BOOKS

What are you reading at the moment?

A Spot of Time-Travelling has taken my fancy...

Last year I was lucky enough to see new writer Kaliane Bradley at Wimbledon BookFest, talking about her debut novel THE MINISTRY OF TIME. I quickly devoured the book and would recommend you do the same. It was, quite simply, unlike any other time-travel book I had encountered.

It details a government employee in the newly established time-travel department, whose job it is to look after the 'expats' or time travellers, all of whom have been plucked from history, moments before their own deaths (and thus unable to change the outcome of our present). Matters are complicated when some subjects can't assimilate into our time (they stop showing up on airport scanners for example) or they fall in love with their handlers...or any number of other things that you just wouldn't think about if you weren't Kaliane Bradley! 'This is how time-travel books should be done', I decided.

But, of course, there are many ways you can write about time travel and do it well, as I have discovered this year having been gifted a couple of Jodi Taylor's wonderful THE CHRONICLES OF ST MARY'S books.

Here is a completely different take on the notion of time travel...except it's not really time-travel as they are historians, able to go back to different periods of history to document events (and occasionally bring the odd thing back with them). What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything....otherwise you wouldn't have a series of (at present) 14 books!

Start at the beginning with JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER and see what it takes to be a time-warping history buff, then I'm pretty sure you, like me will be hooked!

What are you writing at the moment?

A few years ago the idea for a children's adventure series was born and, like with all new projects, for a while it took over my life. Today, story lines have been plotted out for books three and four, even though the second book is still only in its early draft stages.

The first book, Bell and Ash in The Curse of Thaddeus Drake, was shortlisted for the Wells 2020 Book For Children.

More recently, I have been working on a fictionalised adult memoir dealing with, amongst other things, the not-so-cheery subjects of parental ill-health, dementia and death. It has more laughs than you might expect, given the subject matter, but I felt that with so many of us now facing this situation, it was a story I very much wanted to tell. Here's hoping that it resonates with plenty of would-be readers.

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