Foreword Reviews Editor's Pick However Long the Day launches February 15! Get an early peek here!

 

However Long the Day

by Justin Reed

Genre: Historical Fiction 

However Long the Day is the tale of two strangers—Niall Donovan, a poor immigrant from Ireland, and Frederick Philips, a rich ne'er-do-well from New York's Upper East Side—who discover they look so similar they could be twins. Frederick, desperate to avoid a lecture from his father, bribes Niall to switch places for the evening. Niall finds there's more to the story than Frederick let on, and is dragged through the turbulence created by World War I, the Spanish Flu, and social upheaval, and into the corrupt belly of Manhattan on the cusp of Prohibition.

As Niall and Frederick hurtle through the next twenty-four hours, will either get what they bargained for?

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Justin Reed lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife and four children. He was a software engineer and executive for fifteen years before he began his writing career. When not working, he enjoys spending time with family and friends, volunteering at his church, fly fishing, and agreeing to his wife’s requests to take selfies in front of libraries.

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Question: What inspired you to write However Long the Day?

Justin Reed: In May 2020, cooped up in my office because of COVID, I was in a writing funk. I had written a novel I wasn’t happy with and lacked motivation to finish the second draft. I craved a diversion, a way to clear my head. I woke up one day with an idea. I polled my Instagram followers for story prompts, with a promise I would write something to entertain them during lockdown. One of the prompts—An alien and a boy switch places, like the Parent Trap but with aliens—sparked something inside me. I discovered, after 4,000 words, I had written a first chapter rather than a complete story. The contrarian inside me tried to wriggle out of the creative box into which these prompts put me. For this story, I played with the definition and historical usage of the word alien. Thus was born Niall—an Irish immigrant (an alien, in the parlance of the day) newly arrived in 1918 New York City—and Frederick—a rich ne’er-do-well from Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Question: Did you always want to be a writer?

Justin Reed: Writing is actually my second career, with the first being software engineering. English, specifically Creative Writing, was my first field of study at university. After some introspection about my goals, I switched to Computer Science and pursued a career in programming. Despite that change, I never abandoned the dream of writing. I wrote on and off during my programming career, but nothing of substance. During my first career, my wife and I established a plan by which I could return to writing on a full-time basis. In 2019, after fifteen years of technology, we were able to execute the final part of the plan. I left a comfortable job with benefits to venture into the wild, unforgiving world of authorhood.

Question: What do you want readers to take away from However Long the Day?

Justin Reed: The conflict between selfishness and selflessness. What do we get when we give? What do we lose when we take? Our focus/goals determine our outcomes. Sometimes we lie to ourselves about our goals/ambitions/efforts. It takes work to overcome our past, but it’s possible. Also, turning a dream into reality requires work, sacrifice, and planning, but it's never too late. I sacrificed my dream of writing for a long time to ensure I could support my family. My family has sacrificed things we could have purchased, and instead chose more economical options so we could save for the time we could chase a dream. Our purposes are manifested in our actions.

Question: How would you describe your author “voice” or style? What about your writing process?

Justin Reed: I would say sparse is probably the best term for the narrative style I used in this book. Sparse on description. Sparse on historical explanation. Sparse on internal monologue. The book is moved along by dialogue and action. While taking prompts from my Instagram followers, I used each story as a way to experiment with new writing techniques. I wrote sans outline for the first draft and discovered the plot as I went. In truth, I discovered a plot, of which only fragments remained beyond the first draft. What I really discovered were the characters. I came to understand them, to anticipate their reactions to various situations, to nestle them into alleys, parlors, stoops, and hidden passages. The novel blossomed from there.

Question: Who or what inspired the characters of Niall and Frederick?

Justin Reed: Midway through the first draft, another inspiration for Niall and Frederick emerged: Justin Reed. I found myself pouring one part of me into the young immigrant, and another part of me into the young ne’er-do-well. There are parts of me that don’t share the same ambitions, and are thus in frequent conflict. This flowed onto the page and saturated the main characters and their actions. The more I wrote, the more I realized their conflict was my internal conflict. I had to write the whole novel before I could see it clearly. I think that there is a version of Niall Donovan and Frederick Philips inside all of us, pushing and pulling and working for what they want.

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