Secondhand Daylight

I've previously written about how the writer Eugen Bacon came to know my fiction and vice versa in this blog post about a short story, "Messier 94", that we collaborated on which was published last year. Following the writing of that piece, Eugen had suggested we work together on something longer, a novel or a novella. I parked that idea for a moment - we were both busy - until one early morning cycling before work along Marriott's Way in Norwich the sunlight was channeled through the trees to the extent that it both illuminated but also obliterated the surroundings.

"Secondhand Daylight" is the second studio album by Magazine. It's also my favourite record of theirs. Released in 1979 it's lyrical and rough. A real intelligent delight. I'd considered using the title for a novel a few years earlier, but it came to nothing. I no longer remember what that original idea was, but I had one now -- the full structure manifesting itself in my head.

Somewhere else

Something else

On my mind

It was the 5th August, 2021. I emailed Eugen that evening:

"We each begin with one character. Mine in the story’s past, yours in the future. My character senses that he is time travelling forwards (of course, we all do this, but he will do it faster). It’s a natural organic process – no machine. It happens to him without control, subtle changes.

 

"However, in your future, my character is seen as an innovator of time travel because he was the first to appear from the past into the future, but no one knows how it has been done. In your future, people can only time travel back to the past. Your character is sent into the past to investigate how I’ve done it.

 

"My character’s arc will therefore go from past to future, yours from future to past. They will meet at the middle point – but only a glance of recognition (if you’ve seen the film “The Double Life Of Veronique” by Krzysztof Kieślowski you’ll have an idea of how intangible I’d prefer that meeting to be). No more than a puzzlement. Once they’ve made this brief connection, my character continues travelling into the future and yours into the past, realising that mine had no special machine (I sense a feeling of disappointment here as yours won’t be able to return ‘home’) until they each reach the other’s starting point."

Eugen responded quickly:

"Gollygum, I don't know I understand it all, but I certainly get your enthusiasm!"

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Somewhere here

Someplace other

on my mind 

My original idea was for me to wholly write 'my' character, Green, and for Eugen to write 'Zada'. I even had this intention: "Thinking of structure, I was considering alternate chapters, but then that would disrupt the story too much, so how about something radical. My story runs linear forwards through the book, but if you turn the book the other way around and upsidedown your story runs parallel backwards. i.e: the book can be read in either direction depending on which way the book is held and the reader has a choice of which to read first."

However, what this translated into was neither of us having the right impetus to begin the story. It wasn't until mid-January 2022 when time spent on other projects was cleared that we agreed to write as we had done with "Messier 94", in alternative scenes, following on from each other, getting into a roll with it until the story could properly start to snowball. A first draft was written by the end of March. Looking back, I'm amazed it was only two months. Whilst this is a short novel, 50,000 words, it's intense. Subsequent edits honed it, defined the right pace, took out some of the introspection and made it more relatable. We even changed the entire POV from third person to first for Green's section. It gave it a new dynamic.

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Somewhere there

Someone other

on my mind 

No doubt there'll be subsequent blog posts from both Eugen and me as the book nears publication. I don't want to go into too much detail yet, save to say that this is where it all began and that the structure I envisaged when I proposed the book to Eugen is intact. There are two journeys here, two stories, one ending.

So, why posting this now? Because yesterday we signed a contract with Cosmic Egg Books, the Speculative Fiction arm of John Hunt Publishing, newly acquired by Watkins Media, owners of Angry Robot Books. "Secondhand Daylight" is coming...