ON Friday Raymond Evans will deliver an author talk on his latest novel.
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Time travel and world-first experimentation are meaty subjects to bite into on the third outing as a novelist.
But boldness is one of the Port Macquarie resident's strongest qualities.
The Port Macquarie-based author published his first book in 2012.
The fictional 'Flashback: Time and time again' marks Evans' first foray into science fiction writing. It features Dr Laurie Stevens' journeying back 300,000 years to study Earth's ancient ancestors. Naturally, a raft of complications beset the good doctor at every turn, and he is forced to exhaust all resources in a desperate battle to survive and change Earth for the better.
Mr Evans' desire to wield the pen was always strong, so after retirement he joined the University of the Third Age.
His latest book is actually the result of his first attempt at fiction, though it has been on the back burner for some time.
"It came from one idea: what would it be like to be one of our earliest ancestors?" he said. "What would it be like to suddenly wake up and find yourself in this place and know nothing?"
But next came the inevitable frustration all writers experience.
The solution? Time travel.
"I dreamed up this idea of a spin-off from the Large Hadron Collider where they find a shift in time among the particles, they explore that and in four years time they've built this time travel machine," he said.
He admits to getting attached to his central characters, saying they become like children to him.
But the sadness when the writing process ends is soon replaced by the hard graft of editing and shaping the final product.
He is much indebted to his "lovely friends" who help him with the process of proofing and final editing.
Next he plans to revisit in greater detail the Stone Age world of the Pacific that he wrote about in his first book 'Towards Rahiti'.
"I want to go back and do justice to that world and its explorers," he said. "I want to extend the story and end it with the populating of New Zealand."
He encouraged people to join a writer's group so stories "don't die with them".
"Go along and the groups will help you. They certainly helped me."
Mr Evans will deliver his talk in Port Macquarie Library's Meeting Room at 10am on Friday, June 12
Please RSVP by phoning the library on 6581 8755 or email portlib@mnclibrary.org.au
