fuonlyknew

Q1: How did you do research for your book?

A1: I lived it instead of researching it!  Almost everything in the book came from some part of my personal experience.  I rode a motorcycle for years and rode the same roads David does—in fact, several experiences he has are ones that I had.  I went to Cornell and knew students in the school of architecture, so I put in memories from there.  I was a lobbyist in Washington for a long time, so I took experiences and acquaintances and blended them into episodes and characters.

Q2: Which was the hardest character to write? The easiest?

A2: David was the hardest character.  He was because his power makes him exaggerated beyond normal and this calls for a leap into the unknown: What would he do in this circumstance?  How would he react?  The easiest was the office assistant, Stacey.  She is normal but experiencing David’s abnormal; I just had to put myself into her shoes.

Q3: What made you write a book about stopping time?

A3: My daughter started me on the path.  Very unknowingly, of course.  When she was very young, we had these great conversations about the most random things.  One was about what our preferred superpower would be.  We went back and forth, and I stumbled onto this one as we stretched our list.  It intrigued me, and I just kept developing it and applying the premise to things around me.

Q4: Where do you get inspiration for your stories?

A4: From life as much as practical.  Things I experience, mostly.  Sometimes from things I read, but I would rather experience something directly.  I think if you are going to make a copy of something (and that is what writing is to me: making a copy of something in words), then you will get a clearer image from an original than from someone else’s copy.

Q5: There are many books out there about manipulating time…. What makes yours different?

A5: While there are many about manipulating time, these usually involve traveling through it; mine is about standing still in it.  Time travel is such a natural draw; when we encounter old buildings, we all want to travel back to their heyday.  The more I thought about travel through time, the more the idea of stopping it altogether intrigued me.

Q6: What advice would you give budding writers?

A6: Think, analyze, write: All the time!  I used to know an English doctoral student when I was in college in Chicago.  He confessed to me one day that he edited everything in his mind, right down to the writing on his shampoo bottle!  I thought this unusual at the time, but as I continue to get more into writing, I know exactly what he meant… because I do exactly the same thing.  The point is: never turn your mind off.  The more you think, the more fodder you create; the more you create, the more likely you are to stumble onto something worth developing.