Telling the Tales of Time

An Interview with Steve Nallon

 

What job would you be terrible at?

A prison warden.

I had a Myers-Briggs profile, and I asked, ‘what's the worst job I could do?’

And he said, ‘Prison guard.’

It’s about time. I don't like timetables and prison is run on a timetable.

Is writer’s block ever a problem for you?

No, it's not a problem. Writing is about solving problems and if you've got a problem to solve, you can write. If you can't solve it, go for a walk.

What advice would you give your younger self?

That's a slightly time traveller story in itself.

I would say you're going to make mistakes and you learn from them, but you can only learn from them by making them. So, I'm not going to give you any advice at all.

What's your party trick?

When I was about eight or nine, my party trick was singing Ave Maria, which for which I got sixpence from my aunt Edith. If I'm still required to do it, I'm quite happy to sing Avie Maria.

What book has changed your life and how?

George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm.

I have a strong dislike for anything to do with tyranny and the Animal Farm prose is my favourite prose. It's incredibly simple English, which is incredibly difficult to write.

Going back to the tyranny, I realized, when I was re-reading The Swidgers, that that's a theme across the series. I hadn't realized it until I reread it, and I think that's where I got my dislike of tyranny from.

Have you always wanted to be an author?

I always wanted to create stories. I always created stories. It never quite occurred to me that those would end up as written words. But the creation of stories was there from the age of five.

Where's your favourite place to write?

My study.

It's the biggest room in the house. I've just got all the books to hand that I’ll ever need.

Is the finished book what you were expecting when you first started writing it?

No. When you are collaborating, it can’t be because there's somebody else involved.

It covers the areas that we wanted to cover, but it is still different.

How did the narrative for Destination Time Travel come about?

The book was sort of written before it became a book because I put together some ideas about time travel when I was preparing to write The Swidgers. I realized that I would have to decide what the rules of time travel should be. I thought time travel itself would be interesting to write about, and I wanted to see how other people had done it.

That’s how the book came about.

In terms of the acorn, it grew into a very large oak and unexpectedly so, but I'm very happy that it has done.

What is your favourite chapter from the book and why?

The comparison between Back to the Future and A Christmas Carol.

Although Back to the Future and A Christmas Carol seem to be completely different, they actually follow the steps of the story in a very similar way.

How do you plan to celebrate the publication of this book?

I think Dick and I are going to go and get pissed. We're going to have a meal together.

If you could meet anybody in the book, who would they be?

It would have to be Charles Dickens.

This is a book about time travel stories and just because he's Charles Dickens, I would want to talk to Charles Dickens.

What was your favourite thing about writing the book?

Working with Dick because he just brought a new dimension to what was already there and took what was already there and made it better.

He brought in aspects of time travel that I had never thought of.

If your book could have any other title, what would it be?

Well, the lecture I'm giving is called Telling the Tales of Time, so I would call it Telling the Tales of Time.