What is the title of your latest release?
TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A nondescript storefront on a suburban Sydney street, between a sushi place and a geloato bar, calls itself the Time Travel Agency. It offers twenty-minute trips back in time, for a fee – customers can immerse themselves anywhere from Mesopotamia to London in the 1960s or revisit a time in their own life. The catch is, nothing in the present will change.
Anna gets a job at the agency, Teddy is a customer, and Jade thinks it’s a cruel hoax and wants to burn the place down.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The idea came to me when I was riding a bus along Military Road in Neutral Bay, Sydney, Australia – a suburb just across the harbour from downtown. Through the window, I glimpsed a Time Travel Agency. I was intensely excited. (A Time Travel Agency! They’ve discovered the secret to time travel!) Then I looked again and realised that no, it was not a Time Travel Agency. A billboard for Time magazine had slipped against the window of a local travel agency – I’d merged the words.
To cope with my disapppointment, I decided to write a book about a time travel agency. It was only fair to set it on Military Road in Neutral Bay, Sydney, Australia.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
There are two heroines who share the story, Anna and Jade. I think I would hang out with Anna as she has a sense of humour and an imagination, likes reading and plays the cello. On the other hand, Anna has a tendency to overthinking and self-doubt – two of my own flaws – so that might be an issue.
Jade has sharp edges which I might find too scary, and her lifestyle – a high-flying financier – is too different to mine. Still, I find sharp-edged people an interesting challenge. If I’m patient enough, they tend to soften and let me meet their funny, vulnerable selves.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Anna – hopeful, dreamy, funny
Jade – cynical, ruthless, sad
Teddy – easy-going, bright, sexy
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That Ancient Roman statues were actually brightly coloured; they’re only white now because the paint has worn away. (And a lot of other historical facts – I spent almost twenty years researching this book, and then left out 99% of the research.)
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit as I draft. I know a lot of writers write the first draft like lightning, without looking behind them, and then set to work fixing it. B(ut when I do that I have the constant, uneasy feeling that I’m leaving a trail of trash behind me, which seems vaguely impolite. (I also edit again when it’s done.)
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Cinnamon and cardamon hot chocolate at Coco Chocolate which is in Kirribilli, Sydney, and any of the chocolate they sell there. However, I am working on my chocolate addiction. It has become too closely intertwined with my identity.
Describe your writing space/office!
At the moment I have a study that overlooks the courtyard of my apartment complex. I like watching the resident children play, and people coming and going with their dogs or their shopping bags or briefcases. However, I’m in the process of swapping my study with my teenage son’s bedroom. He has finally noticed that my study is bigger than his own tiny bedroom.
It’s okay though as my priamry office space is the small table outside Coco Chocolate in Kirribili.
Who is an author you admire?
My sisters Liane and Nicola Moriarty are two of my favourite authors as well as being two of my favourite people (along with the other two sisters, who do not write books, but that’s okay, we need readers too.) I also love Kate Atkinson, Anne Patchett, Anne Tyler, Maggie O’Farrell, Lorrie Moore, Marian Keyes, Kathryn Heyman, Laura Bloom, Katherine Heiny, Rachel Cohn, David Levithan, Garth Nix, Ellen Raskin, Diana Wynne Jones, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard, etc, etc.
Is there a book that changed your life?
In childhood, THE MAGIC FINGER by Roald Dahl seemed like a revelation because its hero was an angry little girl, and I thought my own anger was a terrible secret; Dylan Thomas’s UNDER MILKWOOD and Virginia Woolf’s TO THE LIGHTHOUSE made me fall in love with lanuage and night; THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE by Carol Shields helped me find my voice by revealing that you could be funny, lively and intelligent about contemporary domestic life.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was working as a media lawyer. I was sitting at my desk on my swivel chair, wearing my suit with stockings and heels. When the telephone rang, I reached for my yellow legal pad and pen. The voice on the other end of the phone announced that his name was Garth Nix. Not a client then. I sighed. This was not going to be a chargeable phone call. At the same time, there was something familiar about the name. Garth Nix. “You’re a writer!” I remembered. I’d read his fantasy books! He set that aside modestly, and explained that he was also working as a literary agent at the moment. He said he’d been working through a stack of unsolicited manuscripts, had found mine, that he loved it, that he’d… at this point my heart was pounding too hard for me to hear. It was like in the movies when the camera pans out and sounds blur, becoming a buzz.
Within the next few weeks, Garth Nix had secured me publishing deals in Australia, the US and the UK.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Warm, humorous, intelligent fiction, either contemporary or historical. I also love children’s books, which I read for ‘research’ (because I also write for young people) and escape, and because they are often better plotted and funnier than grownup books.
What’s your favorite movie?
The Spanish Prisoner, Grosse Pointe Blank, A Room with a View, Mary Poppins, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Stranger than Fiction, Groundhog Day, Wes Anderson’s films, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Get Out, the Avengers movies, etc, etc.
What is your favorite season?
Summer. The other seasons have plenty going for them too though. I like spring for the jacaranda trees, and autumn for the golden leaves (sorry to be obvious). I used to dislike Sydney winters because they seemed pointless: we don’t have snow or central heating. So I recently rebranded winter for myself, focusing on homemade soup, colourful, flanelette sheets, blankets on couches, new coats etc. Most people already know to approach winter this way, but it only just occurred to me and was very effective.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I love this question, as I love birthdays. I start by getting my favourite breakfast in, so the celebration can begin immediately. I usually meet with my four sisters and mother at a café for lunch (that’s a tradition for all our birthdays), see a friend for an afternoon hot chocolate, and have takeaway with my teenage son for dinner. On the weekend after the birthday (never the weekend before), my partner and I go to dinner at a fancy restaurant.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I love TV but never remember what I’ve just watched. I know I loved Slow Horses, The Pitt, Bad Sisters, and The Walsh Sisters (based on Marian Keyes’s books ). I’ve also been re-watching series with my teenage son (Sopranos; Arrested Development).
Books: a friend recommended the Lucia series by E.F. Benson and I’ve been devouring them. I’ve also recently loved THREE DAYS IN JUNE by Anne Tyler, Kathryn Heyman’s powerful CIRCLE OF WONDERS, Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld’s dark THE MORTONS, and Liane Moriarty’s BIG LITTLE TRUTHS (she is hilarious, and a genius).
I like Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight podcast for humor, intelligence and warmth as a relief from all the dark news.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
My favourite foods are chocolate and blueberries. I like all cuisines – it depends on my mood. If I had to choose – well, I can’t. I’d probably cheat and say some kind fusion like Vietnamese-French.
What do you do when you have free time?
I love to watch live music and dance (badly but exuberantly). I am taking singing lessons, because people have been promising me all my life that anyone can sing – so far, not true, but I’m persisting. I like baking, swimming in the ocean, ice-skating on ponds, reading on the sand or on the couch. I love hanging out with my partner Nigel (who dances even more exuberantly than I do) and my very funny teenage son, Charlie.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on another novel set in the real world with a magical twist. This one is about an apartment complex with a secret. (Also, a new book in my Kingdoms and Empires series, THE ACCIDENTAL WORLD-SLIP OF ASTRID VERITY, is out in November.)
TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS by Jaclyn Moriarty
Three strangers’ lives are forever changed when they’re all drawn to a mysterious agency claiming to have unlocked the secret to time travel in this dazzling novel from award-winning author Jaclyn Moriarty.
On a bustling road in Sydney, Australia, lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. Inside, you’ll be welcomed by the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, a selection of baked goods…and the question, Where in time do you wish to go?
The guidelines are simple: you can go whenever you wish into the past, and there’s no fear of altering the present. Have tea with Jane Austen, scream at a Beatles concert, witness the Olympics in ancient Greece. Perhaps a more personal trip? Visit your long-lost grandmother, recapture the heady days of your youth, return to the idyllic time when your teen was a babbling baby—or watch yourself make the one decision that changed everything.
Is it a hoax? And if it’s real, what’s the catch?
When single mother Anna is offered a job at the agency, she glimpses the possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Teddy’s a customer hoping to untangle his recently imploded marriage. And Jade, who has a deeply buried secret, despises the agency for offering false hope.
In Jaclyn Moriarty’s incandescent novel, Anna, Teddy, and Jade leap headlong into time, hurtling on a crash course toward one another. At turns entertaining and illuminating, Time Travel for Beginners explores the moments, big and small, that shape our destiny.
Women’s Fiction | Mystery | Science Fiction Suspense/Thriller [ Berkley, On Sale: August 4, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593820339 / eISBN: 9780593820346 ]
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About Jaclyn Moriarty
Jaclyn Moriarty is an Australian writer of young adult literature. She studied English at the University of Sydney, and law at Yale University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD. She is the younger sister of Liane Moriarty. She was previously married to Canadian writer Colin McAdam, and has a son, Charlie. She currently lives in Sydney.
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