I caught up with David Sharrock last month not long after he’d fed his first paperback, Transitor into the Amazon Kindle machine. Here’s the output of a brief Q&A session I ran with him, touching on where he’s at as a first-time author; his frustrations with the traditional “old school” print world. More brain than man, the work of David Sharrock is certainly one to taste if you’re interested in new and exciting science fiction. Here’s what Sharrock had to say for himself:
Available in paperback and PDF
DJR: This is your first published work. Would you describe it as a one-off or the start of something prolonged? Essentially “where are you” in the landscape of your writing?
David Sharrock
DS: I’m hoping I have more than one story inside me, but Transitor was the culmination of a lot of research, planning and angst about getting the right framework to hold the themes of the story in place. I think the formula I chose works well, but it really did take me rather a long time to get there. That said, I’m currently working on an idea for a second book (which I’m exploring loosely in ficblog format on my website). I sketched out a first person narrative based on this idea but wasn’t happy with the research. I now have a much better idea of the physics involved and feel slightly better equipped to get some solid ideas down on paper. So that’s where I am and what I’m working toward right now. I work slowly, however, so I won’t say watch this space. More like, tell your kids to watch this space. Of course, a nice publishing advance would speed things up I’m sure!
DJR: Predictable question, sorry – but what led you to write this book. Why this book, this story?
DS: I’d held the idea in my head for a while and started the story a few times but quit because I felt the scaffolding for themes I wanted to explore just wasn’t there yet. Back in November 2009 I found myself highly charged with creativity and approached the Transitor idea anew. The book seemed to flow in an organic kind of way from then on. It’s a cliché to say the story wrote itself, but in many ways it really did. I’m a strong believer in firm foundations (being grounded in the building and property trade as I am) and I think the long planning, thinking and studying I undertook before writing gave Transitor an excellent footing.
The central premise of the book came first, of course, and is a simple ‘what if’. As in, what if the natural ability to travel freely in time existed? No time machines. No nifty gadgets or unlikely messing around with wormholes, just a shift in thought and the owner of this marvellous ability could zip backward and forward through time as they wished.
Furthermore, what if those blessed with such a gift were firmly in the minority and what if their movement outside the natural states of time prolonged their life to levels of near immortality? I started, erroneously as it turned out, by building an idea in my head of how these individuals might change society in their manipulations of time. Would they become caretakers of time, being careful to ensure their actions had no negative impact on future timelines, or would they use their ability in a criminal way, dipping into the future to see tommorrow’s stock market reports then returning to the present to make their billions? Pretty soon, as the idea evolved, I realised these were naive assumptions, that our modern society, to the traveller, would no longer be the anchor we all assume it to be and that they might never choose to return to the present, or continue a life there. All of the past and all of the future would be the traveller’s new environment. The very basic mechanics of what we think of as life, cause and effect, physical proximity, dimension and the forward flow of time, would alter completely. The traveller, with their new perspective on the universe, would become as aliens to us. When I realised this, I knew I had the bones for something interesting.
DJR: I’ve heard this book described as hard sci-fi. You’ve got a strong scientific flavour to your thinking; is that your background or just your passion?
DS: Writing is my passion. Science… well, I’m in the middle of a physics degree, so science is an interest. But my first love is philosophy… and people. People, and in particular people’s brains (or minds, if you prefer). Both fascinate me much more than mathematical science. The human question has always intrigued me, as in why we are here, who we are and how on Earth we came to be where we are today? The more I study philosophy and in particular modern ideas about ancient arguments, the more confusing the issue becomes for me personally. On the one hand, the cold scientific approach is both logical and rational, bolstered by peer review and proven with physical, verifiable and repeatable experiments.
On the other hand, the study of science with regard to the quantum world shows us that reality is actually spookier than we ever imagined.
Science itself suggests that the universe is a very random and improbable place! The more random it potentially is, the less trust we can comfortably place in logic and rational debate without deferring to the idea that we have no solid way of stating absolute truths. In reality (which is where we spend most of our time) there can be no such thing as absolute conviction. For this reason I tend to mix a great deal of metaphysical in with the ‘hard’ or ‘crunchy’ aspects of my science fiction. Horror is also something I enjoy playing with, if only to shock the reader out of their comfort zone and make *them* question the realities proposed by the story (or even the genre) they thought they were reading. Use logic to suspend the reader’s disbelief, order to present a believable world and believable characters, then hit them with random, uncomfortable chaos. The result – I hope! – is something akin to a psychological fairground ride.
DJR: What is your favourite theme within the book – what makes you really excited about other people reading it?
DS: The most prevalent theme explores the nature of duality, the juxtaposition of chaos and order, birth and death, infinity and zero. Not necessarily a study of opposites, but certainly one of bedfellows. This theme repeats throughout the entire story, in the personalities of protagonists and even in the makeup of environmental settings. I think those readers I’ve spoken to so far, however, enjoy the play on time travel more than the contrasts I find in universal truths. There’s the classic ‘if you killed your own grandfather’ question, but I’ve also approached, I believe, an entirely new idea in the time travel modus which links with the explorations I make of humanity’s relationship with zero and infinity. I won’t say more. You’ll have to read the book!
DJR: You’ve made the book available through print-on-demand service but you’re also approaching agents and publishers. What’s this experience been like for you? And what’s your ideal outcome?
DS: It’s a somewhat depressing experience. There’s an advert I’ve seen recently on TV that depicts a man playing tennis on what looks like a Wimbledon court. He serves and his opponent returns the ball, but just as he makes to strike the return, spectators descend from the stands in their hundreds, all whacking new balls into play or going for the original ball themselves. The original player, clearly dressed to play and eager to prove himself, gives the referee an exasperated look, but the ref merely shrugs. What can he do? I think this is the perfect analogy, not only for job hunting in a depressed market, but for seeking representation and a publishing contract in a world where every other person you pass in the street has a story to tell and a publishing deal in the offing.
I think it must also be incredibly frustrating for the agents and publishers whose job it is to sift through reams and reams of submissions to find and reveal the true talents of this world.
Personally, I intend to keep scratching the itch until someone takes notice, if only because my incessant scratching has become an irritant to them. Until then I shall join the masses on court and keep whacking that ball across the net.
DJR: What else do you think you need to do to achieve what you want? Tell us a bit about what’s it’s like being at this stage of a writing career?
DS: There’s a great deal to do before I come even close to my goal of becoming fully dedicated to writing. Recognition, I think, is what I want to achieve first and foremost so that I can relax a little and get on with the business of story-telling, which is, after all, my true passion. As a new face on the sf scene I not only have an enormous amount to prove but I also face a daunting challenge in getting my work known. Right now I’m just ploughing forward with the PR and having fun with it, finding new and creative ways to draw interest and grab the attention of as many potential readers as I can, one person at a time most of the time. In terms of my work I’ve always felt that quality was more important than quantity. Not so, however, when it comes to an audience. I still have a long way to go.
DJR: Any last words?
DS: Just a link, if I may, to my website www.farcountry.ukwriters.net (my ficblog charting the end of the world one day at a time in real time can be read there). I’m also working feverishly to keep up with current technologies and convert Transitor to eReader format (you can, if you prefer, already buy the book as an Adobe PDF on Lulu).
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David J Rodger ¦ Science Fiction & Dark Fantasy 
Great interview guys.
Thanks for reading and responding Dan.
Djr