About the Book

Book: Echo Nova

Author: Clint Hall

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Release date: January 14, 2024

Dash Keane is about to become the biggest star in history.

As a poor teenager living in the Dregs, Dash Keane can only escape his dismal reality by competing in illegal rooftop races and staying up late to watch the timenet with his younger brother.

When there is an opportunity to participate in a competition set thousands of years in the past, he uses his rooftop racer skills to catch the eye of Mr. Myrtrym, head of entertainment for the massive Dominus Corporation.

It is the chance of a lifetime when Dominus Corp. hires Dash to be a timestar—the focus of his own series in which he must survive some of the most dangerous periods in history, including the Cretaceous period, feudal Japan, the Wild West, and the Golden Age of Piracy. But when empathy for the people of the past conflicts with the desires of his new employer, he must decide whether the price of fame is worth it, a decision that may cost him everything.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

Clint Hall is a storyteller, speaker, and podcast host. He has been writing stories since middle school, where he spent most of his time in class creating comic books. (Fortunately, his teacher not only allowed it; she bought every issue.) Known for instilling a sense of hope, wonder, and adventure, Clint is the author of Steal Fire from the Gods (finalist for several awards), and has been published across multiple anthologies and magazines. Find him at ClintHall.com or “The Experience: Conversations with Creatives” podcast, available on all major platforms.

More from Clint

Time is our playground

What happens when the past becomes the ultimate adventure?

If we could travel back in time, but nothing we did in the past affected the present, would we still consider the past to be “real”?

And if not, how would that “un-realness” impact the way we treated the past and, more importantly, the people who inhabited it? Would they still have fundamental human rights? Would they be protected by laws? Or would we see them as another resource to be exploited?

These are the driving questions behind Echo Nova, though I didn’t have these themes in mind when I started writing the book. I just wanted to write a fast-paced, fun story about a young hero going on adventures through time.

But as I began world-building and plotting, I faced the same issue as so many sci-fi writers before me. In time travel stories, the people going into the past often need to be careful not to make changes that would alter the future. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person in the past, and you might cause a ripple effect of changes that would prevent you from ever being born!

Of course, the problem of being unable to change anything can make for an exciting story with high stakes and lots of tension. The hero must walk a proverbial tightrope to achieve a difficult mission while altering as little of the timeline as possible.

But what if that wasn’t the case? What if the ripples of change in the timestream moved at the same speed as time itself, meaning that if we did alter something in the past, those changes never caught up to us?

For example, if we went back to 2004 and chopped down a tree, it would take 20 years for that “new” reality with the missing tree to reach 2024. But by then, we in the “present” will have moved forward 20 years to 2044, and we’d still have our tree.

If the present is unaffected, the past could become our playground. We could do whatever we wanted.

While that sounds great at first, as I developed the story, I realized that there could also be dire consequences, both in the past and the present.

In Echo Nova, the world’s governments have decreed that because changes to the past don’t impact the present, the past is not “real” but only residual energy and not under the protection of nations and their laws. Corporations can purchase past periods, mining them for valuable resources and owning the people of the past—called “echoes”—like property.

Time travel has also become a pastime of the wealthy. If you have enough money, you can travel back in time to go on a dinosaur safari, watch gladiators battle in the Colosseum, or attend a feast hosted by Cleopatra.

For everyone else, the past is mainly experienced through broadcasts operated by these corporations. These broadcasts feature people called “timestars” who go on adventures in the past to entertain people in the present.

But exploiting humans for our own personal gain and entertainment has terrible consequences, even for those who may claim that they’re “only watching.” When we start to view people as anything other than individuals with rights, flaws, intrinsic value, and everything else that makes us human, the damage goes both ways – hurting those who have been dehumanized as well as those who are guilty of dehumanizing, even if they did so passively.

For instance, while working on this book, I watched the O.J. Simpson documentary and was struck by how people behaved during the infamous Bronco chase. Here was someone accused of a heinous crime, fleeing police while threatening to end his own life, and people responded by flocking to the streets and overpasses to watch. They held up homemade signs while laughing, waving, and smiling for the multitude of news cameras. This wasn’t real life to them. It was part of the show.

As an author, it’s hypocritical for me to be overly critical of entertainment. Further, I believe there is incredible value in well-told stories, both real and fictional, across all mediums. And sometimes, I’ll even admit that I need to turn my brain off and watch something relatively mindless for an hour or so.

But if we’re not careful, we can lose pieces of ourselves on the altar of entertainment.

Echo Nova explores these questions, as well as our culture’s relentless obsession with fame and the dark places in which we can find ourselves in our pursuit of it.

If that all sounds a bit heavy, the book also features pirates, gunslingers, and temporally displaced sea dinosaurs.

After all, sometimes you just need to read something fun.

Author Interview

Are you a one project at a time author or do you have multiple projects going at once?

First off, thanks for having me on your blog!

I typically only have one writing project at a time, at least when developing books. However, I always have lots of creative projects going on at the same time. In addition to writing books, I host a podcast and play music, so I’m constantly engaging in different forms of creativity.

And if I’m marketing a book—like I am right now—that’s another form of creativity. I’ve found that the best marketing efforts are often the most fun and creatively fulfilling.

That doesn’t mean they’re not also a lot of work. But when I can find fun, creative marketing strategies that fit my style and voice, I really enjoy them.

How has your life experience helped in your writing journey?

I spent most of my twenties playing in hard rock bands in Atlanta and around the Southeast. My bands were filled with talent, and I was lucky to be in every single one. As a bass guitarist, I was tremendously blessed to be surrounded by incredible singers, songwriters, guitarists, and drummers.

Still, none of my bands ever had any significant success. We might have a hundred people or so come out to our shows, and for that, we were very grateful. But no record deals, no major tours, nothing on that level.

But being in those bands taught me how to do something just because I loved it. There wasn’t much “reward” in being part of those bands outside of the music and the experience. We never made any money. We weren’t famous. While I worked very hard to make it a career, I was also okay with the fact that we never got big. I loved playing music live, even in front of small crowds, but I also loved band practice. After all, practice was when the music sounded the best. It’s not that I didn’t care about being successful; it’s that I could keep doing it and be joyful even without that type of success.

That’s a muscle—doing something simply for the love of doing it. And that’s been huge for my writing career. I spent years writing novels before I finally got the right offer from the right publisher at the right time. I didn’t get in a hurry to publish anything, and I didn’t get discouraged (at least not too much) because I love writing books.

I’m driven, goal-oriented, and ambitious, but I also find contentment in the blessing of doing what I love.

How do you relax after a long day of writing?

Outside of time with my family, my favorite way to relax is playing basketball in my driveway. I love basketball almost as much as storytelling. Similar to my music career, I never had much success in basketball. I wasn’t a star player or anything like that.

But I have always loved the game. I love its rhythms and how the techniques can be unique to specific players. Even now, working on my shooting form is calming and meditative. Sometimes, I’m very focused on what I’m doing, and other times, I zone out and let my mind wander. I’ve found answers to story problems several times on the basketball court, but that’s not why I go out there. I just love to play.

Do you have extensive outlines when writing, or do you write a book as you go?

I have extensive outlines before I start writing. For me, that planning is the fun part. That’s where I’m discovering what the story will be.

My preferred method is creating story circles on a large whiteboard. I love mythic structure, as observed and recorded by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, so I generally chart out my plots this way. However, I also use graphs to map the character’s emotional highs and lows, often comparing them to the character’s external situation.

I’m also an avid Scrivener user. That tool has a great virtual corkboard feature that allows you to arrange your story with digital notecards (that can open into documents where you write the scenes). I can spend hours rearranging scenes and plot points to see how different orders impact the story. This is all supplemented and informed by extensive character sheets that I create ahead of time.

Once I have that all figured out, I start writing. Sometimes, I’ll change something on the fly if I realize it needs to be fixed. But for the most part, I know where I’m heading before I get started.

What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?

For me, it’s music. I have specific writing playlists that I use for different types of projects. And now I’ve used them so often that it’s almost a conditioned response. When I hear that music, I’m in creative mode.

When I was writing Steal Fire From The Gods, I listened to a lot of heavier rock, such as bands like RED and Linkin Park. I also listened to epic and cinematic music, such as Hidden Citizens, which I highly recommend.

However, for Echo Nova, I wanted a lighter feel. That playlist was more pop-rock, similar to Angels & Airwaves, Fall Out Boy, and Yellowcard.

Regardless, when I sit down at my desk and turn on those playlists, I’m locked in.