There’s no time like the present, especially for authors. How long does the present last; a year, a week, a day, a second?
My novel ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ was set in the present; that was where I intended it to remain. I did not want to name a year; the characters lived in London and the 2005 bombings were still quite recent when I started writing, I did not want their story overshadowed by such a major event.
But first novels, especially long ones, take a while to write, to be read by others and edited, the present was fast becoming the past. World events were turning out differently from what most of us could ever have imagined and technology was racing ahead. My characters had mobile phones, they took pictures with their phones, they Skyped and went on Facebook, a few of them had SatNav. But they did not have smart phones, tablets, I-pads Kindles etc. and the last thing I wanted them to be able to do was Google their location or look up information on the internet with their smart phone.
The novel became a trilogy. ‘Three Ages of Man’ begins before the first novel and runs parallel, ‘Lives of Anna Alsop’ opens the evening after the close of the first novel. The Brief Encounters Trilogy is set in the early years of the Twenty First Century and covers a period of nearly four years, that is all you need to know, but if you would like to read more about the three novels please visit my website.
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