Out Now—The Time-Travelling Estate Agent by Dale Bradford
About the book
It’s December 2019 in a small Welsh town, and 60-year-old estate agent Eric Meek discovers a property which boasts a truly unique garage conversion. Instead of the more customary home office or gym, it contains a hole in space-time that has been developed into a traversable portal.
A
by-product of the homeowner’s attempts to emulate the work of pioneering
electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, the portal allows movement between 2019 and
the day it was first powered up, 3rd July 1976: the best – and worst – day of
16-year-old Eric’s life.
Presented
with a chance to right the wrongs of the past, Eric revisits the moment he
believes defined his future.
The
story alternates between 2019 and 1976 as Eric tries to balance running his
business and improving the lives of people he cares about, including his
long-dead father. Will Eric change history? Or will history change Eric?
Purchase links
The Time-Travelling Estate Agent is
available now on Amazon platforms worldwide in eBook, paperback and hardback, and is free to read on Kindle
Unlimited: https://books2read.com/ttea
The first four chapters can also be
read online instantly via Amazon’s Read Sample facility.
Bookstores and libraries can also
order the title through their distributor.
Excerpt
Saturday 3rd July 1976
There was no internal gents’ toilet in
the Old Oak in 1976, and Eric walked around the outside of the building to the
small extension. It was just as rustic as he remembered it. He stood at the
aluminium trough and pondered on the events of the past few hours. It was
certainly a day to remember, even though he’d be the only one doing the
remembering once he returned to 2019.
Eric’s thoughts were suddenly
interrupted by his iPhone alarm going off. It was the default tone, which
resembled the emergency siren on a World War II submarine, and the sound really
carried in the tranquil country air. Shit. He’d left it in his jacket pocket.
He finished his business as quickly as he could and rushed out to the table
where Carol was sitting. She was holding his iPhone.
“What’s
this?” she cried.
“It’s
an alarm clock,” he said. That was true. He had set it to remind himself to
call his financial advisor to discuss the property chain. He pressed the home
button and turned the alarm off.
One
of the drinkers from inside came outside. “Everything alright?”
“Yes,
it’s just my alarm clock,” Eric said, snatching the iPhone from Carol and
shoving it in his trouser pocket.
“Alarm
clock? It sounded like a bloody bomb was going off,” the drinker said. “What do
you need an alarm clock for on a Saturday afternoon?”
Eric
laughed. “It’s Monday where I come from.”
The
man stared at Eric. “What are you on about?”
“I’m
so sorry to have disturbed you,” Eric said, taking a five-pound note from his
trouser pocket and offering it to the drinker. “Please buy a few drinks for you
and your friends.”
Flabbergasted,
the drinker agreed to do just that.
“Are
you bonkers?” Carol said to Eric. “That’s enough for about 20 pints.”
“It’s
only money, right?” Eric shrugged. And it wasn’t even his, it was Big Ben’s.
“Let
me see that alarm clock of yours,” Carol said.
“Why?”
“Because
it doesn’t look like any alarm clock I’ve ever seen before,” she said.
“I
can’t.”
“If
you don’t, I’ll go in there and tell them it’s a bomb,” she warned.
“Please
don’t do that.”
“Let
me see it then.”
“Okay
but if I do, you’ve got to promise not to freak out,” Eric said.
She
assured him she wouldn’t.
Eric
removed the phone from his pocket and pressed the home button. The jet-black
screen displayed the time in crisp, white numerals.
“That’s
amazing,” Carol said. “How come the numbers are so smooth, and how come they’re
white?”
While
Eric was holding the phone, Carol pressed the home button and the screen now
had 20 little graphics, one of which was an analogue clock with a digitised
second hand slowly moving around its face.
“What’s
happened now?” Carol squealed.
“It’s
basically a computer,” Eric said, deciding it was less hassle to tell her the
truth than to make something up. “And all these little pictures are programs
that run on it.”
“What
programs?”
Eric
took the phone back and gave her a quick guided tour of his most-used apps:
“This one’s a calculator, this one’s for appointments, this one’s an address
book, this one’s a dictionary and thesaurus, this one’s a notebook, this one’s
a map with satellite navigation, this one’s my bank account, this one’s a news
channel…”
Carol
reached across and prodded the phone icon and the screen changed to a numeric
keypad.
“Don’t
tell me it’s a phone as well.”
“It
is.”
“How
gullible do you think I am?” she cried. “Where does it plug in?”
“Please,
lower your voice,” Eric urged. “It doesn’t need to be plugged in.
“Let
me see you make a phone call then,” she challenged him.
“It
won’t work,” Eric said. “There’s no service in this… area.”
“How
convenient!”
Eric
inputted the number for the Barrington Meek showroom and the message ‘You must
disable Airplane Mode to make a call’ appeared. “See?” he said.
She
looked sceptical.
Eric
prodded the camera icon and the screen immediately changed to a view of the
table they were sat at. “This works though,” he said, framing Carol’s face in
the screen and pressing the white button.
The
iPhone clicked like a real camera and a small thumbnail of Carol’s face
appeared in the lower left corner of the screen. Eric enlarged it and showed it
to Carol.
“Fuck
off!” she shrieked.
Eric
smirked. He had never heard her use that word before. He returned to the camera
screen and slid the menu to video, and the white button changed colour and
became red. “What’s your favourite song, Carol?”
She
couldn’t think.
“Okay,
what’s number one in the charts?”
She
thought for a few seconds. “It’s the Real Thing, with ‘You To Me Are
Everything’.”
“How
does it go? Can you sing it for me?”
“I
can’t sing!” she protested.
“Just
hum it then,” Eric encouraged, framing her in the screen again.
Although
clearly embarrassed, she hummed the first line of the chorus.
“That’s
fine,” Eric said, and played it back to her.
Carol
was speechless.
Eric played it again. He then switched
the camera into selfie mode, holding the phone at arm’s length and leaned his
head into hers so they could both see themselves on the screen. “Where are we,
Carol?” he asked.
“The
Old Oak,” she replied, pointing towards the building behind them.
“And
are you having fun?”
“I’m
having a day I’ll never forget,” she laughed.
Eric
cleared the screen and pressed the music icon. “It’s also got stored on it
every song ever recorded by The Beatles, The Kinks, Kate Bush…”
“Who?”
Eric went into
his song library and played ‘Wuthering Heights’.
Intrigued at
first, a look of horror came over her face as the piano intro gave way to the
vocal. “What the hell is that?” she recoiled from the device.
Eric
laughed. Carol probably wasn’t ready for Kate Bush yet, not on top of
everything else she’d just seen. Quite a few people weren’t ready for her in
1978, after all. He put the phone back in his jacket pocket. “Sorry, I got
carried away there,” he said. “It must be the salesman in me.”
“How
does it work?” Carol asked.
“I
honestly don’t know,” Eric said. “I don’t even know how electricity works. I’m
pretty sure microprocessors are involved but don’t ask me to explain what they
do.”
“How
have you got it?” she asked in awe.
Eric
stared at her. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Everyone has them where I come
from,” he said.
“And
where’s that, Futureland?”
“Yes,
in a way,” he said slowly. “I’m from 2019, Carol.”
“Fuck
off!” she said again. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m
honestly not.”
A
look of genuine fear flashed across Carol’s face. She stood up.
“Please,
Carol, sit down,” Eric said. “You promised me you wouldn’t freak out.”
“I
said I wouldn’t freak out if you showed me your alarm clock,” Carol replied.
“This is a bit bloody different.”
About the author
Dale Bradford has been a B2B magazine editor since 1995, initially in
the video games sector and he moved into the pleasure products sector in 2003
when he became founding editor of ETO magazine.
The Time-Travelling Estate Agent is his third book. Also available are
The Honey Peach Affair, a murder mystery set in the adult entertainment world,
and non-fiction title From Sex Shops to Supermarkets: How Adult Toys Became a
Multi-Million-Pound Industry.
He lives in south Wales and his reading tastes range from sci-fi (mainly
John Wyndham, Douglas Adams, and Philip K Dick) to history, politics, and
popular culture. He also enjoys video games and (still) buys far too many DVD
box sets.
Links
F: https://www.facebook.com/dale.bradford.7
X: @DaleBradford
Q&A
What inspired the story?
I’ve
always been fascinated by the concept of time travel, even though the world’s
greatest scientific minds maintain that it’s impossible. Fifty years ago my
iPhone was impossible though, and the story grew from the idea of me meeting my
teenage self, and the people I knew back then, and demonstrating my iPhone’s
capabilities to them.
How long did it take you to write ‘The Time-Travelling Estate Agent’?
The
story is set in 2019, which is when I began writing it, and it became fully
fleshed out during the following year’s lockdowns. When the world restarted,
the demands of my day job slowed its progress and then I set it aside to write
a non-fiction title, ‘From Sex Shops to Supermarkets – How Adult Toys Became a
Multi-Billion-Pound Industry’.
With
that published, I returned to ‘The Time-Travelling Estate Agent’ and spent the
next 18 months refining it and polishing it. So its gestation period was a
rather lengthy five years.
After all that time, is it a relief to finally hold the finished book in
your hands?
It
is a relief. I am genuinely proud of ‘The Time-Travelling Estate Agent’ and I
have been delighted with the initial feedback it has received. The very first
reader – a published author herself – finished her critique with the phrase “So
much to enjoy. So funny too, yet so sad,” and in retrospect I wish I’d asked
her permission to put her name and that quote on the cover, because it’s a
lovely way of summing up the story.
Why should people read this book?
I’ve
been told it’s easy to read and it’s a good story. Will they learn anything
about the business of selling properties? Actually, they might, because I
certainly did when researching it, but the book is pure escapism and offers a
few hours respite from the depressing global news cycle.
Its
title suggests it’s sci-fi, and there are indeed elements of it, but it also
blends a mismatched romance with a murder mystery, while offering gentle nods
in the direction of Groundhog Day and 50 First Dates.
Even
though it has a male central character, it also has a very strong female
character who proved extremely popular with early readers.
We understand that your new book was featured on the front page of a
property business magazine website: how did this come about?
Sadly
I did not plan the marketing in advance of publication, I’m not that clever,
which is why there are currently so few Amazon reviews for the new book, which
came into the world in mid-November 2024.
I
contacted property trade magazine The Negotiator thinking the book’s
release might merit a news snippet. To my surprise, the publication made quite a
splash with it (headline: Finally! A novel with an estate agent
as its hero!) and also tweeted about it. This was seen by the host of
property podcast, The Right Move, who invited me on to
talk about the book. The episode drops in December.
The
launch of The Time-Travelling Estate Agent has also picked up coverage in the
adult sphere, including the German and American trade press, due to them knowing about my previous book.
Release blitz organised by Writer Marketing Services.
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