Jordan Berk is the author of the new novel The Timestream Verdict. Also a software engineer, he lives near Los Angeles.
Q: What inspired you to write The Timestream Verdict, and how did you create your character Aaron Barnett?
A: I started writing The Timestream Verdict at a uniquely opportune moment in my life. I had surplus time thanks to the double-whammy of the pandemic and a tiny child who loved giant naps.
I had inspiration right in front of me, considering my dad had just become a first-time author after many frustrating years, proving that there was a chance of publication if I too possessed the familial writing chops.
And I had the motivation, with the goal of finishing the book within a year so that I could present the completed manuscript to him as a surprise Father's Day gift.
My main, first-person character Aaron Barnett is an exaggerated version of myself, much of the time. He is braver and more open to new experiences than I'll ever be, but also a bit more introverted and with a tendency toward ill-advised spontaneity.
He is an everyman in every sense of the word - an unremarkable accountant with an unremarkable life. But once he has a task in front of him -- whether it be convincing a jury, stopping a murder, or finding love - he gets results.
Q: Why did you choose 2042 as the year in which the story is set?
A: 2042 certainly seems a lot closer than it did when I started writing a few years ago, but the timing was deliberate.
Aaron is from 1985 (a minor tribute to my unsurprising favorite movie, Back to the Future), so I didn't want to set it deeper and thrust him into a world even more foreign.
At the same time, I needed to give some leeway from our real-world present to be able include the fun, near-magical technologies that a time-travelling, utopian society would possess.
2042 seemed like the right balance, and the rest of the timeline of the story worked itself out from there. I can't wait in 18 years to see how wrong I was about nearly every technological/societal prediction!
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Broadly, yes, but a lot of the fun was how to get there. My outlines for each chapter were a mere sentence or two, and while the critical elements of the conclusion largely remained unchanged, the nuance of the characterizations, decisions, and storytelling came to be as it was being written.
Nearly all of my favorite parts of the novel are the little things that maybe weren't essential to the story, but supply the richness and humanness that make it a story worth telling.
Plus, like any good time-travel story, there are delicate breadcrumbs dropped throughout that only make sense once you make it to the end, or maybe not until a re-read. I didn't plan those out ahead of time; instead, I wrote myself into the corner and then figured out how to shape the story around them.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: I hope readers will come away with a deeper appreciation for time travel fiction. This book is my love letter to the genre, and it's not a coincidence that the core disagreement (or verdict!) among the characters is about how time-travel functions and how that affects their decision making.
From a meta-contextual viewpoint, this served as my way of underscoring how time-travel storytelling functions, especially now that it's more ever-present than ever in the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe] and elsewhere.
Despite the gravitas I just implied, this book doesn't take itself too seriously, so I also hope the reader comes away with a few laughs along the way!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm a few chapters into my next book, also very much in the world of time travel. However, without that perfect confluence of time and motivation, it's been a bit more of a slog to make significant progress. That said, it's a story that I'm equally excited about and can't wait to finish it!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm a third-generation sci-fi author, and it's been an honor to follow in my grandfather and father's footsteps. I never wanted to be a writer nor considered it as an option, but now that I am, it's amazing to be able to continue the family legacy. And now that I have kids of my own, maybe a fourth generation is blossoming too!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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