In January 2024 I finished the novel Fagan. I had a bunch of people read it, and everyone loved it (there's a first time for everything). Then came the slog.
Being an author isn't really about writing books. Of course, that's the first part. And the temptation to type "The End" and then send it to every Tom, Dick or Harriet you can find on query manager is worse than trying to walk past a chocolate hobnob without stealing it.
But I wanted a different path for Fagan. And boy did I get it. I spent a year — in between querying some specific peeps — honing, rewriting, rethinking, and re-establishing the timelines.
The Time-Travel Problem
Writing a time-travel novel comes with its own challenges. It got quite confusing, trying to determine how far ahead I was in the progressive base-time through the story, but the more I worked on it, the more ideas came to me. The more paradoxical it became — and I'm truly proud that this is one of those novels that you'll read a second time and there'll be a shed load of forehead slapping and the occasional "f*ck me sideways" emanating from what I'm sure is a usually demure mouth. *cough*
With each iteration I had an opportunity to call back to the past, or set the characters up for a future event. And it wasn't even about making it more complex. Far from it. There are conversations that Fagan has with Mason that won't immediately matter during the first read. The second time around your head will explode — if you do the mime correctly. Don't let me down.
The Name Problem
Then came the biggest change. One of my most trusted beta readers had emailed me waxing lyrical about the book, but started the email with "I finally got around to reading Fagan. Sorry it took me a while, but the name made me think it was some god-awful Dickens reboot" — followed by sixteen paragraphs of why this book was my best yet.
Initially, I ignored the comment, doing that thing that authors are predisposed to do — ignore the criticism and bathe in the glory of their fan mail. (This is a joke. I don't get fan mail.)
But a year later, with an offer on the table from Big Thinking Publishing and several similar comments about the name of the book, it was time to swallow my pride and do something about it. I really wanted a working title, and had recently rewritten an argument between Mason, Alex and Katie fairly late on in the book. It was here that I'd written the line:
"We might as well hand back their ashes through the hourglass."
I mulled it over for about twelve-billionths of a nano-second and spent the next four hours updating the title, blurbs, and all of the formatting files on Word, Scrivener, Vellum et cetera.
Why This Book Is Different
Ashes Through the Hourglass has been an extraordinary journey. I am not predisposed to patience, so having to wait two-and-a-half years to publish the book that I am more proud of than any other has been torturous.
There are so many factors that made this book special for me to write. I wanted to set the scene where I grew up, to mentally re-walk the streets of my childhood. This was as much a walk down memory lane as it was an exciting premise, with twists galore and at least one sarcastic use of the word "tits".
Chessington was my home until I turned 30 and fled to the Shires. There is a special place in my heart for all the places I lived while I was there — North Parade, Ripon Gardens, Mount Road, Bolton Close, Hook Parade, Somerset Avenue, and my final home on Leatherhead Road, where I experienced the true joy of being awakened by the sound of sea lions, peacocks and actual lions at the crack of dawn.
Ashes Through The Hourglass is a story about grief and second chances, and writing it was my second chance at a childhood, through Mason Winward — my mini-me in print.
I'm more nervous of the launch than I can possibly articulate, and pressing "go" on the countdown clock on my website has me giddy with excitement. I'm waffling now. You should just read it. Please.
Ta.
— Danny