JT Nicholas is the author of Re-Coil, out this week from Titan Books. Out on a salvage mission Carter Langston is murdered by animated corpses left behind on the target ship. Yet in this future, a consciousness backup can be safely downloaded into a brand-new body, losing only the memories of what happened between your last backup and your death. But when Langston wakes in his new body he is immediately attacked in the medbay and has to fight once again for his life – and his immortality. Nicholas is also the author of the neo-noir SF series The New Lyons Sequence, and answered a few questions from Paul Simpson.

What can you remember about the very first story you wrote – and what inspired it?

Oh God. You had to ask this question. I wish I could give you a cool sci-fi shoot-em-up answer, but the first story I remember writing was in the second grade (US… I think that’s Year 3 UK). It was about a kid (me, of course) opening a nut factory. Why a nut factory, you ask? Well, my given name is Nicholas, so it was… wait for it… Nick’s Nut Factory. And the thing I remember most about said story was the inclusion of a recipe – complex and detailed, at least for a 7-year-old – for baking nuts. I don’t have a copy of this story, but I imagine it was every bit as cringy as it sounds typing it out now. And as I’ve said “nuts” far too many times in one answer, I think I’ll leave it at that!

Was there a specific image, character or sequence that sparked off Re-Coil?

Yes, at least as far as starting to write it. When I first started, I was thinking something more sci-fi horror (think Alien or Event Horizon), and I had this image of someone cutting open a derelict vessel and finding all hands dead aboard. And I thought it would be cool if at least one of them appeared to have been trying to escape whatever was on the ship. The story ended up going more cyberpunk than horror, but that’s the first spark that started it.

Did you have the idea for it before writing your previous trilogy – and if so, did you find when you were writing that that you wanted to keep scenes or characters for Re-Coil?

The New Lyons Sequence (that first trilogy) came first in terms of when I got the idea, but I started working on Re-Coil before I started working on SINthetic. I had maybe a third of the original draft of Re-Coil written before I got stuck and shelved it for a bit. Mind you, at that point, I wasn’t under contract for anything and I was writing for fun. Well, fun with the intent of trying to get published, but I didn’t have any deadlines. SINthetic (the first version, which ended up being quite different from the final product) flowed without hitting any speed bumps or blocks, and then I got the offer from Rebel Base on a trilogy. That pretty much put Re-Coil on the back burner. I was under a really tight deadline for SINthetic and the sequels, so I didn’t have any headspace to even think about Re-Coil.

But when I finished up with the New Lyons Sequence and was sort of looking around trying to figure out what to write next, I opened up Re-Coil and started reading what I had written previously. It was like talking to an old friend and I knew I needed to finish it.

Going from a trilogy to a standalone, did you find it easier to do the worldbuilding, or did you feel you had to condense elements to fit the word count?

Worldbuilding for Re-Coil was harder, without question. Partly that’s because SINthetic is set on an Earth not super different from ours. But mostly it’s because there were more sensitive topics in Re-Coil. I didn’t set out to write a book that touched on things like gender, sexual, and racial identity, but it was sort of an inevitable consequence of the central premise of being stuffed into new bodies. How would society view gender or race or sexuality if a person might very well be stuck into a biologically vastly different body from the one into which they were born? How would they view things like marriage and children? Religion?

Given the current state of things, I couldn’t just gloss over those issues – it would have been a total copout. But trying to find the right tone, to present more than just a homogenized Eutopia where (to paraphrase The Lego Movie) everyone was awesome with everything was tough. I’m still not sure I threaded that needle perfectly, but I can say with conviction that I did the best I could and at some point you have to let the book out into the wild and let other people judge how well you did. Which is mildly terrifying, but also part and parcel of creating anything.

Do you plot out the entire novel before you start, or simply have ideas of “markers” you need to hit?

More the latter. I have certain things that I know I want to happen, and I know roughly when in the story they’re supposed to happen. But how I get from one to the next? Most of the time, I have no idea, at least not until I sit down and start writing. I kind of prefer it that way. I’ve had to work from detailed outlines, and for me, it’s just a bit too confining. I like the notion of having the wiggle room for characters to move and change and grow in unexpected directions.

J.T.Nicholas PhotoWhich element of the writing do you find the most challenging?

I’m going to assume you’re talking about writing in general, as opposed to the various stages of the publishing process. If so, the answer is probably maintaining the discipline to sit down and do it every day. I spent a lot of years in corporate America and there was always a boss somewhere who needed something right away. Don’t get me wrong – I’m one of those fortunate few who legitimately liked most of my managers and such throughout my career, but the culture of business in America is largely one of fire drills. You know, the “Oh God, we need this thing. Drop everything you’re doing and do it right now!” I don’t have that anymore, which is amazing. But it also makes it difficult sometimes to get motivated. I have to treat writing like a job – sit down in the morning and start pounding out words to hit my (self-imposed) quota and just keep writing until I do. If I don’t, I find myself blindly surfing the internet or thinking, maybe it would be totally cool to take a “sick day” today.

If you’re talking more about the writing process from a publishing standpoint the answer is, unequivocally, synopses. I hate writing synopses with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns. I think I suck at them, but you absolutely have to do them when you’re trying to sell a novel to a publisher. To borrow a phrase from some of my younger friends, they are the literal worst.

How much did Re-Coil alter during the editorial process?

Not a ton. The focus was around setting development and ensuring careful treatment of some of the issues mentioned above. The plot changed a tiny bit, more of a raising of the stakes than a substantive change. And there was a lot of refinement of existing stuff. My editors are amazing and even though the process can be painful (no one likes having to go in and change stuff they thought was good already or clarify something that might be misunderstood) the book that came out of the other end of the process was hands-down a better book than the one I submitted.

You’ve talked about your upbringing and living in multiple places – how do you think that has influenced your writing in terms of characterisation, particularly?

I think the first thing is that it taught me that people aren’t really that different from one another. Most of us want the same kind of things out of life, regardless of what country we grew up in. I think that makes it a little easier to treat characters from different places more realistically and less stereotypically.

The other big impact it had was instilling in me a sort of practicality. That’s more from the military connection to all those moves than the moves themselves, but I grew up in a very practical household, regardless of what state or country that household happened to be sitting in at any given moment. Problems were things to be solved, not worried about, and the ones that couldn’t be solved were to be endured until they could. That sounds a little harsher on paper than I intend… I really value that mindset, and I think, from a characterization (side note – my spellchecker seems to have decided that US and UK spellings are both acceptable at this point) standpoint, it’s a trait that shows up in a lot of my characters, a sort of blend of stoicism and pragmatism.

And finally, what’s next? A return to this world?

I’m working on a second book for Titan, but it’s not in the same world as Re-Coil. It’s another sci-fi, but it’s probably too early to say much more than that.

I do have a sequel planned for Re-Coil, but we’ll have to see how the “first” book does before we know if a second one is viable. I’d love to return to the world someday, though.

 

Re-Coil is out now from Titan Books. Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk

Thanks to Sarah Mather for her help in arranging this interview.