Today, my author buddy, JL Peridot, is visiting to talk about her latest book, which I had the pleasure of beta reading (my review is below!!). Let’s get started with the questions…
What kind of research did you do for Until We Met Again?
I’ve enjoyed a lot of time travel fiction over the years, so when this idea first came up, I figured I could get away with writing what I already knew, something like Back to the Future where we have a light-hearted adventure while playing with timeline continuity. But very early into the first draft, it became apparent that Until We Met Again would be a very different kind of story, and my appreciation for fictional time travel just wouldn’t cut it.
Then, at the suggestion of a friend, I picked up Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, an easy-to-digest explanation of space, time, relativity and quantum mechanics. I’m not writing hard SF, but still needed to think about time travel in a broader way. Along with this bit of non-fiction, I also drew inspiration from Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War, and other stories that explore time, consciousness and agency in different ways.
Interesting. It sounds like you’ve done some heavy reading to prepare for this book. Do any of your characters take over and write the book themselves?
Not exactly, but there were things that happened along the way. For one, this novelette began as a piece intended for an anthology (you can read more about this bit on my blog), which got cancelled at the eleventh hour when we lost contact with one of the authors. One day, we just stopped hearing from them and haven’t heard from them since. Several months before, when I was about two-thirds of the way through the draft, there was a death in my family and for a while my days were saturated in figuring out how to cope with the new normal.
Both are uncanny coincidences when writing something that deals with people suddenly disappearing from your life. For all the fantasy fiction contained in this book, there are some very real feelings threaded in there too.
Sometimes, it’s hard to separate real life from our stories, so the best thing to do is include our feelings in the narrative. In my opinion, it makes the story so much stronger. What do you prefer: ebook, print, or audiobook? Why?
If you’d asked me ten years ago, I would’ve told you ebooks, hands down. They don’t collect dust, they’re easy to take when I travel or move house. Once upon a time, they sparked some measure of joy, but this diminished over the years as I learned more about the implications on user privacy, the ‘technopolising’ impacts of digital rights management, and the environmental concerns around data storage.
One day, I picked up a paperback again after many years of digital-only reading. It was like coming home to a warm blanket and bowl of soup. Holding a block of curated papers in my hands has a comforting effect and helps me focus better. The only trouble with print books is that they’re not particularly accessible, especially on a bad eye day or if I’m out with a small handbag (RIP mass market print sizes). This led me to picking up audiobooks after many years of just not being interested in them.
And here we come full circle. As a bonus, I figured out how to use the screen reader that comes with my devices so I can still have books read to me when there’s no audiobook available. My life is now a balance of all three ways to read lovely stories, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Oh, yes. It’s a hard choice to make. Ebook, paperback, and audio all have good points and bad. Any advice for the aspiring authors out there? Particularly those who are feeling a little discouraged?
For whatever reason, the indie authoring world is full of ‘shoulds’ – how you should write, what you should write, how you should market yourself, what you should do to connect with readers. It’s too easy to lose sight of yourself and what your craft means to you (because writing is very much a craft) when surrounded by all that noise, and then get discouraged about falling short of some arbitrary standard.
In my experience, the best place to start is exactly where you are. Get to know your voice, your style, what excites you about writing, and what challenges fire you up and make you feel purposeful. Then build out from there: make friends, make small bets, take whatever action you can to sustain yourself until you reach your next goal. In the early stages of a career, money is a nice marker, but not the only one, so let it be just one factor of your success, not how you define yourself as a writer.
Well said. I think beginners and authors who have been at the game for a while need to understand that. Besides writing and reading, what are some of your hobbies?
Sewing and crochet come to mind, because Until We Met Again has just come out. I’m convinced that threading thousands of stitches together (aka. messing up sooooo many sewing projects) primed my brain for thinking about time travel in the way this book needed. I’m also a bit of a plant nerd, trying to incorporate more solarpunk principles into my life.
Wonderful! Thank you so much for coming by, JL. It’s been a blast talking with you!
Until We Met Again by JL Peridot
A time traveller absconds to the past in search of her lost love.
One word: my name. A call from Origin through the neural lace grafted to my brain and nerves, connecting me to another place in another time. A reminder of what I’m here to do.
I clutch a bottle cap; its sharp metal edges ground me in the present. It’s funny, don’t you think, to consider this moment the present, as if the past and future I came from aren’t supposed to exist? If you were here, I’d ask. You’d smile and kiss my forehead and say you love my nonsense questions.
But you’re not here. They want me to forget you ever were.
Available now at most e-book retailers.
Amber’s Book Review
Qing lives in a futuristic dystopian world and works for an organization that is trying to change the past, present, and future by time-traveling to different points in time to make little changes here and there to create a better future. She is a Lacer, one of the brave individuals who hop through time, and she is mourning the loss of the man she loves, who was erased from existence when something was changed in the past. Now, she’s looking for him through all of space and time, never knowing if or when she might find him again.
Until We Meet Again is a fascinating tale of endurance, lost love, and hope. It’s completely different from any time-travel romance I’ve read before. Even though the narrative is in 2nd person, it flows well and pulls you in. I felt connected with Qing and was hoping right along with her that she would find the happiness she seeks. This book makes you think about how time-travel could be possible and how life could change for the better or worse, depending on who had control of that technology.
For readers who enjoy speculative fiction with twists and turns, Until We Meet Again is something you should consider checking out.
5 Stars
About JL Peridot
JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices from the past. She’s a qualified computer scientist, former website maker, amateur horticulturist, and sometimes illustrator. But most of the time, she’s an author of romantic science fiction. She lives with her partner and fur-family in Boorloo (Perth, Australia) on Whadjuk Noongar country.
Visit her website at jlperidot.com for the full catalogue of her work.