I’ve mentioned before, I think, that one of the surprises of having a book published is the number of times you have to read it through. I don’t mean all those times you read it through as you’re writing it, to make sure that final draft is as fluent and coherent as possible, but all the time after the contract is signed. You work on the book for months with editors of one flavour or another, reading and re-reading, changing, tweaking, polishing, and re-reading yet again. By the time the proofs arrive, you may have read the book a dozen times, and then you’re doing it again, very, very carefully. But, at last, it goes out to the world and you think you will never have to read that book again.

I don’t suppose I’ve ever re-read any book half so often as I have re-read TimeSplash. Each of the Austen novels may have had three or four goes through, some Shakespeare plays may have had five or six goes, and I can’t think of a single sci-fi novel that I’ve read more than three times.

Yet, when I sold the audio and print rights to TimeSplash to a different publisher, it all started again. I had to read it through for Emma (who reads the book in the audio version) looking for foreign words and names and recording how I think they should be pronounced, then I had to listen to it, chapter by chapter, as Emma recorded it, looking for technical problems and speakos (the speech equivalent of a typo). Then I had another opportunity to edit it for the print version, so another careful read-through, and now I have the print proofs before me and I have to read it very, very carefully, yet again.

What am I up to? Fifteen re-reads and a listen? Since the book was signed to a publisher!

I think that’s enough, don’t you? It’s time somebody else read it.

It would be natural to assume I hate the sight of TimeSplash by now, that every time I go near it I start to sweat and tremble in dread. In fact, I have been very pleasantly surprised that the book is still readable even after all those many times. And I think that is for two reasons. One is that I actually like my own writing. There are still passages in TimeSplash that I really enjoy reading, that still touch me, or amuse me. After a lifetime of writing, you’d hope you would have found a voice you like, wouldn’t you? I really enjoyed writing TimeSplash and I really liked my protagonists. I still feel that enjoyment coming through in the text. It’s probably narcissism, I suppose, but I’m very glad that I didn’t write the book to suit anyone else but myself, because by now I’d be certifiable after re-reading it so often.

The other reason I can still get something out of my sixteenth time through is because of the world I built for the book. I’m very meticulous about world-building. I do masses of research and I work through all the details of every social, political and technological invention I make to ensure that the whole has coherence and integrity. Now, when I read it, a word or phrase will remind me of that background work, most of it probably invisible to the reader. I note the size and power output of F2 generators, I note the titles of police and security officers, and the structures and procedures of the organisations they work for, with great satisfaction, knowing they are right. Silly things really, intended to add rich texture to the world and create a feeling of reality for the reader, but some of them have helped keep me engaged – and sane – through the sixth, tenth, twelfth re-readings.

And the good news is, I’ll finish the proof reading today! Another milestone passed as TimeSplash heads into print.

Again, I owe thanks to the wonderful Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn for showing an interest in TimeSplash, my time travel thriller, and in me and what I’m learning about publishing and promoting my first novel. This time it’s because I had the considerable good fortune to be interviewed by Joanna for her fascinating podcast series. You can find the podcast of the interview here:

Podcast: First Time Novel Publishing Experience With Graham Storrs

I’m beginning to see why Joanna’s podcast series is so popular. You can pack an awful lot of information into 30 minutes of conversation and, with a skilled interviewer, like Joanna, and a garrulous interviewee, like me, you can cover a lot of ground.

So, if you’re a newbie writer, or someone who feels they are taking forever to break into publication (like I did) you might find something interesting in there; about what publishers want, how to balance writing with publicising your book, what networking is all about, what agents and publishers need from aspiring writers, and many other topics we covered.

You might even hear something about TimeSplash.

At first, it seemed far, far away in the future. Then it began and seemed to go on forever. Now it is over and it feels just like yesterday. The TimeSplash Virtual Book Tour has come to an end with a spectacular 6 part wrap-up interview with Andy Shackcloth. And, now it is done, I’d like to say the most huge thankyou possible to all those amazing and kind people who hosted me during March and April. It clearly was not possible at all without the generous support of them all. So let me list them, one more time, in blog tour order:

To see the actual posts, visit the Blog Tour page which has all the links to all the posts.

I had a lot of fun with this – far more than I expected – and I hope you guys got something out of it too. Thanks to everyone who followed the tour and visited all my great hosts. I would be fascinated to hear what you thought worked well and what didn’t, any thoughts you might have on how the tour was set up or executed, and especially if anything in the tour inspired anybody to buy a copy of the book.

When Janette Dalgliesh, my blog tour host for today, asked me to do a piece about ‘turning points’, I knew exactly which particular one she had in mind. However, on reflection, even in just the writerly side of my life, there have been so many. Mostly they have stemmed from decisions I have made that have spurned or deferred the idea of writing for a living, or of attempting publication. The decisions began early and kept coming throughout my life.

I didn’t always see them for what they were at the time, but hindsight is wonderful at cutting through the haze that surrounds us in the present. It would be easy to regret choosing so much else instead of choosing to write, but what would be the point? Given what I knew and what I valued, I made the best decisions I could. Given the very good place in which I find myself, who is to say I could possibly have made better decisions?

So thanks to Janette for provoking all this reflection. It is far too easy to avoid taking the time to pause and look back.

In researching times and places for the scenes in TimeSplash, I found the Web immensely valuable. I knew most of the places quite well already, but only in the present. The past and the future were another matter. I’ll leave the telling of how I developed future settings for another post. Here I want to talk about a few pictures which were key to helping me visualise the past. You have probably seen some of them already. They all appear in the header of this blog and change at random each time you visit (so, to see them all, you’ll have to keep visiting – or at least refreshing the page!)

For the book, each of these pictures (and many others!) helped me visualise scenes for a trip back in time to London in 1902.

The Round Reading Room at the British Museum

The Round Reading Room at the British Museum

This is actually a modern photo (from 2006) but it shows the spectacular dome and the way the shelves wrap around the interior. Nothing much has changed in the past century except for the installation of all those computers! This is a beautiful building and must have impressed the socks off visitors at the time – as it does now.

Cannon Street Train Station, London

Cannon Street Station, London, 1910

This picture is from a postcard from 1910 and shows the stastion as you would see it on your approach over the railway bridge (which crosses the Thames). You can also see the red and green liveried engines of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway – the company that was operating that particular line in 1902. The brownness of everything – including the glass archway over the platforms – is not some kind of ageing or sepia effect. Even in my own childhood, I remember the major railway stations being furred with a dark brown muck from the steam engines.

A Hansom Cab

A hansom cab in Melbourne

This is one of the clearest pictures of a hansom cab I could find. Unfortunately, it is from Melbourne, not London, and the cabbie looks nothing like a typical London cabbie of 1902! The hansom cab was invented in the 1830s and didn’t go out of use until nearly a hundred years later, when the car took over.

Street Scene: Charring Cross Road, London

Charring Cross Rd, 1902

Another postcard, this time of a street scene in London in 1902. Note the omnibus and the hansom cab behind it. Also note the hats the men are wearing – toppers and bowlers as far as the eye can see!

Street Scene: Outside Harrods, London

Harrods, London, 1909

Fashions were changing quite rapidly at the turn of the Twentieth Century but this rather elegant crowd from 1909 were not dressed too differently from the way a similar crowd would have dressed seven years earlier. The ladies’ hats and hairstyles were much the same as were the gentlemen’s hats and suits. Note the car. Although still quite uncommon at the time, it is quite appropriate to this setting.

Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 1895

Lenin (then called Ulyanov) was arrested in December 1895 and what you see above is his police mug-shot from that event. He was 25 and about to spend 14 months in solitary confinement, but it’s hard to see that in his face. He looks very collected, but, I tell myself, there is a seething anger and huge disdain just below the surface of his expression. I learnt a lot about Lenin in researching TimeSplash but used almost none of it. When he appears in the book, it is six years after this photo, he has served his prison sentence, been exiled to Siberia, married, and begun a life of wandering around the European capitals. 1902 was the year he adopted the name “Lenin”, moved to London, and for the first time visited the Round Reading Room at the British Museum.

Steam Engine Backplate

Steam engine boiler backplate

This is the boiler backplate of the West Country class steam engine No. 21C123 Blackmoor Vale. It is a much more recent model than the engines you see in the picture of Cannon St station above, but very much the same, technically, and I wanted to show the mess of valves and gauges you find in the cab of a steam engine. When I was a child, there were still steam engines running in the UK and I loved them. I loved train stations and shunting yards too and spent a lot of time in such places.