Behind The Book Ellery Lloyd 

Ellery Lloyd is the pseudonym for married authors Collette Lyons & Paul Vlitos who I had the pleasure of doing a Q&A with them two years ago after devouring their mystery novel The Final Act Of Juliette Willoughby. Now they’ve returned for another interview discussing their new release coming out on August 4^th titled Time To Burn! 

Q: Welcome back to Book Notions Collette & Paul! Would you give a brief description of Time To Burn & discuss where the idea for the novel came from?

A: Time travel has been perfected by genius tech entrepreneur Inigo Frank but is available only to the super-rich. His company, Tempus Tours, has been approved by the UK government to take travelers back to just one time period: London during World War II.

Award-winning documentary maker Phoebe Hunt has been hired by Inigo to create a film immortalizing his achievement, and on her first day of filming, she is invited to witness a group of property billionaires returning from their trip to the Blitz. But instead of their awe-filled re-entry, she sees the group arriving bloodied and traumatized, with one of their numbers missing.

She quickly realizes that she knows the missing woman, Sasha, and that Sasha is not who she claims to be. As events in the present begin to shift, Phoebe realizes she is in a race against time to uncover Sasha’s plan before the past and present are changed forever.

Q: We briefly spoke 2 years ago about how Time To Burn was your first time travel mystery only there wasn’t a title yet. How was the transition going from writing regular murder mysteries to then writing your very first-time travel mystery?

A: Mind-bending, but in the best way. We live in a part of London that was heavily bombed during the Blitz, so we felt a real connection to the period in which part of the book is set. It was fascinating to be able to walk the streets and really visualise how things might have looked.

Probably the biggest shift in our process was having to sit down and establish exactly how time travel worked in the world we were creating. We needed very clear rules for how technology functioned and especially for how changes in the past would be felt in the present.

A couple of times, when our brains were melting, we wished we could go back in time and write a simpler book—but mostly, it was a lot of fun!

Q: Which scenes & characters were your favorite to create? 

A: We knew we wanted to start this book with a real bang, so we chose a Tempus Tour back to the night in 1941 when the high-society restaurant Café de Paris – billed as the safest nightspot in London – was bombed.

Our group, dressed in period-appropriate finery, are gawping at their surroundings, drinking champagne and eating fillet steak, all while knowing that in an hour’s time the venue will be bombed and many of the diners around them will lose their lives. Of course thanks to Tempus Tours’ research, the group knows exactly when to leave and which route to take across London to reach the aperture that will return them to the present day. Then, of course, it all goes wrong…

In terms of characters, we loved writing Sasha, who has been left behind in the Blitz by Tempus Tours, and Phoebe, who is being paid to make an honest documentary about the company and sees it unravel in real time. The two women are linked by a shared past, which gradually unspools over the course of the novel.

Q: If you were to travel to the past to either, be a witness to history or even try to change a historical event, which period in time would you travel to and why? 

A: Paul would go back and spend time with the dinosaurs, although that sounds a little dangerous to me. I think I would walk along the Thames from where we live and travel back to see a play at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Q: What messages and emotions do you hope readers take away after reading Time To Burn? 

A: That’s a big question! We really like to ensure that all the loose ends are tied up in out novels – I hate the feeling of being left in limbo after The End. So honestly, I think we want readers to feel satisfied – firstly that all the characters you’re rooting for have in some way found their peace, and the ones you’re not have got their comeuppance, but also that the story has been plaited together and tied off neatly. 

Q: Who would be your dream cast to play the characters if Time To Burn were to become a movie or limited/tv series? 

A: Another great question! Dan Stevens would make an incredible Inigo Frank, while Emilia Clarke would be wonderful like Phoebe Hunt, with Jenna Coleman as Sasha Lavrova and Leo Woodall as Luke Allen.

Q: Would you please provide social media links so that readers and I can follow you and your work? 

A: https://www.instagram.com/ellerylloyd_author/?hl=en