Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day is an annual celebration on the fascinating concept of time travel. Clive Stephens, author of the epic YA sci-fi trilogy, The Restoration Project, doesn’t shy away from this complex and captivating phenomenon in his debut novel, Gambit, out January 2025. He has crafted a gripping tale sure to thrill readers as they follow his unwitting pair of protagonists on their time-hopping adventure.
Read on to hear more about Clive’s fascination with time travel…
“As the 8th of December is Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day, let’s travel back to a day I had been doing just that.
It’s morning, in 2007, and I am waking from a dream where I had been visiting my best friend in hospital. He said that the last thing he remembered was being inside a particular building, and I immediately set off to investigate. I remember time travelling to the future and the experience being deeply unsettling.
Dreams are normally quickly forgotten, but this one stayed with me. I thought if I acknowledged it, by writing it down, I would be able to move on. But I just couldn’t shake it.
Over time, I wrote about this dream that was haunting me, and the basics of a story developed. But it was limited.
To help me develop it further, I sought out writing classes and later joined a writing group facilitated by Magical Journeys Claire Steele. The group gave me skills, peers and encouragement to improve my writing.”
“Personally, I find time fascinating. Our experience in the present is part of an ongoing story, sandwiched by the past and future. The ancient past is restricted by the few words that survived millennia of history, and the future is being revealed to us one moment at time.
Both are a curiosity.
Some stories are over in minutes, and others extend beyond our lifetime. We all want to know where the story began, and how it will end. But could we survive in a different time if we travelled forward or back?
If you asked someone for the time, they would answer without a second thought. But the more detail you requested about the date, the more incredulous the response would be. In the first book in The Restoration Project trilogy, Gambit, the two teenagers find themselves in a place that doesn’t look familiar, and one asks for the year. The reply is:
“What year?” he almost spluttered, emphasising the second word. “You know, I might expect to rescue you from there and be asked what day it is, or maybe the month, but the year?”
The present is the place from which we experience time. No one travels outside of it. But what would happen if we did?”
