Time’s New Dawn follows a woman caught in a loop of time, memory, collapse, and responsibility as she confronts the consequences of dark matter technology and fractured timelines. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?

I wanted to write a time-travel story in which creating a paradox was impossible. I thought about the problem for years before the model used in this book finally occurred to me. Once I had it, I began asking questions: What happens to the grandfather paradox? What happens if you travel to a point before your own birth? What happens to the version of you who should already exist in the past?

When I realized how this model answered those questions, the rest of the story began to come together. The rules of time travel did not simply support the plot; they created it.

How did you balance Rebecca’s intelligence with her vulnerability? 

I never saw Rebecca’s intelligence as something that made her invulnerable. In many ways, it is how she protects herself. She relies on logic, routines, and scientific analysis because they give her a sense of control. But time travel forces her into situations where she does not have enough information, where the rules are still being discovered, and where every decision could erase someone she loves.

She can diagnose a temporal instability or understand a machine no one else can, but she cannot calculate whom to trust or know whether changing the past will make things better. She also makes serious mistakes because she acts on what she believes to be true at the time. I think her vulnerability comes from the fact that her intelligence allows her to understand the scale of the consequences without necessarily knowing how to prevent them.

How much scientific research went into developing the concepts of dark matter and temporal technology? 

When I wrote the first draft, all I knew was that I wanted dark matter to make time travel possible. That version of the story did not contain much detail about how the technology actually worked.

After finishing the draft, I began asking a larger question: If this model resolves some of the traditional paradoxes of time travel, could the same fictional framework also provide interesting ways of thinking about problems in general relativity or quantum mechanics?

That led me to the idea that some quantum effects might be interpreted as extremely small-scale variations in the flow of time. From there, the science of the novel began to take shape: time as a physical medium, dark matter as time in a condensed state, and temporal technology as a way of compressing, redirecting, or reversing that flow.

As I researched further, I was surprised to find real scientific papers exploring concepts that echoed parts of my fictional model, including superfluid dark matter, emergent spacetime, and unusual relationships between time and quantum behavior. The ideas in the novel remain speculative, but I included a list of the relevant papers at the end of the book so readers can see where the fiction overlaps with genuine scientific discussion.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available? 

I have several ideas in development, including a direct sequel that I am currently calling Time’s First Dawn. It would explore the consequences of the first novel and reveal more about the previous timelines and the events that occurred within them.

I do not have a release date yet. I want to make sure the next story earns its place and expands the world rather than simply repeating what came before. But there is much more of this story left to tell.

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