Author Interview: M. J. Keeley

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Historian Dyrne Samson doesn’t want to read about the past anymore. Now he visits it. Abandoning University lecturing, he joins a classified research organisation, hidden beneath the streets of New London. Their time-distortion pods let him witness crucial moments throughout history. But when observing the past, Dyrne discovers that he can also change it. Of course, visiting events from his own life is forbidden – the only reason he can’t return to the day he’ll never forget… unless he can manipulate the rules.

Release Date: April 25, 2019 – Currently available for preorder at Black Rose Writing or Amazon.

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Writing and reading have been life-long passions for me. I studied English Literature and Film & TV Studies at the University of Glasgow and am currently a full-time secondary school English teacher. 

I write in various genres including speculative fiction, magic realism, literary fiction and non-fiction review writing, and have had short fiction and poetry published by Centum Press, Medusa’s Laugh Press, Mother’s Milk Books, Ink & Voices, and Havok magazine. I am also a contributing arts review writing for award-winning magazine ‘The Wee Review’ and the Neon Books blog. 

My main focus is novel-writing and my debut science-fiction novel, ‘Turning the Hourglass’, will be released by Black Rose Writing in April 2019. I am currently seeking representation for my coming-of-age novel ‘The Stone in My Pocket’.

Other interests include: cinema, theatre, yoga, vegan cooking, travelling, attending my book group and cat-adoration. I live in Glasgow with my partner and cats: Luna, Matilda, Astrid and Loki.

Interview

1. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I’ve loved writing stories basically since I could write. I remember “writing” a play in primary school and casting my classmates when I was about eight. The teacher actually let me take up class time to perform it for everyone else. I also used to use my dad’s old Apple Mac to create little comic books and print them off, again taking them into school to show my teachers. It was probably closer to high school that I realised writing was something I might seriously do one day.

2. How long does it take you to write a book?

Turning the Hourglass, from inception to finish (not including final edits and changes after signing with my publisher), took about four years. I’m a full-time English teacher so finding spare time to write is pretty tricky (school holidays are my best friend). I also had a space of about a year where I semi-abandoned the book to start on another novel before I returned to it to work through another draft.

3.  What is the first book that made you cry?

‘Wonder’ by R.J. Palacio. I read it a year or two ago and was literally sobbing with happiness towards the end. Oddly, I don’t think I’d ever really cried at a book before that. It’s happened a few times since…

4. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

I’d tell myself to devote more time to reading and to start writing much earlier. What was I doing with all that free time as a student?!

5.  What did you edit out of this book?

I had an entirely different beginning that took weeks of research. Because Turning the Hourglass is about time-traveling historians, I wanted to start with an account of a real historical event that my main character Dyrne was ‘visiting’. I chose the murder of two princes (Edward and Richard) who mysteriously vanished from the Tower of London in 1483. However, several beta-readers told me they felt it was a bit of a red herring beginning because the event didn’t really have any significant bearing on anything else in the novel and it didn’t introduce us to the main character. I resisted for a long time but eventually ended up cutting the whole thing. I’m thinking of offering it as a little bonus giveaway to anyone who signs up for my mailing list though…

6.  How do you select the names of your characters?

I usually don’t come up with character names until after I’ve made pages of notes on their traits and personalities. Then I either choose a name that ‘feels’ like it matches their qualities or that has some sort of symbolic or figurative significance. The protagonist in Turning the Hourglass is called Dyrne – an old English word meaning ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’. I felt that suited his essence and it made sense that a historian should have a name from an extinct language.

7.  What is your favorite childhood book?

Roald Dahl’s Matilda is the one that I remember most fondly – my mum always used to read to me on the couch at night and Matilda was quite an early one for us – I’ve even named one of my cats after her. John Christopher’s Empty World was something I read more independently, though, when I was about ten or eleven, and probably one that’s had the most impact on my obsession with dystopian literature.

8.  Share one little known fact about yourself.

I trained as a reiki healer in my twenties.

I know you’re curious to learn more about M.J. Keeley and Turning the Hourglass so here are some links!!

www.matthewkeeley.co.uk
www.facebook.com/matthewkeeleyauthor
www.twitter.com/matthewjkeeley
www.instagram.com/matthewjkeeley