Dear subscribers,
Publication day is finally here!
And there will be a party
With cake and drinks
And you are all invited ๐
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Today, my novella-in-flash โฐFifteen Brief Moments in Timeโฐ
is published with V Press.
The journey to become a traditionally published author has been a long one.
It's taken time.
Now, I finally get to know what readers think of my 'very fast and very philosophical' book.
It includes the following characters:
An adulterous philosophy professor
A grieving mother desperate to finish her degree
A time-travelling delivery worker
A girl who documents her own psychedelic trips
A boy who dreams of living on the moon
It charts fifteen transformative moments in these people's lives.
...And the professor discovers something incredible about the nature of time.๐ฎ
Recent praise for Fifteen Moments:
โPhilip Charter has written an intriguing and emotionally involving book, where notions of how we experience time interweaves with the visceral complexity of life itself. Using the scenario of a single lecture about Time as the centrepiece, the author passes the narrative baton around a cast of intriguing characters, each with their own compelling issues and concerns. Charter playfully uses the constraints of form, setting, and the linear nature of storytelling, to create a fresh and welcome addition to the novella in flash form.โ
KM Elkes, author of All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019)
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Oh, and the launch party?
It's next Monday, 6th June at 7PM UK time on Zoom.
I'll be answering some questions and doing a reading from the book.
Join me to raise a glass and celebrate. (digital cake and drinks provided)
Please save the link or create an entry in your online diary. I'd love to see you there.
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Click the link to attend the launch party
Monday 6th June 7pm (UTC+1)
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In the meantime, hereโs an excerpt from the book:
Luca Cangemi and everyone he knows will be long dead, but the moment will come. Theoretical physicists believe it will be anywhere from 2.8 to 22 billion years in the future. In that moment, everything reverses.
ย ย ย The Big Crunch is a cosmological event in our future and our past in which the density of matter grows sufficiently that gravitational attraction overcomes the expansion that began with the Big Bang. Entropy reverses and the second law is broken. Chaos retreats.
ย ย ย Order is regained as space contracts. Broken rocks reform and decayed bodies reanimate. We live our lives in reverse, unexperiencing everything we did the first time around, moving backwards, shrinking towards birth. Instead of questions about creation, we search for the harbinger of order. Who began this? What is our final form?
ย ย ย Luca imagines the crowds at his book signings dissipating and the offices of his academic fellowships decreasing in size. Wrong turns are righted and his family grows closer. His briefcase heals itself and he returns it to his mother. Life rewinds back to him as a young boy, unreading the words that inspired him to look for meaning in all of this. If it can all be reversed, are all shared experiences undone? All bonds broken? Luca returns into his parents, then ancestors, apes, microbes, and nothing. The earth, the planets and stars all merge into one perfectly ordered mass.
ย ย ย Yet, this is not an end, but another beginning in which the universe is reborn in another bang. Galaxies, planets, plants, and philosophy professors will live the same lives as they did billions of years before (and after). The process of positive and negative entropy repeats and we all make the same mistakes again.
Time elapsed: the infinitely repeating cycle of a universe
***
Iโm so excited that readers can finally purchase a copy.
If you are based in the UK, itโs best to buy directly from the publisher.
This book is not available on Amazon or in eBook form.
Please support wonderful independent publishers like V Press by buying a copy!
If you live outside the UK, feel free to get in touch and Iโll send a signed copy direct.
I really hope to see lots of you at the launch party.
Iโm counting on your support!