Randy Brown is the author of the award-winning novel First as well as the Desert Sun thrillers: Sunset, Sundown, and Sunburst. His books have been enjoyed by readers around the world. He currently resides in Texas and loves summertime, Guinness, cigars, and trying to smoke the perfect brisket.
TBE: In your book, Next Time, The concept of Miriam’s time travel is quite unique – she only moves forward in time and can’t control it. What inspired this particular twist on time travel?
Randy Brown: It was quite literally a flash of inspiration when I awoke at 3:30 a.m. from jet lag after an overseas trip. Unlike most of my story ideas, which marinate in my brain for months or years, the idea hit me at a moment when all I wanted was to get a few hours of sleep. When I thought about it a little more the next morning, I liked the idea and felt it was different enough to use in a new book. In most time-travel stories either the person controls the travel through a device or some outside source, known or unknown, draws the person through time. The concept that it’s uncontrollable for Miriam provided the opportunity to ask why. And to play around with how it contrasts to what we non-time-travelers perceive as real or normal life.
TBE: William and Miriam’s relationship spans centuries but only amounts to weeks or months of actual time together. How did you approach writing a love story with such unusual constraints?
Randy Brown: The first thing I had to do was decide how to narrate the story. I felt like the only way to tell it would be through the eyes of William, the person who’s not jumping forward in time. If I told any of it through the eyes of Miriam, the time-traveler, then the initial skepticism of the reader disappears, and I wanted the reader to be on the journey toward acceptance with the narrator. After that, the question became how a regular person would fill in the gaps between Miriam’s appearances.
William spends time with friends, family, second-guesses his decisions about Miriam, and even has a moral failing. Those are things that happen in real life with regular relationships and they become more intense in the context of William and Miriam’s brief encounters. At one point in the story, Miriam tells William he gets time to think about their relationship between her appearances and she doesn’t have that luxury. For example, the conversation they had four months ago in his time has only been five minutes in her past. I thought that was an important point to get across and explore.
TBE: The ethical implications of time travel are touched on in the story. Did you grapple with any ethical dilemmas yourself while crafting this narrative?
Randy Brown: Some of the people investigating Miriam’s appearances allude to crimes they think she (or people like her) potentially could commit, like robbery or murder, and then disappear. The perfect crime, right? It was a bit of a paranoid thought process for the investigators, but also not out of the realm of possibility in that world. I didn’t go too far down that road since that would’ve made Next Time a totally different type of story.
The only real ethical dilemma for me regarded Miriam’s request for William to help her commit suicide if it looked like she’d live out the rest of her life in captivity. I wish I could’ve spent more time developing what in her history would cause her to make such a request and had the two of them spend a few pages discussing. It wasn’t an easy request for her to make and certainly outside ethical bounds, but also understandable for someone who’s lived Miriam’s life.
TBE: William’s decision to genetically modify himself to time travel with Miriam is a huge leap of faith. What made you decide to have him take such a drastic step?
Randy Brown: To me it was the difference between writing a tragedy or a love story with a happy ending. I even made a comment about the ending in my original brainstorming notes and knew I couldn’t write a story that ended with Miriam appearing one day and standing by William’s tombstone. Sure, it’d be a striking, heartbreaking image, but kind of a downer. William taking that leap of faith into an unknown future is the ultimate expression of his love for Miriam. The urgency of his medical condition gave an extra push for him to decide quickly.
TBE: The book explores themes of sacrifice, mortality, and hope. How do you see these themes interacting in William and Miriam’s journey?
Randy Brown: Self-sacrifice was one of the major themes I mapped out for Next Time. William is a guy who’s seemingly planned his entire life, but he’s going to sacrifice that because he wants to be with Miriam whenever she appears. He sacrifices his future with his father and sister’s family when he starts time-traveling with Miriam. Miriam touches on theme of mortality several times, especially when she comments that she usually knows a person for only a year of her time.
It’d be emotionally wracking to live that kind of life and part of what compels her to be in love with William while at the same time knowing their bond will be short-lived for her. Regarding the theme of hope, William’s cancer served to sever any hope from their relationship to ultimately providing the basis for his decision to time-travel with Miriam. In the end, they actually realize the hope of living out their lives together, an unexpected gift which most of us take for granted.
TBE: You incorporate some interesting historical details, like the Irish Potato Famine. How much research went into the historical elements of the story?
Randy Brown: Some of the historical points come from reading a ton of history books and biographies over the years. It’s much more fun to read about it now than it was to study in school. Bits in the book about Ireland were inspired by a trip we took there right before I started writing Next Time. Ireland is an enchanting place and I’m glad I could work a little bit of it into the book, even the tragic parts like the famine.
I’ve also listened to plenty of history podcasts when I’m out jogging, which provided background about raiders along the British and Irish coasts where young Miriam was abducted. I’ve been to Boston a number of times, so I guess you could count that as research on elements in the book like running alongside the Charles River, riding the T, and the Freedom Trail, among others. When it comes to direct research, I’m lazy. I guess it’s the accumulation of a lifetime of what you might call passive research that all comes together in the story.
TBE: The ending leaves some questions open about William and Miriam’s future. Did you always intend to end it this way or did you consider other endings?
Randy Brown: I had to go back to my old notes to refresh my memory on this one. I would say, yes, that’s pretty much how I drew it up. I liked the idea that they’re time travelers and they take that step together into the future, not knowing what they’ll find on the other side.
A different ending where Miriam goes on alone and ends the book as a tragic figure could’ve been interesting, but that wasn’t how I wanted the story to end. Plus, I’m not sure I could’ve pulled it off to my own satisfaction, much less to the reader’s. There’s a conversation in the book where William realizes Miriam could easily live past the year 5000 and it blows his mind. That concept is frightening yet also raises a challenge of adventure. I prefer the ending with that kind of hope rather than tragedy.
TBE: Miriam has survived for centuries by herself before meeting William. How did you develop her character to be both vulnerable and incredibly resilient?
Randy Brown: I threw in references to her past, like her brother teaching her to hunt and fish, or encounters with the Indian tribes in pre-colonial days. I tried to avoid being heavy-handed with those comments but still putting in enough to make the reader think she could do those things.
Just like any of us, Miriam has times where she seems tough as nails and other moments where she feels small and frightened. She has to have a certain amount of steel in her backbone to survive like she did, but I tried to make sure she came across as all-too-human at certain times. It’d be easy for her to emotionally wall off anyone she encounters after centuries of just trying to survive, but that wouldn’t make her an interesting character, would it?
TBE: Government agencies play a significant role in the story. What made you decide to include them as antagonists?
Randy Brown: In every story you need conflict, and in this case I slowly escalated the stakes by starting with local investigators who handed off to the mysterious National Security Agency. Miriam had been appearing and disappearing in the Boston area for decades and someone must have seen her suddenly blink in or out and reported it to the police.
The natural progression to the Federal government seemed logical as more people became aware of Miriam’s disappearances. What scientist wouldn’t want to study Miriam? By putting a face to the government agency with the character of Agent Vance, I tried to make it more personal than just a nameless group of agents in dark suits and SUVs. Full disclosure, I worked a dozen years for the Treasury Department, which gave me way more insight than I needed regarding how people in the government think.
TBE: Time travel stories often grapple with paradoxes. How did you approach keeping the time travel elements consistent and logical throughout the book?
Randy Brown: Well, it wasn’t easy. Not only do I have several documents on my computer for breaking down those elements, but plenty of handwritten notes and scribbles as well. In my previous book, First, I had a section that was very timebound and I had to break the story down to the hour and make sure I didn’t contradict anything in that sequence. I thought to myself, let’s not do that again.
Of course, I did it on even bigger scale with Next Time. Part of the challenge was keeping the story consistent with what went on in the world over the last couple of decades, like the pandemic, or even the baseball schedule when William and Miriam went to a Red Sox game. The biggest challenge came with trying to explain why Miriam disappears when stressed. In the end, I came to the same conclusion Dr. Goddard did when he told William he didn’t know. I realized sometimes you just trust the reader and don’t have to explain every detail.
