Here's what I've read in the last month...

• Before The Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
  A creative take on a time travel story. What's notable here is how the story is made by the constraints the author imposes. It's almost entirely in one room, except a few backstory recollections, and there are a host of rules that limit the time travel. Also, it's an ensemble pieces, so in many ways it's like a collection of interwoven short stories.
  It's a very enjoyable read, but it all wraps up perfectly for me — so I don't think I'll read the sequels. Am I wrong?
  
• Strange Loyalties, by William McIlvanney
  If you like your noir bleak, this is for you. McIlvanney has crafted a great antihero in Laidlaw, and this puts him through the wringer. The writing is as sharp and effective as the main character. The next one in this series was unfinished by the author before his death, with Ian Rankin stepping in, so I'm really looking forward to that one.
  
• A Philosophical Investigation, by Philip Kerr
  I enjoyed another of Kerr's books last year, and had this recommended to me.
  
  I do like a good speculative thriller. There's a great concept behind it, but it falls into the traps that are so easy with speculative fiction. So I'm going to delve into those a little deeper here, as part of recording my own learning as a writer through my reading...
  
  It was published in 1992 imagining a world in the early decade or two of the 2000's.
  
  In this world, Britain has joined a federal Europe and is beholden to European masters (er, nope). Draconian anti-crime measures have been taken, at the heart of which is a terribly prejudicial crackdown on alpha males (er, really nope).
  
  Then there's the imaginings about technology. People can have 'pictaphones' installed in their homes and offices, but when out and about they need to use their carphone or a satellite phone briefcase. A state of the art computer is going to run data to try to match a DNA sample against the database of everyone in the UK, but it can only do 1 million checks a day, so will take 70 days!
  
  These things are a shame because they pull you out of the flow of a story that's otherwise well-plotted and well-told.
  
  That is the challenge with speculative fiction though. What is the shelf life when you set it in the near future?
  
  I need to bear this in mind because in my own novel I'm writing about a time in the near future in what is essentially a speculative/political/spy/tech thriller. But the story will be utterly changed if various world events happen, such as Trump winning a second term (I do understand there are bigger things to worry about in that case other than the shelf life of my story!)
  
  

So, what can I learn from this month's reads for my own writing?

• Create constraints. Restrict your characters' options and see what they do. Create the rules of your world clearly. Story comes out of that.
• Keep prose lean.
• Be inside your main character's head as much as possible. Reveal the side of them they're not proud of. Their fears, self-doubt, regrets, anger.
• When imagining a near future realise that people very rarely adopt new words in everyday speech. Especially not clumsy portmanteaus. My incredibly powerful iPhone in 2024 still gets called a phone just like the old bakelite rotary telephone my parents had plugged into the wall 50 years ago.
• In speculative fiction, don't let the description of the context in the new world take over. If a series of paragraphs could be on that long scrolly thing at the beginning of Star Wars, take them out and find other ways to drop in the world-building.
• There may be benefits in making it a 'parallel' world at an unspecified time (as in The Handmaid's Tale), rather than being so clearly a near-future of the present world. This is common in movies and TV series.