Jaclyn Moriarty, TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy.
[0:26]Jacqueline Moriarty is the author of Time Travel for Beginners.
[0:31]She is the award-winning author of Books for Readers of All Ages
[0:34]and has been the recipient of the NSW Premier's Literary Award,
[0:38]the Queensland Literary Award, and the Aurelius Award for Fantasy.
[0:42]Her books have been named Boston Globe Honor Books,
[0:45]White Raven Selections, and recognized by the American Library Association.
[0:48]A former media lawyer and one of the talented and popular Moriarty sisters,
[0:53]including Leanne and Nicola,
[0:55]Jacqueline lives in Sydney, Australia,
[0:57]along with her teenage son.
[0:59]Welcome, Jacqueline.
[1:01]Thank you so much for coming on totally books to talk about Time Traveler
[1:05]for Beginners and novel congratulations.
[1:07]It's a pleasure.
[1:08]Thank you so much for having me here and thank you.
[1:10]Thank you.
[1:11]You're so welcome.
[1:12]Oh my gosh, I love your voice, all the voices of the different characters,
[1:17]all of the characters themselves.
[1:19]I am obsessed with the way that you write,
[1:21]how funny and smart and sad and real, you're so good.
[1:26]You must know this, but you are so good.
[1:28]Oh, you're so lovely.
[1:30]I'm so happy to hear that.
[1:32]It's really, really lovely to hear.
[1:35]It's quite late here in Sydney,
[1:38]but I'm a night owl anyway, so it doesn't matter.
[1:42]But it is still the time of the night when I feel slightly dreamy.
[1:45]So that feels dreamy to me to hear it say so much.
[1:49]Thank you very much.
[1:51]Thank you, thank you.
[1:52]Very true.
[1:53]Oh my gosh, so funny.
[1:54]The nuts store.
[1:56]I mean, the confluence of all the different events in the book are just so brilliant.
[2:03]The commentary on having teenagers as well, you know,
[2:07]I have four kids and the letting them go to the mall.
[2:10]And what are they even doing there?
[2:12]And I thought that this would happen over time,
[2:15]but actually it happened overnight that suddenly they don't want to hang out.
[2:18]Like all of that resonated with me a lot as well.
[2:22]How old are your kids?
[2:24]They range from 11 to 19.
[2:27]Oh wow.
[2:28]Great, right?
[2:29]Yes.
[2:30]Different issues.
[2:32]My son is 19 now,
[2:34]and he's in a really lovely face.
[2:36]Like a beautiful young man.
[2:38]Oh, well, anyway.
[2:41]And of course, the concept of the book itself was genius.
[2:46]Like it really made me believe that this was possible,
[2:49]that it that a scientist could figure it out,
[2:52]and we can live in different versions of the multiverse.
[2:56]And as coined by, I guess, Henry James, as you say in the book,
[2:59]it was just brilliant.
[3:00]How did you think of this?
[3:02]You're so lovely.
[3:03]Thank you again.
[3:04]Or just enjoy in your kind words.
[3:06]Thank you.
[3:07]I'm aware of the idea.
[3:08]I can tell you where the idea came from originally.
[3:10]It was, um, I was writing a bus along a street in Sydney.
[3:17]And I looked out the window and saw a time travel agency.
[3:23]And for one moment, I honestly believed that somebody had discovered
[3:32]the secret to time travel, and that there was an actual storefront.
[3:36]I mean, I completely genuinely believe with all my hat.
[3:39]And I was so intensely excited.
[3:41]Someone's discovered the secret to time travel.
[3:43]And there's this storefront on this busy street.
[3:46]And I was thinking, why are people walking past it,
[3:49]paying no attention to it?
[3:51]And why are people on this bus not turning around and staring in amazement?
[3:55]And can they take you on trips anyway you want to in time?
[3:59]And do they have tours and tour guides taking you through different parts of time
[4:04]and the time travel agency?
[4:07]And then I looked back again.
[4:09]And so that it was a billboard for time magazine had slip sideways
[4:16]and was leaning against the window of a local travel agency.
[4:20]So there was no time travel agency.
[4:23]And to cope with my disappointment, I decided to write a book about it.
[4:30]Got your money's worth out of the bus drive.
[4:32]Let me say that.
[4:33]Part of what the book is really about,
[4:37]and maybe you should summarize it quickly for listeners.
[4:40]But part of it is about overcoming heartbreak.
[4:43]And part of it is about the what-ifs of life.
[4:45]And the people who you go on your journeys with,
[4:48]and all the different potential outcomes,
[4:51]which of course we all hold in our hands every day.
[4:53]We could do this and it would affect our lives this way.
[4:56]What about this way?
[4:57]And the idea that in your book,
[4:59]in your book, you can go back in time,
[5:02]but you can't affect the present that it just lives on
[5:05]in this other stream that could be a dream.
[5:07]I just find this so fascinating.
[5:09]So tell listeners a little bit more about the premise of the book
[5:12]and how you came to Tinker with the exact mechanics of the time
[5:17]travel and the scientists behind it
[5:19]and what you were really after when you were writing the book.
[5:24]Sure.
[5:25]Yes, that's a good question.
[5:27]And you express some of that so beautifully.
[5:29]You speak so beautifully.
[5:31]I love that.
[5:32]So I'll tell you what it's about.
[5:34]I'll tell you all the students what it's about.
[5:37]So time travel for beginners is the story of a nondescript storefront
[5:41]on a suburban street in Sydney between these sushi shop
[5:45]and a gelato bar.
[5:48]And it calls itself the time travel agency
[5:51]and promises its customers' short trips
[5:55]anywhere they want into the past.
[5:57]So they can go as far back as the times
[6:00]of when the oceans were just green, primordial material
[6:08]or as recently as your own kitchen last week
[6:12]or you can visit your teenage self
[6:14]and tell her to start washing her hair
[6:16]and having better posture.
[6:18]And the three main characters are Anna
[6:23]who has just got a job in the time travel agency
[6:26]and Teddy who wants to,
[6:29]who is a customer at the agency who wants to go back and visit
[6:33]times throughout his marriage
[6:36]because it has just fallen apart
[6:38]and he wants to figure out where he went wrong
[6:40]and put it back together again.
[6:42]And the third main character is Jade
[6:44]who thinks the whole thing is a giant hoax
[6:47]and wants to bone the place down.
[6:51]And the reason I, well, for a start
[6:54]I was interested in regret
[6:57]and the concept of regret
[7:01]and what my initial concept was
[7:04]I wanted to go, a character who's married has broken down
[7:07]and I wanted to be a woman who wants to see where it went wrong
[7:10]and to go back and see if she can unravel that
[7:13]and start again.
[7:15]But I was telling a friend about this idea
[7:18]and the friend said,
[7:21]broken relationships and regrets,
[7:24]that's nothing.
[7:26]The real regrets we have are to do with our children
[7:30]and mistakes we make as we are bringing them up.
[7:34]And this was a long time ago.
[7:36]My son was six years old at the time
[7:39]and at the time I thought to myself,
[7:43]privately, well,
[7:45]surely you can just make good decisions
[7:48]and not have any regrets
[7:50]because I was things were going pretty well
[7:52]with my little boy at the time
[7:54]and I just thought I'll just keep making the right decisions
[7:57]and doing the right thing
[7:59]which was such a, and I'll just keep doing that till he's 18.
[8:04]It was such a preposterous moment of pride
[8:09]because of course from that point on
[8:11]as the kids get all day,
[8:13]as you will know yourself,
[8:15]you have to make more and more decisions
[8:17]that are more and more complex
[8:19]and nuanced and difficult
[8:21]and bigger and bigger decisions
[8:23]to do with health and education
[8:25]and behavior and as they get older,
[8:29]that sort of autonomy,
[8:30]you have to allow them some autonomy
[8:32]while at the same time protecting them.
[8:34]So that's why I decided two of the characters
[8:37]would have 13-year-olds
[8:39]and have very different approaches to parenting
[8:42]and that they would be beginning to think
[8:46]we've messed it up, I've messed it up
[8:48]and where have I gone wrong
[8:51]and can you go back and start again?
[8:53]But I did want the time travel agency
[8:55]to be a place that cannot change the present
[8:58]and partly that's because one of us saw it
[9:01]I was, you know, on the bus
[9:03]and people were just walking by
[9:05]and I thought, why would I really like that idea
[9:08]that there was a secret to time travel
[9:10]and time travel just hiding in plain sight somewhere
[9:13]and that there were people who believed in it
[9:15]but most people thought this is not possible
[9:18]and nobody has solved time travel yet
[9:22]and so for that to work, first start,
[9:25]you would have to start by saying,
[9:28]well, the present isn't changing.
[9:31]So how can it actually be time travel?
[9:34]I won't pick and do this
[9:35]but it's still this situation
[9:37]but that to me made perfect sense from my quantum physics perspective
[9:42]and I was reading a review of this book the other day
[9:47]which it was a very good review
[9:50]it was a very nice review I was grateful
[9:52]and I really liked it
[9:53]but the reviewer said something like
[9:55]Jacqueline Moriarty clearly had no interest in the physics
[10:00]of the thing. And I thought, wow, are you talking about? I read so much physics before,
[10:06]I mean, every now and then I even understood it for a tiny moment. But I read a lot of,
[10:13]I really wanted to find a way to make time travel credible. And the more I read, the more I thought,
[10:19]well, if you are traveling in time, you're traveling along your own timeline. And the multi-walled
[10:27]concept of the universe must be what applies to that situation, because a timeline is just
[10:34]a chronology of things that happen. So if you go back and visit that time and change it, you've
[10:39]switched the timeline and a universe, your universe is really just your timeline. It's everything
[10:44]that's happened. So you create a new universe. So that was my idea that the universe has split each
[10:51]time, the time travel agency sends someone back in time. And also, I wanted the possibility that it
[10:56]isn't real. I want people to think, oh wait a minute, they still could be a whole,
[11:02]it could be a hoax. Well, you also talk about regret with your family of origin, too.
[11:08]Right. So Teddy has been betrayed by his brother. And he goes back and tries to understand all
[11:15]the ways in which Mateo bullied him why he didn't speak for a couple years as a child. Like,
[11:21]what it was about his childhood that could make his current situation have been avoidable,
[11:26]or how they even got there, which I also find fascinating, because
[11:31]sibling relationships, I don't think get enough examination, particularly in fiction. Like,
[11:37]what happens? People just say as a throwaway, like, oh, yeah, I was beaten up on my brother for
[11:41]like years or something like that. And that's a huge thing to be. And it really affects how you
[11:47]you develop as a person and can affect literally everything. So he doesn't just want to go back
[11:52]and see what did he do wrong perhaps in his marriage, if anything, which is debatable. But how did he
[11:57]get to a place in his life where he can't stick up for himself, too? Yeah, exactly. I like,
[12:04]and that's such a great point about the importance of sibling relationships and the extraordinary
[12:09]effect that they can have in your life in the same way that any difficult home lives. And that
[12:16]strength and courage of people who emerge from them and create themselves and have to find their
[12:22]own identity. So I'm really conscious of having grown up not only with very great parents,
[12:29]loving parents, but also with forced sisters and one brother who are, and my sisters and my best
[12:36]friends now. But I also, I went through a doctor not long ago who, and we were just talking about
[12:41]medical history. And I said, I have forced sisters. And I always say that you're a little bit of
[12:46]pride. Just a little bit, I have forced sisters waiting for people to say, oh wow, for sisters. But she
[12:51]looked at me and said, oh, you're poor thing. And I was, and it turned out that she had two sisters
[12:57]and she said they were awful and unbearable and, and that they make life difficult and continue to
[13:04]make life difficult. And if you're, if you're background, I'll come from up, it is a context that
[13:13]you have of yourself. And the idea that you have of yourself has different, it's completely
[13:21]different stories to it based on, because you are siblings, see you and see your childhood
[13:28]differently to how you see it. I think that's very fracturing and disorienting for people. Because
[13:34]everybody experiences that at a minor level, the fact that memory is unreliable. And I love that,
[13:41]I love, I always love that, that something that happened. And when you get together, everyone has
[13:46]a different, and, and, and you can be absolutely convinced of, I spent some time recently trying to find
[13:55]a photograph of the camping campground where my family went to when we were kids and camped in
[14:01]this campground near the beach. And I was trying to find, you know, you think Google has the answers
[14:06]to everything. And so I was searching and diving deeper and deeper just because somebody in the
[14:12]family said, oh, that photograph is, I said that photograph is in the campground that we went to
[14:17]at a work of each when we were kids. And one of my sisters had no absolutely not that photograph
[14:22]is that, that, that, that. So even that very small, completely irrelevant, innocent example of,
[14:29]no, I have a memory of that story. I know when that story took place. And somebody else
[14:35]saying, you absolutely do not. And that's irrelevant. But I spent an hour or two hours trying to
[14:40]prove my own perspective. So I just think that people who have much bigger, more significant stories
[14:46]like that and different perspectives and what has happened to them and, and, and the difficulty and
[14:53]the drama that they face to children and having that denied then, then to be able to go back
[14:58]in a time travel agency to go in the little booth and go back and say, now I can prove this is
[15:04]what happened, just like I think. Oh, I, I didn't put just in the book, but I thought, you know,
[15:09]when your new partner might go away somewhere. And you think he's looking at his phone all the
[15:14]time. And he says to me, I'm looking at my phone all the time. And no, are you looking at your
[15:18]phone more? And I imagine let's go back in the time travel agency. Let me show you how often you
[15:24]look at your phone. So just I had a thing like that with my family where my dad, my brother and
[15:30]I were in a car, we almost got an accident. And now I am convinced that I was driving and
[15:36]they are convinced my brother was driving. Like we all have different interpretations. And it's so
[15:41]clear in my head. And I'm like, well, I guess my memory is just not reliable on the slightest. So
[15:48]no, I really want to do one of those investigations to find out. But it was just us, it was just us
[15:56]close call with the tree and we'll never know. And it was, it was a small enough accident that
[16:02]they wouldn't be records of it. But we didn't get any accident. It was a near accident.
[16:06]So yeah, prevent it. Anyway, but when you talk about your family and all your sisters with pride
[16:14]or whatever, I mean, you don't come from a normal family. Your sisters, you and your sisters
[16:18]are so accomplished. I mean, your sister, Leanne, who's been on the show wrote big little lies and
[16:24]apples never fail. And I mean, your whole family is like exceptional. How did that happen? What did
[16:29]your parents do right? Thank you so much. And I am so lucky with my sisters. And yeah, two of them are
[16:37]authors. Leanne and Nicola authors and two of them are not authors. And I always say, if one more
[16:43]person asks me when I'm going to write a book. My, if Leanne's been on the podcast, you might have
[16:53]told the story of how our dad used to commission us to write stories when we were children.
[17:00]So he noticed that we loved telling stories. And so he said, instead of giving you pocket money,
[17:08]I will give you $1.50 if you fill up an exercise book with words. So that was how we made a living.
[17:16]That was how we, and the wonderful thing about that was I'm sure because we loved writing stores,
[17:21]we would have anyway. But you know, when you're kid and you write stories and you often don't
[17:26]finish them, you start, you think you're writing a novel and you started and there's nothing wrong
[17:32]with that because everybody's evolving as a writer and changing as they grow up. But you go in
[17:38]all kinds of directions and starts crappy stories. But having our dad say, take us very seriously
[17:45]and say, okay, let's, you come to me and pitch me an idea for a book. And then listen
[17:54]solemnly to our idea and then say, okay, yep, I'd like to commission that one, please. You felt
[18:00]and we were probably seven, six, seven, eight years old. And, and you felt so important. And
[18:08]also it meant that you sat down and made sure that you completed a story and polished it and
[18:15]illustrated it and you had something that a final product that you could be proud of and that he
[18:22]would read and take seriously and then give you some money for it. So our dad always liked to
[18:30]take the credit for our writing. And it definitely helped because it made you feel like this
[18:38]could be a profession because dad was someone who had always loved flying from when he was a boy
[18:47]and loved the idea, sorry, of flying an airplane and that had been his dream. And somehow he made
[18:52]that dream come true and then he made a career, built a career out of flying by building a
[19:00]started just surveying up on business and got into aerial mapping and aerial photography. And so
[19:07]he spent all these time in the air and never, he's whole life. He's, he lies lit up every time
[19:14]he talked about flying an airplane. So he always wanted to encourage us to, he had that thing where
[19:22]it, you know, find what you love, find a way to make money from it. And an example of that is
[19:27]you know, you grow up and think, I always wanted to be a writer, but you grow up and think that's
[19:31]not very realistic. So I studied law and actually really liked law and I did English and law and I
[19:37]did really well in law. And I remember my dad seeing those results and usually you would think
[19:45]a pair of when they saw that, I mean, I came first in law at Sydney University and when I told
[19:51]my dad, I came first and he said, that's great, but didn't you want to be a writer? And do you
[19:56]think that most parents would say, oh,
[20:00]And God, she's given up that ridiculous flight to writing an idea and so that stayed in my mind because it is what I wanted to do and it's just the fact that he was continuing still taking that seriously.
[20:14]So I went overseas and I studied more a lot to put off becoming a lawyer for as long as I could and went to America to the states and did a Masters in law and then I went to Cambridge and did a PhD in law.
[20:29]And I didn't sound like I was showing off when I said I came first in law.
[20:32]It's a long time ago.
[20:33]No.
[20:34]And it wasn't.
[20:35]It wasn't.
[20:36]It wasn't.
[20:37]Fascinating.
[20:38]What you're showing is like, even if you go and achieve all these things, sometimes the people you most want to validate it, see another part of you that you refuse to extinguish and they know like maybe sometimes more than you that maybe you're chasing something else.
[20:56]It's a lot of time ago.
[21:01]It feels like another dimension of me.
[21:03]It doesn't feel like showing off at all.
[21:05]It's just like I took that opportunity.
[21:07]I just happened to understand how the law worked and I did like it.
[21:11]And while I was doing a PhD in England, that's what I realized this is my last chance to become a writer because once this is finished I'm going to have to get a job as a lawyer and then I will disappear into the law and never.
[21:24]be able to have a moment to write.
[21:27]And so I made a secret pact with myself that I was not going to be allowed to go home until I was a published writer.
[21:35]And in the evenings, I walked across the campus at Cambridge and into their computer room because I didn't have my own computer and wrote a novel for young adults.
[21:48]called feeling sorry for Celia.
[21:50]And when I finished it, I sent to a publisher in London and they sent it straight back to me saying,
[21:56]thank you.
[21:57]And that I said, sure, another one.
[21:58]They sent a black singer, thank you.
[21:59]And I sent her to about 20 publishers and literary agencies and by this time I finished my PhD and run out of money and my visa had expired.
[22:08]And the secret pact with yourself not to go home until you're a published author is not legitimate grounds for extension of a visa.
[22:16]So I went home and got a job as a lawyer and on my first day I took the print out of my novel and put it in the corner of my office.
[22:27]And I thought one day when I get a moment I'll work on rewriting it.
[22:32]And one year later it was still sitting on the floor of my office because it was very busy being a lawyer.
[22:40]And I happened to be working late one night.
[22:43]And I thought I'll just give that one more chance.
[22:47]And I put it in an envelope and addressed it to a literary agency and Sydney and I visualized the envelope as a kind of rescue helicopter that was going to come and airlift me out of the law firm and send it away.
[23:04]And a few weeks later I heard from that agency saying they loved it and wanted to represent me.
[23:09]And then within a few weeks after that they found me publishers in Australia and America and the UK.
[23:17]So that's yeah.
[23:19]And then I just let I faded face the law out gradually over time and became a full-time writer.
[23:24]Wow.
[23:25]That's amazing.
[23:26]That is so inspiring.
[23:28]No, seriously.
[23:29]I mean, it speaks to timing, perseverance, rejections not ending your career.
[23:36]I mean, it's amazing.
[23:38]And luck too.
[23:39]Just yeah, exactly timing just that moment in time.
[23:43]And Leanne always tells the story about.
[23:46]She might have told you the story about her when when I called her to say that I got a publishing deal.
[23:53]She always says I was furious because she kind of forgotten our childhood dream.
[23:58]But she hit it.
[23:59]She hit it really well what you she was so nice to me and happy for me.
[24:03]But she says she was in a rage because she kind of forgotten about that.
[24:07]And she was.
[24:08]And she is and always has been extraordinary.
[24:12]I mean, I actually was doing incredibly well in advertising and marketing.
[24:16]And she was a big career woman.
[24:19]But in that just reminded her of the childhood dream.
[24:25]I do think she would eventually have written a book anyway because she's too brilliant and too creative and imaginative.
[24:31]So she would have anyway.
[24:33]But I like that she I do like to take the credit.
[24:36]For reminding her to yeah, just not writing.
[24:39]Wow.
[24:40]It's the it's the ripple effect.
[24:42]Right?
[24:43]Like just one thing.
[24:45]One thing reflecting another and.
[24:47]Next thing you know people are on their couch watching.
[24:50]You know Reese Witherspoon and big little lies.
[24:52]And I'm sitting here reading time travel for beginners.
[24:55]And it all is full circle.
[24:56]Right.
[24:57]It's like.
[24:58]Exactly.
[24:59]Because of your decision one day to pick up a stack of papers in the corner of your office.
[25:04]Wild, right?
[25:05]Yeah.
[25:06]Yeah.
[25:07]And that's something I really was interested in in this book that those moments in time.
[25:11]Just a tiny little decision that you say the change everything.
[25:14]But I thought the same thing watching big little lies.
[25:17]Everything about that whole experience just seemed impossible that that one little moment.
[25:23]Because I remember when they are.
[25:25]When our kids were little and we'd taken them to one of those soft play.
[25:30]Play grounds you know indoor big play areas and our kids were playing together.
[25:35]And Leon and I were having coffee and the answer she's gotten.
[25:38]She had an idea.
[25:39]What did I think of this idea she had about a school.
[25:42]And there's murder and there's a trivia night.
[25:46]And it's Elvis Presley order.
[25:48]He helped a night and I don't know what I was saying.
[25:51]I love it.
[25:52]It's fantastic.
[25:53]And then it just felt like one moment later.
[25:56]We are watching Nicole Kidman dress.
[25:58]That was awesome all the time.
[26:02]Yes.
[26:03]Wow.
[26:04]Well, your book so perfectly speaks to those moments passing in the night.
[26:10]Sometimes, you know, just when you decide to cross the street and how.
[26:15]you avoid or don't avoid a car accident.
[26:18]The decision to leave a job or not.
[26:21]I mean, all these ripple effects.
[26:24]And also friendship, male friendship.
[26:27]I mean, there's just so many themes.
[26:29]But best of all in this whole book.
[26:31]In addition to the unique literary tours and everything that you invent.
[26:35]Is the characters and your voice and how completely.
[26:40]addictive it is that you just don't want to.
[26:43]I just did not want to put the book down.
[26:45]And even though it is quite long, I must say.
[26:48]So.
[26:49]Well done.
[26:51]Daniel.
[26:52]Thank you.
[26:53]So kind of you.
[26:54]Thank you.
[26:55]Well, Jacqueline, thank you so much for your time and for this fabulous read.
[27:00]Time travel for beginners.
[27:02]Congratulations.
[27:03]Congratulations.
[27:04]So lovely talking.
[27:05]Thank you.
[27:06]Thank you.
[27:07]Congrats.
[27:08]Okay.
[27:09]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[27:12]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[27:14]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[27:20]and spread the word.
[27:22]Thanks so much.
[27:23]Oh, and bye the books.