Behind the book: 'How Soon Is Now?'

‘How Soon Is Now?’ began as an idea we’ve probably all had at one time or another: What would it be like to go back and live any part of your life again?

What could you do better? Which mistakes would you correct? Which long-lost love or loved ones would you want to see again?

It’s a compelling idea, but for a long time, that’s all it was – just an idea. Finding a story big enough to do the idea justice was the tricky part…

There were various potential stories over the years. One was for a time-travelling romantic comedy similar to the 1986 Kathleen Turner movie ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ – college hi-jinks with a middle-aged protagonist transported back to his college days. The more I thought about the practicalities of it, though, the less attractive that particular idea became. In fact, it began to seem downright icky in these more enlightened times.

What was needed was something with more weight, more emotional resonance. What would compel someone to revisit their own past? Loss, guilt and grief all seemed like strong contenders. And so The Nostalgia Club was born – a group of assorted misfits who, for widely varying reasons, find themselves drawn to examine and re-examine their pasts, over and over again.

The very different lives of the Club’s members would give me a chance to examine themes of memory, fate and the dangerous pull of the past while telling stories within stories, all within the framework of a classic quest narrative – an ordinary man discovers an extraordinary talent while embarking on a perilous mission (in this case, into his own past).

This being a time travel story, things quickly became pleasingly complicated. Twists, secrets and paradoxes piled up (a missing man, an unsolved murder, a maverick rival time traveller), but the mechanics of time travel within the novel remained resolutely down-to-earth. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ is a story about people, not technobabble or SF gimmickry.

The aim was always for the time-travel trappings to aid the story, not overwhelm it. The people – they quickly became people, not just characters – always came first.

In the end, what I wanted to create – and I very much hope I’ve succeeded – was a page-turner with enough mystery and invention to keep readers hooked, balanced with enough depth and complexity to bring out new shades of meaning with each reading. A time travel story, in other words, worth returning to over and over again.

This article first appeared on the 'Story Behind the Book' blog on September 19, 2024.