The story behind the story: Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I have two stories in Ceaseless Way, the anthology coming out on Black Friday. Here’s the backstory on how I came to write Impossible Things Before Breakfast, though it’s been long enough I admit I’ve forgotten some of the details.

The germ of the story was the mental image of a man sitting and typing on a Mac laptop that they were stuck in 1970 with no way home and they hated it. I had no idea who the guy was or how he got there, and the image never made it into the story.

What started me trying to write it was reading various commentaries on time-travel stories while working on Now and Then We Time Travel. Some reviewers vented that if a time-traveler doesn’t reveal the truth about themselves the whole reliationship is bogus — how can love be real if they’re hiding stuff like that?

I don’t feel the same way, at least for fiction but it sparked the opening scene: my protagonist, Hal, finally tells the truth to his lover Susan. He does it even though he knows she’ll never believe him: his time machine disintegrated and he can’t think of any historical event to predict before Watergate and Roe v. Wade.

Instead, Susan levitates her ashtray. She’s totally used to weird people: pretty much everyone at the bookstore she works at is weird. Cyborg. Alien. Mage. Hal’s just one more.

Then I had to start thinking about why this bookstore existed and where all these strange types came from. In the early drafts this led to a lot of discussion which slowed down the plot and wasn’t that interesting. You learn about some of the backstories, briefly, but only a little.

I didn’t have any success submitting it. When my friend Kat Traylor proposed Ceaseless Way with a pilgrimage/wandering theme — well it was easy enough to work that with a guy who’s wandering in time.

Then came the critiquing, editing and recommendations. I took some of them to heart and made the relationship between Susan and Hal stronger and changed the explanation of how it shapes the final outcome. On the other hand, some of my co-contributors wanted more backstory on the Nothing Men; I thought they worked better with none.

And now it’s coming out at last. Woot!

All rights to images remain with current holders. Ceaseless Way cover by GetCovers based on concept by Arden Brooks.