Flumes Volume 2: Issue 1, Summer 2017 | Page 83

of books. I was very weak, which was actually true at that point. I couldn’t even walk, and I was hanging on to these bookcases, and you know how you go into somebody’s house and your eyes track the bookcases to see what they read?

I am laughing because as soon as she said bookcases I had wondered what was in them.

JGH: Right, right, right … every time!

DA: Well, in the dream, I was walking up this hallway tracking all these books, which I recognized. I would see all of the books I read, and then there were stacks of books by authors I’d never heard of. And as I walked up the hallway, I realized I absolutely knew that this was from another time, but I wasn’t quite sure where I was.

And then, when I started getting better, and I could sit up and hold a notebook, I started writing about that apartment and those bookcases and that woman who wasn’t quite me, but who had been just as ill as I had been. So now I seem to be finishing a book about….oh dear, there’s just no way around it….I’m writing a book about time travel!

JGH: Wow! So this was in the future, you think?

DA: No, I think it was in the past….I know now because I have 120 pages, and I wrote a couple of chapters. I took a while to get ‘em typed. I couldn’t type for a while, and then when I was able to type them, I sent them to my editor and to my agent, and they became extremely excited. They really love this material. I really love this material, although it’s hugely challenging.

JGH: And so different from anything you’ve written before, right?

DA: Oh, Completely, I know!

JGH: I’m excited excited! Oh my goodness!

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