Jason Ayres's Blog

2024 marks the beginning of a newera in The Time Bubble world. A new era that began back in 1980. Apologies ifthat doesn't make sense, but that's time travel for you.

The most recent Time Bubblebook (Gone to the Rapture) was released in October and was very well received(4.6-star average on Amazon from 139 reviews). I was most pleased with how itturned out and consider it to be one of the best in the series yet. It provedthat I can still come up with fresh concepts, even after fourteen books in theseries.

However, there is somethingthat has been bugging me for some time. I feel that The Time Bubble series hasbecome too long. Before everyone gasps in horror, in fear that I'm not going towrite any more, don't panic! (as fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide might say). No,what I mean is that I feel having fourteen books in one long series makes it ratherunwieldy. It leads to a situation where I can write one of my best works, likeGone to the Rapture, yet it's unlikely anyone who hasn't read the previousthirteen will be interested in it.

I say this as a reader, that if Ispot a book I like the look at and see it is part of a very long series I willthink seriously about passing on it. Do I have the energy to tackle a saga thatlong? And what if I decide to go back and give the first book in the series atry to see if I like it and it doesn’t grab me right away? I may well check outat that point and never get to the better books later in the series.

Of course, when I startedwriting the first book, I didn't even know there was going to be a second book,let alone fourteen. If I had known in advance exactly what I was going to writeI would probably have planned them out as several shorter series e.g. 

The Time Bubble/ GlobalCooling/ Man Out of Time (The initial trilogy)

Vanishing Point/ Cause ofDeath/ Lauren's Odyssey (Vanessa trilogy)

My Tomorrow Your Yesterday/Return to Tomorrow (two-book set). And so on…

Hindsight, as they say, is awonderful thing. If I had done it this way I would have split the series up intodigestible chunks, giving people more entry points. They wouldn’t all have to havestarted with the first Time Bubble book, a point at which I lose many people becausethey mistakenly assume it’s a teen romance series. You only have to read the reviewsof the first book to realise that.

With that in mind, I’ve decidedthat Book 15 will be the last in the main series, but again, don’t panic! Itwon’t be the last Time Bubble book. On-going, I will do exactly what I saidabove and write some shorter spin-offs. For example, I might decide to have athree-book series focused on the pub around Andy, Kent, Lauren and co. Or I mightwrite a series all about some of Josh and Alice’s earlier adventures when theyfirst invented the tachyometer. These could have been Time Bubble books 16, 17,and 18, but instead, they’ll be something else numbered 1, 2, and 3. I hope everyonecan see the logic in my reasoning about all of this.

To reiterate – The Time Bubble seriesis not ending. It is only the current numbering system that will be ending withbook 15.

The process of branching out intoa venture has already begun. For the past year, I have been planning andbeginning to write a series set in the 1980s. Writing stories set in that erawas always quite difficult with the main Time Bubble characters as Josh, Lauren& co weren’t born until around 2001. Therefore, what I’ve done is utilisesome of the older characters from the existing series instead.

I plan to produce a set of ten bookseach set in a different year of the 1980s. That might sound like another longseries but the beauty of these is that they will all be standalone. When theseries is complete, anyone will be able to pick up any book from the series withoutever having to read any of the others. I believe this is what in televisionterms is known as an anthology series – like The Twilight Zone or Tales of theUnexpected.

Although these will be standalone,they will have an interlinking theme. Without revealing too much in the way ofspoilers, there is a bracelet which is passed on every year from person toperson. It sends each new recipient back exactly forty years in time to spend acalendar year in the past. There they are given the responsibility of lookingafter the timeline, which can involve both changing things or preventing thingsfrom being changed. These changes range from confronting issues in theirpersonal lives to major, world-changing events.

This all takes place within theexisting Time Bubble universe, with plenty of nuggets for fans of the series.Each person going back in time will have appeared in earlier books and whilethere, they will encounter other familiar faces. For example, in both the 1980and 1981 books, everyone’s favourite security guard, Barry, makes anappearance.

The stars of the first two booksare Keith Diamond, who appeared in Lauren’s Odyssey, and Nick Taylor, who was Thomas’sbest friend in his two stories. Although they both go back in time with thesame mission, the settings couldn’t be more different. The first book revolvesaround the world of Fleet Street tabloid journalism in the 1980s, whereas thesecond has a rural setting and is more about family life and the experience ofgrowing up in the 1980s. And here they are:

I’ve got a few candidates linedup for future books, with Nobby from the pub a possibility for one, and Charlotte,the girl Thomas got involved with in Return to Tomorrow earmarked for 1988.That will give me the chance to revisit that story from a different perspective.

All of it takes place against abackdrop of the music, fashion, attitudes, and culture of the time, all of whichas someone who was a teenager in that era, I remember with great fondness.

I’m really excited about this newventure and I am hoping you will be too. It’s probably the most important booklaunch I’ve ever done so anything you can do to help in terms of spreading theword and positive reviews all helps. You can pre-order your copy here: Link to pre-order

The single most important aspect of starting a new Time Bubble book is coming up with a fresh, innovative concept that has not been explored before, either by myself or anyone else. While it may be easy and tempting to churn out endless variations on the same theme, like Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, I'm not interested in taking that route. My goal is to make each Time Bubble book as exhilarating and novel as the first, even if it means waiting for the perfect idea to strike me.

This waiting game means that I typically take around a year between books, as I'm committed to delivering one exceptional idea per year. While I've explored numerous ideas in the past, only a few have made it to completion, while others have been incorporated as parts of other works or have been put on hold for future consideration. Some of the alternate universes that Josh and Lauren visit in my books have been born from these unused ideas, and while others remain dormant for now, they may resurface at a later date.

It's been almost six months since I completed the last Time Bubble book, and I didn't have another idea ready to go with. Instead of churning out something mediocre just for the sake of it, I decided to focus on another project and wait until a killer idea came to me. And I'm happy to say that it has! Over the past month, I've developed a brilliant concept that fits perfectly within the existing universe. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't give away any spoilers. There's a huge element of mystery, and you'll just have to wait to find out why. But I promise you, it's an absolute cracker of an idea!

What I can reveal is that it will be set sometime in the mid-2020s, around the time Alice first met Josh, when Peter was in the Time Bubble, and Hannah was bringing up Jess alone. I have two provisional titles which are either Gone to the Rapture or Gone to the Angels. Those should certainly pique your interest! I'm still in the planning stage, but I'm confident that it will be ready for release this autumn.

Fortunately, I haven't been idle during the last six months. While it's true that I can only produce one Time Bubble book per year, which takes six months to write, I make good use of the remaining six months to work on other projects. This year, I focused on writing two Ronnie and Bernard books. I acknowledge that the first one received mixed reviews, but it was my first attempt at something different, and it was created in a different way than my other books. It started as a film script, co-written with another writer. When it became apparent that the film wasn't going to happen anytime soon, I decided to turn it into a novel, feeling that it was a good story that shouldn't go to waste. 

As you may have noticed, it's not as serious as my other books, and much of it is a self-deprecating send-up of itself and the era it's set in, but that was part of the fun. I enjoyed the process enough to write a second book, which I'm very pleased with. The Haunted Theatre is also comedic, with more of Ronnie and Bernard's antics set around another time travel plot. I conducted extensive historical research for this book, which features a famous person from history, Marie Lloyd, the music hall singer. The story is set in a fictional seaside resort called Skegmouth in 1974 and is a lot of fun - in my humble opinion, anyway! I'm in the final editing stage now, and it's scheduled for release in early May. 

Images of both are below - as you can see, I have changed the cover on the first one as I wasn't happy with the first attempt. Those of a vintage that remember the TV of the era will recognise what the three circles pay tribute to - it's similar (though not identical) to the ATV ident that opened all TV programmes made in the Midlands in the 1970s.

I'm not sure if there will be any more Ronnie and Bernard books after this second one. I have an idea for another, but I'll wait to see how this one is received first. After finishing the new Time Bubble book, I may work on developing something new entirely. Only time will tell!

All that remains is to wish you well and thank you for your continued support!

Jason

 On Monday evening I noticed something odd happening with the rating count of my Time Bubble book on Amazon.

This book has been out for nine years, selling steadily, and accruing reviews along the way. Up until about two or three years ago, people had to leave a written review in order for their ratings to be included in the total, but that has now changed. Now, if someone rates a book they have bought without leaving a review, that's included too.

They could leave a rating formerly, but the only place it showed up was on Goodreads, a sister site.

So accumulating reviews was a long and slow process. It is estimated that only about 1% of people who purchase leave a review, so it took a long old time for The Time Bubble to reach the milestone of 100 reviews. In recent years, since they started including the ratings, it climbed more quickly but it was only new ratings. The historical ratings seemed lost forever in the mists of time, like those long sought-after missing black-and-white episodes of Doctor Who. OK, they were on Goodreads, but that's no help when someone is on Amazon browsing for books.

So, imagine my surprise when I noticed a sudden surge in the rating count of The Time Bubble on Monday evening. At first, I thought it might be a glitch, but as the week went by, the count continued to increase, from around 900 on Monday to nearly 1,400 by Friday. And I wasn't the only author affected by this phenomenon.

I checked the ratings of another author I know, Tracy Bloom, who started around the same time as me. I noticed the same jump happening in her early books too, and interestingly, like myself, not in her newer ones. Or not yet, anyway. This led me to speculate that Amazon might be adding in the missing ratings from all those years ago and moving chronologically forward in time as they do. At the moment they seem to have covered all books released by the end of 2015.

If this is true, it's great news for authors with older books, who may have felt they were at a disadvantage compared to new releases that could accumulate ratings and reviews more quickly. Now, those old ratings are finally getting added in, it is almost like receiving backdated pay for our past work. OK, there is no immediate financial benefit, but the more reviews a book has the better in the eyes of the consumer.

Of course, I don't have any official confirmation from Amazon about this theory, but it seems like a plausible explanation for what's happening. If you're an author with books from this era, let me know if you're seeing the same thing on your older titles. And if you're a reader who left me a rating way back in 2015, thank you! It got through eventually!

Jason

 Happy New Year to you all. I’m writing today to talk about my new book which came out this week.

You’ll note the title of the blog post is “The Difficult Second Album.” This term refers to bands who’ve had some initial early success and then attempt to try something else, which isn’t always well received by fans of their original work.

This is a difficulty I believe that we as writers also face. Let me begin by saying that I absolutely love writing The Time Bubble books. I can scarcely believe I have clocked up thirteen of them in less than nine years. They have enabled me to achieve my ambition of becoming a full-time writer for a living, thanks to the strong and supportive fan base that they have built up. If you are part of that fan base – thank you! Every sale, every review, and every little thing you do to help is appreciated by me every single day and enables me to continue to write more books.

In terms of writing The Time Bubble books, they are very complex. First I have an idea e.g. a man lives his life backwards, one day at a time. Then I’ve got to turn that into a story. Then, crucially, I’ve got to tie that story into the entire existing narrative of the series, with a convincing explanation of how it occurred. On top of all that, the idea needs to be distinctly different to what has come before to keep the series fresh. I’ve never wanted to just churn them out. To say it is quite a challenge is an understatement, and it is taking me up to a year to write each book.

Here is where I am with book 14. I want to do something different again. I certainly don’t want another book with Vanessa, she has run her course and that storyline is all finished now. The idea I have got has got huge potential and at this stage, I’m still fleshing it out. What I haven’t got is any convincing reason as to why what is happening in the story is happening. The journey itself is all part of the fun, but ultimately you have to have some sort of resolution. The idea for Cause of Death began like this – so I am going to put two people in a holiday resort and have them die over and over again. At the start, I had no idea why, but I figured it out in the end. That is about where I am with this next book.

In the meantime, let’s talk about that difficult second album. So, here is where I am. I said earlier I was getting by on what I earn from The Time Bubble books, but as we all know, there’s a cost-of-living crisis in the country. I’ve hungry mouths to feed, soaring energy bills, mortgage etc so I’m facing the same issue as everyone else – I need to earn more money. I can’t demand a pay rise or go on strike, so the only way is to increase my sales. Unlike those unscrupulous retailers, I’ve no intention of putting the prices of my books up – why sting you when you’ve got bills to pay too? It’s self-defeating anyway – put the price up and get fewer sales. Simple economics.

I’ve long wanted to expand my writing into other areas, and hence the concept of the Ronnie and Bernard books was born. It came from an idea cooked up between me and a couple of actor friends, one of whom, Michael Livesley, wrote some of the dialogue that made it into this book. The idea of this book was to do something different. We are both in our fifties and nostalgic for the simpler times of our youth, when entertainment was something to be enjoyed, without the politics that pervades everywhere these days. If you watch almost any soap, drama, comedy or documentary produced by the major networks these days you may have noticed that they are packed full of moral messaging about what you should or shouldn’t be doing, thinking, eating etc. Now it doesn’t matter if you agree with those messages or not, in my case I don’t want to feel I’m being lectured every time I sit down to watch some light entertainment.

This is part of what I wanted to achieve with this book. The series is intended to be much lighter than The Time Bubble and rooted very much in the style of the era. I’ve deliberately made the characters uncomplicated and packed the book out with cliches and references to the era – this is all tongue-in-cheek and quite deliberate. So if it’s a bunch of hapless Roman soldiers blundering about like Keystone Cops in a Carry-on film scenario, an over-the-top cackling villain like an actor hamming it up in a Tom Baker Doctor Who story, or innuendoes like you would find in a 1970s sitcom, it’s all in there.

Who are these stories designed to appeal to? People old enough to remember the seventies – so basically aged 50+, who just want a light-hearted easy read that reminds them of the good old days. There is time travel in it, but no detailed technical explanation of how it comes about. It just happens. The focus of the book is very much on comedy. I want to write something that cheers people up and makes them laugh more than anything else.

Above all, I wanted to try something different. Nobody wants to be known as a one-trick pony, and I think it might look a little odd a decade from now if I’ve got one long series with 25 books in it and nothing else.

Now I realise that this new book may be at odds with what fans of the existing series expect from me, but as I said above, I need to reach out and find a new audience if I’m going to be able to keep writing these books for a living. As things currently stand, I’m thinking I’m going to have to take on some other work – whether that be pursuing newspaper and magazine articles, or heaven forbid, the poorly paid world of copy editing, I’ve still got to pay those bills. I know, get the violins out, but there it is. Of course, if I end up having to do other work, it takes time away from writing the books. That means longer waits between them and none of us wants that.

I loaded up the book with some trepidation. Would the existing fans like it? Would I be able to find my new audience? No matter how many times you release a new book, it’s always nerve-wracking, but that was especially the case with this one, being the first of a new series. So you can’t begin to imagine how sick to the pit of my stomach I was to see the first review come in, a negative 2-star one. Now I get two and one-star reviews all the time, everybody does, and when they come in on a book that’s already got hundreds of reviews, they have very little impact. But when it is the only review the book has, it’s devastating and this one killed the sales stone dead. What happens in the first few days of a new book’s life on Amazon is crucial for its prospects, due to the algorithms which decide what is a good book and what is a turkey. I’m therefore feeling a little deflated this morning, though I am still going to press on with writing the second Ronnie and Bernard book which is coming along very nicely. By the time I have finished that, I should be in the right place to start the next Time Bubble book, which will be out later in the year.

To reiterate, The Crooked Line isn’t a Time Bubble book and if you don’t think from the synopsis it’s going to be your thing, I’d be the last person to urge you to go out and buy it. However, if you do have any support or positive feedback to give, I could certainly do with it right now.  

You can find the new book here: The Crooked Line

Best wishes,

Jason

 Today I launched the latest book in The Time Bubble series, and it can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BD248XTQ

And here it is:

So, it seemed as good a time as ever to give you a little preview of what to expect, without giving too much away in the way of spoilers.
The first stage in the planning of all of my books is, what is the basic premise? In most cases, it starts with an idea. For example, all I initially had for My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday was a scenario, which was what would life be like if you lived it backwards, one day at a time. Then I built the plot and the characters around it.
This book is no different, however, it benefits from having the ensemble cast from the earlier Time Bubble books already in place. Obviously, you still need a story, though! 
I looked back at what I had done before and in most cases, the lead characters are reacting to events around them, being lost in time, trapped, that sort of thing. What I decided to do this time was to have the lead character go on a specific quest with a set of goals in mind. I drew my inspiration for this from a variety of sources, but one that springs to mind is the 1978 series of Doctor Who. That year, with Tom Baker, they had the usual six, separate stories, but in each, they were looking for one of the six segments of The Key to Time. 
I have done something similar here. I chose Lauren as the lead character as she has always been a favourite of mine and I felt she deserved her moment in the spotlight. The early books were very much focused on Josh and although he still plays a part here, exploring the other characters in the later books has helped to keep the series fresh and original.
What does Lauren have to do? I won't go into the reasons why, you'll find that out when you read it, but she's required to go to five other universes on her quest. This gave me the flexibility to both revisit some places we've been before and develop some new ideas.
Her first destination was inspired in part by Back to the Future II when you'll recall Marty and the Doc revisit the events of the first film in 1955. I thought it would be rather fun to take Lauren back to where it all started - that very first day when Charlie and Josh discovered the Time Bubble. There is a nostalgic section when Lauren heads back to 1984, and also another opportunity to explore the nineteenth-century style universe that Josh first visited in Splinters in Time. You may recall that there was a version of Lauren in that universe called Annie - well, here, we get to explore the world from her perspective.
Finally, there are a couple of dystopian worlds, reminiscent of the sort of scenarios you might find in Black Mirror. I've long been fascinated with the idea of an Orwellian-style world where people have become enslaved by technology, without even realising it, so I've delved into that for a hefty chunk of the plot. And also, in a similar vein, I've wondered how dangerous it would be to become dependent on robots that are stronger and faster than us. Now there's a chance to find out.
It all adds up to a rip-roaring adventure that's dark in places but with plenty of humour elsewhere. There were plenty of opportunities to slip in a few old favourite recurring characters so I hope you'll enjoy those, as well as a chance for another one of Charlie and Kaylee's famous annual barbecues, which first featured all the way back in Book 3.
There is so much more I could tell you, but if I tell you the whole plot there will be no need to read it, and we can't have that! I really hope you enjoy it and keep your eyes peeled because in just another couple of months or so, the first in my new series, The Crooked Line, will be coming out. I am very excited about that and will tell you more about it nearer the time.

Various news reports last week put the current rate of inflation at between 2.7% and 7%, depending on the criteria and timescales used. At the same time, interest rates rose to 1%, their highest level for some time. We are accustomed now to the idea that we are in a cost-of-living crisis, but just how bad is it?

I would suggest, a lot worse than many people realise. The energy costs and fuel price rises have been well documented, and are way above the quoted rate of inflation. Surprisingly, when you think back to the fuel crisis of 2000, most people seem to have absorbed these without too much complaint. The Government has managed to divert attention from their misguided policies by apportioning blame to external factors. 

A favourite scapegoat is Covid-19, but the virus itself was not to blame. It was the untold billions wasted on pointless measures in response that did the damage.

If that won’t wash as an excuse anymore, then the convenient crisis in Ukraine makes a good substitute. It is conveniently swept under the carpet that prices were spiralling long before the conflict began. As for the opposition, they can always fall back on that old standby, Brexit. Has there been anything that’s gone wrong in the last six years that opponents haven’t tried to blame on Brexit?

I think that covers them all, no wait, there’s one more. How could I have forgotten about climate change? It seems that practically any amount of hardship can be justified in the glorious pursuit of net zero!

Leaving energy aside, I am becoming increasingly concerned with the huge hike in food prices, the true extent of which is being disguised by any means possible. Most of us will be familiar with the concept of shrinkflation, having at some point enjoyed a light-hearted conversation along the lines of “Wagon Wheels aren’t as big as they were when I was a lad.” It is not so amusing now people cannot afford even basic foodstuffs. 

The truth is, that retailers and manufacturers have developed all sorts of ways of sustaining the illusion that prices are not rising. Desperate to keep the price of a product the same, they will reduce the content in several different ways. If it is not a straight cutting of the weight, it will be the reduction of the number of items in a pack, or a combination of both. Some may think they are buying the same product when they pick up their six-pack of crisps.  But at some point, they may notice it has changed to a five-pack, and that each bag is now 20g instead of 25g.

Another trick is to remove a long-standing offer. For example, several retailers used to offer own-brand fruit juices at £1.20, but with a permanent offer of two for £2. This effectively made the base price £1. Now those offers have disappeared, forcing customers to pay the full amount no matter how many they buy. That’s a hidden 20% increase right there.

For many years I worked for the largest market research company in the world. One of my duties was to collate and publish the weekly “shopping basket” of goods to allow price comparisons between retailers and to track changes over time. The methodology used to create this was not complex and I have no reason to believe it has become any more sophisticated in the intervening years. It simply would not pick up many of the scenarios I have described above.

The retailers are desperate to keep you believing that they aren’t increasing prices. They will fight tooth and nail to keep the price on a few key items down, even if they end up running them as loss leaders. These will be the ones they use in their ads when claiming they are cheaper than a competitor, but anyone can cherry-pick a favourable basket of goods to make that comparison. 

Away from those battleground items, some prices have increased dramatically. The own-brand coffee I buy has gone from £1.39 to £2.39 in under a year, at periodic twenty pence increments. It is a similar story with the branded jars of beetroot I buy. These have risen from £1 to £1.40, then £1.70, and unbelievably, last week, £1.90. Does that sound like 7% inflation to you?

£1.90 for a jar of beetroot?
I think I'll have to start growing my own!

Although I no longer work in the market research or retail sector, I keep a keen eye on developments. I estimate that the true annual rate of food inflation at present is somewhere between 15% and 20%. Of course, it is in the interests of the powers that be to play this down, because otherwise, the clamour for pay rises, pensions and benefit increases will kick off. This could fuel an inflationary crisis to dwarf anything we saw in the 1970s.

To combat this, we get various industry figures and government ministers coming out with suggestions that we need to shop around and look for bargains to make our money go further. They are stating, to quote the great Basil Fawlty, “the bleeding obvious.” 

Do they not realise that most people struggling to make the ends are doing all of that already? I am guessing not, as it is difficult to imagine that the likes of Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak have ever had to rummage around in the bakery at the end of the day for a reduced loaf of bread.

I believe we are in serious trouble. If the intention of the policies of the last two years was to completely trash the economy, in advance of a cashless social credit system, then they’ve certainly gone the right way about it. Most won’t see it coming until it is too late. Those who were basking in the sunshine on furlough and are now adopting an “I’m alright, Jack,” attitude because they fixed their energy bills until March 2023, are in for a rude awakening. 

 Hi all,

As you'll know if you're read my novels, I do like to explore alternative, dystopian futures on occasion. I have all sorts of ideas, often inspired by current affairs, that don't make it into print as they aren't substantial enough to make into a full novel. So they sit on the backburner.

What I'd like to do is explore some of these through short stories, so here is the first of what may become a series. Here, I imagine what might happen if future people in power looked back at what happened over 2020-2021 and used it as a template to pursue other objectives.

I wanted it to be concise, so I've kept it to 1,500 words. I'd be interested to hear your feedback. If you like it, I may write some more. Enjoy!

The Meat Elite - by Jason Ayres

 

As Annie pushed the swing doors that led back into the kitchen, the unmistakable smell of sizzling steak assailed her nostrils.

How long had it been since she had tasted meat? It must be getting on for two years now. As the chefs scurried around in their white shirts and check trousers, she felt an all too familiar craving, one she would have to suppress. For she was not one of the privileged few.

They were all here tonight. The elite. The exclusive members club where she waitressed was hosting a big Christmas bash for a group of senior cabinet members and selected friends. Such gatherings were illegal under the 2025 Infectious Diseases Act, but the attendees tonight considered themselves exempt from that.

It was all strictly top secret. To work tonight, Annie had been required to sign a non-disclosure form with a threat of up to ten years in prison should she break it.

The dinner was being hosted by the new health secretary who had taken over after the 2024 general election. Annie had also recognised other senior medical staff she had seen standing at the podiums during Downing Street press conferences. There were also several prominent television presenters and well-known climate change campaigners. As she had served them their starters they had all been laughing and joking like they didn’t have a care in the world.

They had ignored her, of course, but then she barely even registered as a human to them, hidden behind her mask. Ordinary citizens were required to wear them in all public places. It had been that way on and off ever since the Covid-19 outbreak, some seven years ago.

It would soon be time for her to take out the main courses. She watched as one particularly flamboyant chef tossed a steak in the air like a pancake before it landed back in the pan with a flash of flame.

When she was growing up, she could never have imagined a world where eating meat would now be the preserve of the super-wealthy. Her father had been a traditionalist who insisted that the family came together for Sunday lunch every week. She recalled the joints of meat now, gorgeous, rare topside of beef, with Yorkshire puddings cooked in the dripping, and succulent legs of pork, with perfect, crispy crackling. No-one had been able to make crackling like her dad.

Gosh, she still missed him so much. It had been six years now, and she still couldn’t believe he’d left her the way he had. Seeing these Government ministers here tonight brought it all back. They weren’t the same politicians who had been in charge during the Covid-19 crisis, but no matter – they were all the same in her eyes.

Her father had retired in 2019 and poured his life savings into opening a lovely little family restaurant in their hometown. It had thrived, quickly gaining a loyal following of local devotees.

But all that changed in 2020. The business survived the first lockdown and struggled through the second. They had been all ready to bounce back at Christmas, but then they were forced to close again. As 2021 wore on, with one reason after another for extending the lockdown, the business was forced to close. Her father lost everything, and not long afterwards took his own life.

Slowly, the world had returned to normal. But then, in the autumn of 2024, news of a new pandemic swept the globe.

This time, the virus was spread by animals, starting, as it always seemed to, in China. It began slowly, with rumours of a new strain of flu in chickens before spreading to cattle. Before long cases were being reported on every continent.

The media frenzy soon began, with experts warning that eating contaminated meat could spread the virus to humans. A computer model from a prominent London college suggested that five million could die in Britain if all meat consumption did not cease immediately.

Overnight, all meat products were pulled from supermarket shelves. Those who had seen it coming and stocked up their chest freezers were not sitting pretty for long. Draconian fines were introduced for even being in possessing any meat, with police given powers to enter any home to carry out a search. Keeping food animals, such as chickens, carried a jail sentence.

For their own safety, the people were put under lockdown again, with other restrictions such as face masks reintroduced. Many deaths in hospitals were connected to the supposedly infected meat, though those who questioned these diagnoses were ridiculed and cancelled.

All livestock was slaughtered. The meat industry was up in arms, but the farmers were sated by massive handouts from the Government to permanently convert their premises. There had been huge advances in the technology for producing vegan food and the choice between financial security or utter ruin was not a difficult one to make.

The same choices were being made all over the world, with the source of cash being used to bankroll these huge changes never being identified.

The crisis dragged on for the best part of a year, during which many climate campaigners stepped up declaring this had been a blessing in disguise for the planet. They had long stated that intensive farming had been disastrous for the climate’s carbon footprint, and welcomed this opportunity to enact permanent change.

Social media joined in of course, with those in favour cheering on the cause. Opinions polls showed 75% in favour of a permanent ban on meat. Annie found these figures hard to believe.

She had never had a problem with vegetarians or vegans. She felt that everybody had the right to make their own choices on these issues. But it didn’t work both ways. Anyone who protested against what was happening was denounced and discredited.

Now, over two years after the outbreak had started, a tiny amount of organic farming was permitted again, under strict guidelines. The total production was less than 1% of what it had been before the pandemic. Not only did you have to have a licence to sell it, but you also had to have a licence to buy it.

Even if you did possess a licence, the cost was beyond the means of most people. Something as simple as a chicken breast would now set you back a three-figure sum, leaving meat as the preserve only of the elite.

Like these people here tonight, thought Annie. For them, a hundred pounds was the equivalent of about 50p to her. These same people, who had screamed for the slaughter and more restrictions. These same people, who had told her it was all for her own good. Well, it wasn’t good enough. She simply wasn’t going to take it anymore.

It was time for the meals to go out. She was handed a plate and gazed lovingly at the juicy, perfectly cooked meat in front of her. This one was for the health secretary, who liked his steak rare. Dripping with blood was how he had requested it.

A second plate was handed to her. This was for a daytime TV presenter who had never shut up about the need to convert to a vegan diet after she had realised that was the bandwagon to jump aboard. What a hypocrite.

She pushed through the swing door that led out into the corridor, but instead of going straight across into the dining room, she turned right. She walked to the end and around a corner, where she would be out of sight at the foot of a staircase.

She sat on the stairs, picked up the rare steak by hand and gorged on it, stuffing the meat into her mouth like there was no tomorrow. As she did so, rivulets of bloody juice ran down her chin, dripping on to her white waitress uniform and staining it with blood that would probably never come out. But that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t need it again after tonight.

The first steak was demolished in a couple of minutes, and then she started on the second. She had heard people talking about having experiences that were better than sex. As she savoured every precious mouthful, she now knew exactly what they meant.

Finished, she left the plates on the stairs. Then she looked up and saw the CCTV camera trained directly upon her.

No matter. What else could they do to her now that they hadn’t done already? There was no point to life if you couldn’t live it. And tonight, for possibly the first time in seven years, she felt incredibly and wonderfully alive.

She got up, ripped off her mask, and pushed the bar marked emergency exit on the doors opposite the stairs and walked out into the cold night air. For this moment at least, she was free.

THE END

 Every store you shop in, every product you buy is a brand. The biggest brands are recognisable the world over, from the red and white of Coca Cola to the golden arches of McDonald's.

Any professional business needs clear and consistent branding, and books are no different. When I started writing my Time Bubble books in 2014, I had no inkling that seven years later I would have eleven of them on the market. When I started, I had no great marketing plan - I was learning on the job. I realised early on that I needed my covers to match, so I had the hourglass on the first few, but over time, I deviated away from that.

There was nothing wrong with my old covers - they served their purpose, but I realised over the past year that I needed to upgrade them. Some of them were looking a little tired, and dare I say, even a little gloomy, so I got together with my cover artist and we came up with a plan to relaunch the range with a bright, shiny new selection of colours.

My idea was straightforward - a set of eye-catching covers that would all match. The same fonts in the same places on every book - the only variation being in the colours and images. I also believe that simplicity is key. Many book covers are far too complicated. I think some authors feel they need to tell the whole story on the cover. I wanted to go for just one simple image on each that would tie into the book's theme.

The results are the eleven brand new covers I am going to unveil today. Here they are in turn, with a little explanation below each about why I chose each image.

NB: Depending on which device you are using, you may find that the captions don't match up to the pictures - apologies for this. It seems that the formatting went awry when importing from my blog.

The first book in the series is the one with the most generic image. This was deliberate because this one needs to tell people not only what this book is about, but also what the whole series is about. So it's a simple clock face being sucked into a time vortex. Note the other elements on the cover. I've gone with a teaser line at the top, a bold title and author name, and a brief snippet from a five star review with the stars on the cover to emphasise this.

For the second book we went with a cold, blue background to reflect the title and the theme. For the image we came up with this rather clever Earth frozen inside an ice cube sketch, which sums up nicely in one image what the book is about.























Man Out of Time is set predominantly in the future, including some scenes set in the early twenty-second century. When visiting that time, Josh marvels at the futuristic buildings of his home town and I believe this image sums that scene up nicely.























The main focus of this book is Josh's nightmarish journey through a succession of alternate universes. This image of multiple Earths, tailing off into the distance captures that theme brilliantly.























This book is the first in the range set predominantly in the past, most of it in 1992 as the title suggests. I wanted to go with a nostalgic theme to reflect the times. I was inspired by a scene in the book where Peter is bemoaning his problems with the local video shop - such as being charged 50p for not rewinding the tape!























I love the effect on this cover. It refers directly to a scene in the book where one of the main characters disappears. She literally fades out of existence, leaving the man depicted holding only fresh air in his hand.























This book is another nostalgia fest. In an early chapter the main character, Richard Kent, finds himself in 1984 on the day he bought his first record from Woolworth's. 

























It's established right from the start of this book that luckless Kay, is negotiating the pitfalls of her life with the help of copious amounts of vodka. For a book which is largely set in the pub, this seemed an appropriate image.

























This is possibly my favourite of the lot. We used a backwards calendar on the old version of this book, but it wasn't particularly clear. This image, where Tuesday follows Wednesday capture the theme of the book beautifully.


























There's only one obvious image to use for a book set around New Year in the UK, and that's Big Ben and fireworks.

And now, the one you're all waiting for, which will be out next week! This is the sequel to My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday and focuses on Thomas Scott's one, unwavering mission - to make it to Ibiza at a certain time on a certain date to meet his wife for the first time and fulfil his destiny. Needless to say, this isn't as simple as it sounds!

Hello everyone,

What a year it’s been. Where to start? Well, I won’t dwell on the virus, lockdowns or any of that, because millions of column inches and tweets have been devoted to that elsewhere. You didn’t come here for that – you want to hear when the next Time Bubble book is coming out!

I’m pleased to say that the answer is soon. I have faced a number of challenges this year which have delayed progress. Firstly, I had to home school the children for three months earlier in the year. Secondly, and I won’t go into great detail on this as I am not one to whinge about health issues, I am waiting for eye surgery which I hope to have in the first few months of next year. As things stand, I can still write and work, but I have to go slower than before. This is also the reason you have not seen much in the way of posts from me because I have dedicated all my time to getting the book completed to the standard you both expect and deserve.

I am very happy with the end result, provisionally titled Return to Tomorrow. It is a sequel to My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday, featuring Thomas Scott’s third journey through life, in which he has dreams and visions of his previous lives. He has one mission – to make it to the day he is destined to meet his future wife, Sarah, without disturbing the timeline. So far so good. Then another time traveller, Ben, shows up with very different ideas and the two men soon clash.

The story follows the pair from the gleaming spires of late 1980s Oxford, to the heat of Ibiza at the peak of the clubbing scene in 1998.

You’ll be pleased to hear that Josh makes a couple of cameos. He is the only character to appear in every book so far so I couldn’t leave him out.

I am very happy with the way the story has turned out. The lives of the characters intertwine well and as always, there are references to happenings in previous books – and possibly ones yet to come!

When will it be out? I am aiming for some time in February. I have completed the final draft and passed it on to an editor for proofing. It will then undergo a final edit. I do not have a cover yet, but have been in touch with my artist, Dani, and we will be working on some ideas.

One final thing before I go – I will be making the Kindle edition of Book 1 in the series, The Time Bubble, completely free to download from Amazon on Christmas Day to encourage new readers into the series. If you have any friends who you think might enjoy a freebie, please let them know. Hopefully they will enjoy it enough to shell out for the others!

Best wishes to you all and I do hope you have a nice Christmas, even under these trying circumstances. I am sure that we can look forward to better times ahead. And also a book 12 at some point. I have no idea what that will be yet, but something will come to me, it always does. As I have said before, as long as you keep enjoying them, I will keep writing them.

Jason

I watch a lot of TV - probably more than I should since I got Netflix, but hey, it's winter and the sun sets ridiculously early, and I've got 91 episodes of Orange is the new Black to get through, amongst other things.

What do you think about teasers in TV programmes - in particular those that give a hint about what's to come? I'm talking about something shocking and unexpected in the pre-credits sequence that's going to happen much later in the show. After the opening credits you get a caption along the lines of "Three Days Earlier" so you know you'll be working up to what you saw before.

Personally, I've always liked this, and the literary equivalent is the Prologue. I used to feel that my books started rather slowly so I gave it a try in Class of '92, my last book, which opened with a dinosaur rampaging through Oxford. I think that got people's attention.

For my new book, I've decided to go down the same route and opened the book with a truly shocking opening in which two of the most beloved characters of the series find themselves in mortal peril.Those of you local to where the books are set may recognise the location - it's the roof of the Sainsbury car park in Bicester and the stairs leading down to the shop.

The good news is you don't have to wait until the end of the month to read the prologue as I'm releasing it as a teaser right here right now. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for the book's release on 29th December.

What's in the new book, without giving too much away? It's a book of two halves, really. In the first half, Josh and the team get involved in some new experiments travelling back within their own time streams. This gives us a chance to see the Time Bubble team again when they were young, as Josh faces off against his old enemy Dan in a legendary pub crawl. Later, things take a more serious turn when a new and far deadlier foe emerges, tying in with this prologue.

Enjoy!

Prologue
June 2025
Kaylee was crippled with fear in a way she never had been before. It was the kind of fear that people only felt at the very real prospect of imminent death, and it was consuming her whole body like a slug of poison coursing through her veins.
She was a lithe, fit woman in her mid-twenties but right now she felt as weak and helpless as a frail, old woman. Frantically she tried to suppress her body’s overwhelming reflex to be physically sick and to summon up the energy she needed to keep running from her assailant.
As she descended the stairs on the fire escape that led down to the ground below, the desire to throw up was too strong and she paused briefly, leaning over the metal bannister to projectile vomit over the side.
The staircase, behind the superstore, ran all the way from the top floor of the car park above to the entrance to the shop below. As the splatter of her semi-digested breakfast hit the floor some thirty feet below, she heard a woman’s voice further down the stairwell exclaiming, “Disgusting!”
That was all very well for her to say, thought Kaylee, but she hadn’t just seen her husband murdered in cold blood right in front of her.
Barely a minute ago, up on the roof, she had seen her beloved Charlie hit by a futuristic laser weapon that had made him briefly glow an incredibly bright blue before completely vanishing.
The unidentified, black-clad and masked assassin had then turned the weapon on Kaylee but the young woman had been nimble enough to just about scramble out of the way, leaving her abandoned Sainsbury’s trolley to be zapped into oblivion instead.
Despite being utterly traumatised at seeing the love of her life vaporised right in front of her, her survival instincts had kicked in and she had ducked behind a large, white Transit van that was pulling out of a parking space close to the sliding glass doors that led to the entrance.
From there she had managed to dive through the doors, despite a third thunderous laser blast shot taking out the van and presumably the unfortunate occupant within it.Desperate to escape, she headed towards the lift doors, but she soon realised there was no escape that way.
A crude, handwritten note attached to the lift doors informed her it was out of order again, leaving her with a choice of the travelator or the stairs, a decision which needed to be made in a split second. She opted for the latter, figuring they were less open, making her a more difficult target for the assassin who she assumed would be coming after her. She could also see that there were people blocking the travelator with their trolleys – she would be a sitting duck.
As she burst through the doors and began to descend the stairwell, there was only one word in her mind and that was “why?”
Was this some random terror attack with some new type of weapon she had never seen or heard of before? Or was it a premeditated hit and, if so, why was whoever it was targeting her and Charlie? They were just a normal young couple doing their Saturday morning shopping. They didn’t have any enemies.
It had been the most ordinary of days until they had emerged onto the top floor of the car park. Charlie had been pushing the trolley and they had been chatting amiably about their plans for the weekend. Their friends Josh, Lauren and Hannah were coming around for dinner and they had just bought everything they needed, not just the food but also copious amounts of alcohol.
That dinner was never going to happen now, she thought, as she willed herself on, leaping down the stairs, three steps at a time. She was desperate for what she hoped would be the relative safety of the store: at least there were security guards there. Admittedly they were probably more used to dealing with shoplifters slipping bottles of vodka into their coat pockets than assassins with laser guns, but it was better than nothing.
These and countless other thoughts whirled through her head in the relatively short time it took to descend the stairs. This couldn’t just be some random terror attack. There had been other people around at the top of the car park, but the assassin had ignored them, focusing solely on her and Charlie.
There was no doubt it was the two of them the assassin had been after, and Kaylee knew that escaping through the doors had only given her a temporary respite. She felt a growing feeling of despair welling up inside her at the realisation that her chances of getting out of this alive were slim.
Part of her almost didn’t want to escape. Charlie was her whole life. Without him was it even worth surviving? Should she just give in and accept her fate, like a condemned prisoner at the gallows? But then she would never know the reason behind all of this, and she doubted that the assassin was going to give her the courtesy of an explanation before blowing her away into oblivion.
There was a tiny flicker of hope inside her that perhaps Charlie wasn’t dead. Perhaps the laser beam hadn’t been a weapon but instead had just transported him somewhere else. It was the stuff of science fiction, but after all the adventures with the Time Bubble a few years previously, her mind was open to all kinds of possibilities.
The only other comforting thought she had, and it was an extremely tenuous one, was that if the assassin did kill her, maybe she and Charlie would be together again somewhere. It was an odd thing to think of because she had never believed in any sort of deity, but the likelihood of impending doom had suddenly made the existence of some sort of afterlife an extremely appealing proposition.
By now she was halfway down the stairwell at the entrance to the middle level of the car park. As she swung around the corner towards the next flight of stairs, she almost knocked a mother with two young girls out of the way in her haste.
The woman gave her an extremely filthy look which suggested she was the one who had seen the contents of Kaylee’s stomach descending at high speed towards the ground floor moments before.
There was no time to apologise or issue a warning: what use would that be? If the assassin was only after Kaylee, these people would be safe, and if not, no one would be against the sort of weaponry the killer was toting.
Kaylee risked a quick glance back up the stairs but there no sign that she was being followed. Briefly she allowed herself a little hope that maybe she was going to get out of this alive after all.
Her hopes were swiftly quashed as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs and the assassin reappeared, right out of thin air directly in front of her. With a sinking feeling, she knew now that the game was up.
It was the first time Kaylee had got a proper look at her executioner, not that it gave her any clue as to the identity. The assassin was so heavily clad in black body armour and a mask that covered the whole face, bar the eyes, that she couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. Come to that, she couldn’t even be sure it was human – the armour was made of some strange-looking metallic material that made her wonder if it might not be some sort of robot or android. Could it be an alien, or something from the future?
“Why are you doing this?” cried Kaylee as the killer raised the weapon that had already killed her husband. They would be her final words as no reply was forthcoming.
There was a high-pitched whistling sound and then a single brilliant, bright blue laser bolt consumed her body, instantly annihilating her. Barely anything was left behind, just the single yellow flower that she had been wearing in her hair which was blown off her head by the blast. Other than that, there was nothing, not even a hint of smoke.
Beneath the mask, the assassin smiled, pulled a wand-like device out of a side pocket and pressed a button, before stepping forward and vanishing
Other than the small yellow flower fluttering slowly downwards towards the regurgitated bits of muesli and skimmed milk congealing on the floor, it was as if neither of them had ever been there.To be continued... 
Many of you will recognise this location.
It's The Bridge of Sighs in Oxford which is featured in a key scene.
Vanishing Point will be released on 29th December 2019 and you can reserve your copy here: Vanishing Point