Tag: camera obscura

“Heretics” is now “Alchemists of Time”

Throughout its development my latest novel has been called Heretics. I had the title before I started writing because one of the central ideas was that the Victorian characters were all heretics in one way or another, non-believers in a Christian God in a supposedly pious time. Equally the characters in 1959 were all unconventional, thinking and acting differently to the rest of their contemporaries. In my own mind the book is still called Heretics but when it came to publishing I had to ask if it was a meaningful title. It sounded too much like a historical non-fiction and gave no flavour of genre or content.

After much discussion with my wife we eventually settled on Alchemists of Time, a title which had the virtue of including two major themes of the book – alchemy and time travel. It was my idea to have a strapline “A novel of the occult.” This strapline together with the title covered a lot of the bases and I think will appeal to the audience I am trying to attract. After all it’s difficult when your novel is a historical time-travel fantasy occult social history novel spanning a hundred years. It’s hard to classify and to market with all these aspects but Alchemists of Time and A novel of the Occult are the nearest I can get.

It’s worth saying something about the cover design for which I am also responsible. I wanted it to be eye-catching and give a flavour of the story. The final design is made up of three images licensed from Getty Images and one image from my personal collection of old photographs. I blended the woman’s face on the front of the book with a backdrop of clouds. In the original photo the woman has blue eyes but I changed them to black using Photoshop. On the back cover I blended more clouds with  a drawing of esoteric circles and overlaid a photograph of four Victorian people who bear a similarity to some of the characters in the book. In fact their clothing isn’t quite right for the time period but it does the job.

So, Heretics is now Alchemists of Time, a novel of the occult which should not be read late at night or when you are alone!

Who are Alex and Maxine? Introducing Heretics.

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All the posts in this blog have been attributed to “alexandmaxine”, but who are they? They are both characters in my forthcoming novel Heretics. Here’s a gentle introduction to them.

1959 – Alexander Harrison is a man of science working as Head of Department at a Derbyshire Grammar school. In his thirties, he is conventional in his outlook and his dress. He believes in logic, does not suffer fools and is an atheist in a time when that isn’t the norm. Maxine Silver, his girlfriend, professes to be a witch and earns her living as a photographic model. Together they move into an old house built early in the nineteenth century and they discover a camera obscura, a device which enables them to see all that is going on outside the house, hidden in an attic room. Alex becomes obsessed with restoring the camera. He starts to have visions of an old man who tells him that he has “to come back.” But come back where?

1859 – Alexander wakes to find himself transported back in time to the industrial town of Derby. He is shocked by the terrible social conditions he encounters there. He eventually finds his way to the house he will live in one hundred years in the future. The old man takes him in and begins to teach him alchemy and occultism, telling Alex it’s the only way he can find his way back to 1959. Sceptical at first, he begins to learn….

1959 – Maxine eventually learns that Alex is now in the past (could old photographs be involved?) But someone else, Bella Nightingale, has come out of the past and she’s a killer. The only way Bella can be stopped is for Maxine to find a way to work with Alex in the past and for them to pool their resources. But how can that be possible?

As for the family in the photograph, could they actually be some of the characters in Heretics?