Today on the site, we’re welcoming Kevin Klehr, author of The Midnight Man, which just released on August 30th from Ninestar Press! Before Kevin gets to talking about finding yourself as you get older, let’s get a glimpse of his speculative romance:

Stanley is almost fifty. He hates his job, has an overbearing mother, and is in a failed relationship. Then he meets Asher, the man of his dreams, literally in his dreams.

Asher is young, captivating, and confident about his future—everything Stanley is not. So, Asher gives Stan a gift. The chance to be an extra five years younger each time they meet.

Some of their adventures are whimsical. A few are challenging. Others are totally surreal. All are designed to bring Stan closer to the moment his joyful childhood turned to tears.

But when they fall in love, Stan knows he can’t live in Asher’s dreamworld. Yet he is haunted by Asher’s invitation to “slip into eternal sleep.”

Buy it: Ninestar Press

And here’s the post!

We all do it. Some are ready for it while others avoid it all cost. But there is no fountain of youth. We all get older.

The tragedy of aging is when you feel like your life hasn’t begun. That’s the dilemma Stanley faces in my new novel, The Midnight Man.

Stan is in a failed relationship, he hates his job, and he has an overbearing mother. But soon he’ll be facing his fiftieth birthday, and this is not how he planned his life to be at this stage.

When this manuscript was accepted by my publisher, my editor emailed saying she liked what the story ‘had to say about the good and bad aspects of getting older.’ And even though she was obviously referring to my book, it was the first time I realised that was the underlying theme of this work.

When I came up with the concept, I was listening to Kate Bush’s haunting track, ‘Man With the Child In His Eyes’, a song about a mystical lover who appears when the songwriter goes to sleep. 

But this is one of my novels. The plotline can’t just be about an ethereal romance.

Stan’s midnight visitor is Asher, a twenty-one-year-old who appears in his dreams. Asher offers Stan a gift. Every time they meet for their night-time adventures, Stanley is another five years younger than the last time they met.

This is how ageing is examined in the story. Stan gets to be himself at an age he once was, while bizarre dreamlike scenarios happen. He reflects without actually reliving moments of his life. He remembers what youth feels like as Asher organises whimsical, or sometimes challenging, scenarios for Stanley to face.

Sometime in the past six months I realised all my books feature a love story. Odd, I thought, because I’ve only written two books you could call Romance. The Midnight Man, like many of my novels, is Urban Fantasy, Magic Realism, Speculative Fiction or whatever you’d like to brand it. But it doesn’t mean our two heroes don’t fall for each other as Stan becomes younger.

In the end, this work is about taking control of your life, and sometimes it takes a special someone to help you do it.

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