The Bentley Blog

It is an often asked question!  Where did that title come from? In the case of Furniture Sliders, from replacing floors in our house!  Yes - sounds weird....

The storyline was there but the title of the book was not final.  Then we decided to install new wood floors in two rooms in the house.  That meant moving all of the furniture out - some of which was heavy. And so we bought some sliders to help. One of the boxes was on the table - as you can see in the photo - and it had Furniture Sliders written down the edge of the box.  It looked just like a book lying on the table and Furniture Sliders looked like the book title 0n the spine! I thought...  now there's an idea!  Of course, the title has to work for the book and it did. Sliders are the book's characters that can slide through time and space using the principles of quantum mechanics such as entanglement and superposition but applied at a human rather than atomic level. The furniture connection comes from the device at the center of the science fiction element of the story which looks like a mirror.  And also a story element that involves moving furniture.

The next question was why a mirror?  That to some degree was a little random.  I wanted something that was identifiable but could be bent to a different use.  The inspiration for that was hanging in a corridor in the house.  I had always noticed and was fascinated by how what you see in a mirror is constantly changing.  What if you could pass through it? Where would you end up? Some other time? Some other place?  It worked.  And the design of the Mirror in the book, even though it is not a mirror, took on the same baroque design feel albeit bigger than the one on my wall.  

Inspiration is a wonderful thing.  Sometimes it needs a trigger and sometimes the trigger is odd!  I am sure that Shakespeare and John LeCarre had the same thing happen!