Gerard asked Scott Hawkins:

My question is fuck you, pal. It shouldn't be legal for someone's first book to be so unnaturally good. I've had my share of page-turners, but your book hacked my perception of time to bits. Errands were ignored, sir. I hope you find the inspiration for a second Char novel, because you've planted a seed that's ripe with potential. Was there a particular thing that fuelled your inspiration for this novel?

Scott Hawkins I actually lol'd. Thanks, Gerard, good morning to you too! :-) I'm glad you liked it.

As far as inspiration...I can probably tell you where I got any one particular idea, but the story as a whole evolved from the process of stringing the individual ideas together.

So, for instance:
Probably the earliest inspiration for the library itself was a guy who lived down the street from me when I was a kid. He had this huge library of Silver and Golden age SF paperbacks that he'd led me borrow. They were all thirty years out of date, though. At least in terms of what I read for fun, I essentially grew up in the 1950s. When I got out of my small town and started talking to other people who read SF/F, I was like a time traveler. "Who is this William Gibson guy everyone is talking about?"

The bit where Steve goes out for a jog and nearly gets mauled by dogs actually happened to me. I used to live on the edge of a woods where people would dump strays. The neighborhood was unfinished--so, like, the roads went a lot farther the the houses. One day I was jogging in an unfinished section and a pack of good-sized strays took offense and chased me. There was about five seconds there where I thought I was going to get mauled to death in sight of the suburbs. It was surreal. One day years later I typed it up.

Once I had half a dozen scenes that I liked, I started asking questions about how they fit together. Maybe jogger guy is going to visit the weird & ancient library? But why? And why is it guarded by feral dogs?

Like that.

So, the book evolved from stringing completely unrelated incidents together in a way that's at least semi-plausible. There wasn't any one eureka moment, I just sort of iterated until all the scenes fit together and there weren't too many loose ends.

Best,

Scott

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