Sean Minogue gives a glimpse inside the creative process behind his debut novel Terminal Solstice.
Congratulations on the publication of your debut novel, Terminal Solstice. So much is conveyed in the title "Terminal Solstice." Please tell us how did you land on it?
Sean Minogue: Choosing a title can be such a weird and stressful process. I don’t like to spend too much time on it. I’ll start with a gut feeling and try to focus on the writing instead. I’m happy as long as what I’ve got captures the basic feeling of the piece I’m working on.
For Terminal Solstice, I auditioned a few options that didn’t last. I landed on “Terminal Solstice” because I felt like it did a good job conveying an abrupt halt to a global cycle, which is what’s happening with the frozen-time phenomenon in my book.
Who was the first character to populate Terminal Solstice? Did they arrive on scene fully realized or did the character evolve throughout the writing process?
Sean Minogue: Of the three main characters (Tyler, Emma, Len), Tyler was the first to arrive.
From my earliest draft, I knew I wanted to write about a teenager living with his divorced mom and navigating the impacts of an absent, larger-than-life father. Tyler’s growth as a character took off for me once I understood his relationship with Emma, who helps guide him through frozen time. Once he had that ally, I was able to tease out his family’s story.
Len is the one who changed the most during the story’s development. I had initially envisioned him as an antagonistic force. But as I got to know him, I started to see his humanity more and found his wounded nature endearing. He was a pleasant surprise for me.
Has your perception of time changed over the course of writing Terminal Solstice? If so, how?
Sean Minogue: Oh man, yes. I went down a deep rabbit hole on this stuff and started reading so much about how we perceive time and the scientific efforts to measure what time is. It’s such a fascinating intersection of science, philosophy, and psychology.
One book that helped kick off my understanding was *Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation* by Alan Burdick. That was my gateway to learning about biological expressions of time and eccentric figures like Michel Siffre, whose chronobiology experiments involved secluding himself inside a cave for two months.
I used to think about time in a Back to the Future-kind of way – that we exist as a moving dot on a line that extends forever in both directions. But now I think of it as a subjective experience that we all share in similar, but not identical, ways.
A global catastrophe of frozen time brings humanity to a standstill. Power grids crash, planes disappear into oceans, and highways become scenes of deadly carnage. But a ruthless conspiracy cult remains unaffected, and it's growing fast. In the eerie silence of an immobilized city, three characters endure a harrowing quest for survival. Sean Minogue's gripping debut novel probes a fraying world at the mercy of a mysterious phenomenon.
Turnstone Press Ltd.
