The hypothesis….

When I would write stunts and magic tricks for tv, it was common practice to start at the end and work backwards. There is a psychological concept which is called the “Peak End Rule”. Which states that people judge an experience based on the peak moment, and what happens at the end; rather than judging the whole experience. With that in mind, the ending of “The Persistence Hypothesis: First Life” was actually the very first thing I thought of.

Don’t worry there are no spoilers here.

I had an idea for a really gripping, shocking ending, but at that point, I didn’t have any characters, or even a situation that was any deeper than a very basic premise. Then came the fun part of filling in the blanks. Creating the characters.

There is another crossover with my former work. I always used to say, that as an escape artist if you are going to ask an audience to give a crap if you live or die… then its vitally important that they like you. The same is true of characters in a book, or a film. The reader is going to spend a long time with these characters and so there has to be something interesting about them. What makes them tick? What makes them different or their judgement flawed? These are the creative elements that are fun to play with. It almost becomes like stage improvisation. Acting actually. CharacterA says something, so then what would character B say in return? For me much of writing is a giant game of pretend.

I’m excited to see whether you like “The Persistence Hypothesis”. Its available to pre-order now and will be released in September 2025. Its a nerve wracking time. You have put your heart and soul into creating something… and the waiting to see if people like it, is excruciating. In the meantime I am plying my family and friends with a copy.

It was really fun watching Amanda read the book (she read it first), and squirm and shout out loud when she got to the end. Hopefully my hypothesis was correct.