Strange Timing
First of all, thank you to all those who have taken the time to read (and review, on this site and others) Entanglement - I’ve always believed that first and foremost a writer ought to treat the reader’s time as the most valuable thing when it comes to books, because it is.
Entanglement was published at perhaps the worst time possible - the middle of March 2020 (the Ides, in fact), and just a few days before the first lockdowns became official. So no author events at bookshops, no promotions to hand out, and everyone’s minds understandably preoccupied with getting a handle on the new reality, the new world, we found ourselves in. For a long while, I simply forgot about the book I had just written.
As we gradually find ourselves on the other side (with a few promotions and advertisements to help along the way), there have been more copies of Entanglement sold in the past two months than in the previous two years, and that’s deeply appreciated.
If it matters at all, here are a few thoughts that occur to me when I look back on how the book has aged, something that naturally comes up when thinking about novels, and particularly science fiction stories.
The theme of technology’s power to alter our reality certainly hasn’t lost relevance, and if anything has become more pronounced. The re-emergence of Russia as a major shaper of world events is an interesting coincidence, though it plays out very differently in the novel. But in the end, the science fiction elements of Entanglement were never meant to be the centerpiece of the book, but were there to highlight how people connect with each other in mysterious, wonderful ways, ways that technology can’t quite quantify or control. And that, I think, is a realization that is emerging with increasing force at this moment.
Which leads me to a special (and still perplexing) thank you, given to all the Canadian readers of the novel. Other than occasional trips to Toronto many years ago when I was in grad school at SUNY Buffalo, and the belief that Robertson Davies doesn’t get the recognition he deserves (at least not in the States), I have absolutely no particular connection to Canada. At the same time, of the readers of Entanglement, an absolutely inexplicably high proportion are in Canada. I’m not sure what to make of that, but thank you nonetheless.
One last minor point: what would I change about the book if I could? Well, the most consistent and understandable critique about my novel is its lack of chapter divisions. I won’t bother explaining all the reasons I omitted them, but it was not the original plan and it does bother me a bit. At first I wanted to divide the book into levels and stages, like certain video games (world 1-1, world 1-2…world 3-4, etc), and I wish I could go back and put those in. Highlighting the literary conceit of the novel being the stream of consciousness journal entry of a high school senior probably wasn’t worth the burden it put on the reader.
Entanglement
Entanglement was published at perhaps the worst time possible - the middle of March 2020 (the Ides, in fact), and just a few days before the first lockdowns became official. So no author events at bookshops, no promotions to hand out, and everyone’s minds understandably preoccupied with getting a handle on the new reality, the new world, we found ourselves in. For a long while, I simply forgot about the book I had just written.
As we gradually find ourselves on the other side (with a few promotions and advertisements to help along the way), there have been more copies of Entanglement sold in the past two months than in the previous two years, and that’s deeply appreciated.
If it matters at all, here are a few thoughts that occur to me when I look back on how the book has aged, something that naturally comes up when thinking about novels, and particularly science fiction stories.
The theme of technology’s power to alter our reality certainly hasn’t lost relevance, and if anything has become more pronounced. The re-emergence of Russia as a major shaper of world events is an interesting coincidence, though it plays out very differently in the novel. But in the end, the science fiction elements of Entanglement were never meant to be the centerpiece of the book, but were there to highlight how people connect with each other in mysterious, wonderful ways, ways that technology can’t quite quantify or control. And that, I think, is a realization that is emerging with increasing force at this moment.
Which leads me to a special (and still perplexing) thank you, given to all the Canadian readers of the novel. Other than occasional trips to Toronto many years ago when I was in grad school at SUNY Buffalo, and the belief that Robertson Davies doesn’t get the recognition he deserves (at least not in the States), I have absolutely no particular connection to Canada. At the same time, of the readers of Entanglement, an absolutely inexplicably high proportion are in Canada. I’m not sure what to make of that, but thank you nonetheless.
One last minor point: what would I change about the book if I could? Well, the most consistent and understandable critique about my novel is its lack of chapter divisions. I won’t bother explaining all the reasons I omitted them, but it was not the original plan and it does bother me a bit. At first I wanted to divide the book into levels and stages, like certain video games (world 1-1, world 1-2…world 3-4, etc), and I wish I could go back and put those in. Highlighting the literary conceit of the novel being the stream of consciousness journal entry of a high school senior probably wasn’t worth the burden it put on the reader.
Entanglement
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