Interview With Graham Austin Dix

 

  

 

1.           What inspired you to write this book?  I love time travel stories.  My favourite is probably Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time-Traveller’s Wife, where time travel is shown more as a disability, than as a cool superpower.  I wanted to find an original form of time travel and came up with two people who share the same soul. Of course, there have been body swap books and films before, but as far as I am aware, not across time and space.   I have always been fascinated by tales of reincarnation. Not being religious, I wondered whether there might be a scientific explanation for why so many people claim to remember past lives. I love books about physics and cosmology. Putting these together, I realised that one possible explanation might be quantum entanglement. Out of that mix came Our Future Selves, a body-swap love story across two centuries and two continents. 

  

2.            What exactly is it about and who is it written for?  It tells the story of Zak Emblin, a comedian from Birmingham, England in the present day and Sarah Templeman, a prison service doctor from 22nd century New Palm Springs, USA, who are connected across time by a shared soul. From childhood onwards they inexplicably find themselves in each other’s bodies. We experience with them the obstacles they have to overcome, every day, because of this condition, such as finding you now have breasts or a penis and the reflection you see looking back at you from the mirror is someone you don’t know. Or not being believed by anyone. That’s where the third main character, Carmen Fry comes in. She is a brilliant young quantum physicist researching reincarnation stories to support her theory that recent discoveries in quantum entanglement might provide an explanation. She meets Zak, and through him, Sarah. She believes them and uses their case in her research. A tight bond develops between Zak, Carmen and Sarah because they are the only three people in the world (they think) who know the truth about reincarnation. A unique love triangle develops.  Word gets out to the world’s media about Carmen’s research.  She, Zak and Sarah face persecution until a mysterious US government department steps in to ‘help’ them.  This book is written for curious people.  If you do not accept the world around you at face value and often find yourself wondering ‘what if?’ then this book is for you. Time travel fans and those fascinated by reincarnation will engage with this story, but it can also be read as a straight romance or political thriller. 

  

3.            What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?  An adventure. A thrilling journey. Perhaps enlightenment. I hope they will come away from it asking questions. 

  

4.            How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?  The cover was not easy, but I am really pleased with it. I needed an image to get across the idea of two people who are closer to each other than the rest of us can ever be, because they have intimate knowledge of each other’s thoughts and bodies.  Yet at the same time, they can never meet, because when Zak is in Sarah’s body, she is in his. This concept also needed to be captured on the cover. I can’t draw, so I sketched out the idea to the publisher’s illustrator and between us we came up with a cover which, judging from feedback, works really well.  The title was harder.  An earlier online version of the novel, which has since been substantially revised, was called Future Echoes.  But this is inaccurate. In Our Future Selves, Sarah is not an echo of someone else, but a fully rounded individual. So, I changed it to Our Future Selves which is more optimistic, while still hinting at time travel. The ‘Selves’ is a hint that any of us might, like Zak and Sarah, share a soul with someone. 

  

5.            What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?   

Keep writing.  It is better to be writing rubbish sometimes than to not be writing at all and risk losing the habit.  The more you write the better you will get and the more ideas you will have.  

  

6.            What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? More people writing, which is good.  More people reading, which is better.  On the negative side, I see an increased (linked) threat from plagiarism and AI generated content. 

  

7.            Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? Absolutely.  I have used my own experience of being bullied at school for Zak’s far worse torments.  And he deals with it much better than I did, so writing this section was cathartic for me.  And the evil Commander Eleanor Levy is a mash-up of all the bad managers I had to deal with during my career as a librarian. (In case any of my former library bosses read this, I should point out that there were some good ones, too!). 

  

8.            How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to?  All of us writers like to think that we have our own style!  However, thematically, I am influenced by Philip K Dick (The Adjustment Team, Minority Report), Andy Weir (The Martian) and David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas). For character development, dialog and corrupt authority figures I try to channel my inner John Grisham.  For short, digestible chapters, I am influenced by Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife and Helen Fitzgerald’s The Cry. 

 

9.             What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?  In the first few years of writing, I was still working full-time in a university library. Finding time to write at all was difficult during this period.  Staying on top of the chronology was a self-inflicted challenge. One of the novel’s themes is the uncertainty of the concepts of past and future. In keeping with this idea, I decided not to present events to the reader in the order in which they happened.  To achieve this, I had to create a timeline in my notes to make sure that events which caused other events did not take place after those events. 

  

10.        If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?  Where else would you get a body-swap triumph-over-adversity tale; time travel; a love triangle romance; a quantum entanglement explanation for reincarnation; and original stand-up comedy routines, all in one place?  Or because this book will make you “challenge the nature of reality”, as one reviewer put it. 

 

About The Author: I write science fiction novels and children's picture books. One of each has so far been published, Our Future Selves and Dan the Lollipop Man.  Writing has always been my vocation, but I have also had a career as a Librarian and studied languages. I speak Russian, German and French.  My brother and I were brought up as twins, but we later discovered that we were really triplets.  I hope to write a novel one day (Third Twin?) about our lost sibling, who did not survive childbirth, and what might have happened to them, had they lived.  I love Cosmology, classical music, rock music, football (soccer) and comedy (particularly puns). You can find more on Instagram: @dix.graham

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Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 4,900+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.