It’s all in my head. I think…

For someone who creates stories about time travel, I’m actually a very chronological writer. I start on page one, then keep plodding across the keyboard until it’s time to write ‘the end’. Not for me that final chapter written years in advance and then lost on a coffee-dunked memory stick. Of course, revision is a different process – then I leap around the storyline like Marty McFly – but the actual writing is done in strict order.

So when my publishers asked me for some precise details about how my new (non-time travel – yay!) project will end, suggesting a sample chapter or two of the later action, I found myself having to do more than just daydream ahead and speculate, more even that having to – shudder — plan. I had to actually write it. And this is where the weird business of writing gets really weird, and even a bit spooky, because in my new book, the third main character doesn’t join the other two until a quarter of the way into the plot, and I haven’t actually reached him chronologically yet. So as far as I’m concerned he has not even been formally introduced to anyone, let alone been allowed to develop as a player in events. And yet suddenly there he is, striding around the stage of Act III like he owns it, telling everyone what to do (he’s French) and referring back to shared experiences he hasn’t actually had yet.

For someone who has been patiently waiting to be, he seems to have been very busy! It’s like he’s always been there, and that’s because — by this late stage of the story — he always has. And yet, where has he been exactly?