers and teams I had encountered over the course of my short semi-recreational league bowling career. Once Bowlingus got his nickname…
Commentary 1: One
While the prologue seemed to write itself in a single sitting, I was at a loss for how to kick off the first real chapter. Two paragraphs in and I was already at my first roadblock. How would I ever write an entire novel? It was then that I got some help from my younger…
Commentary: Prologue
Ok. Here’s the long awaited debut of the chapter by chapter commentary posts. Let me start at the start, then take it away… Once I decided to write a time travel novel, the first idea to be brainstormed was a character going back in time to save his relationship with the one that got away….
Origin Story
Back from my trip and ready to kick off the series of behind the scenes and commentary posts. But before we go chapter by chapter, it feels like a little more detail on the origins of the project would be appropriate. I alluded to the “Maybe I’ll write a book” quote in the first post. …