Memory gives people a sense of identity, history, and truth. In Original Echoes, even that deeply personal refuge becomes dangerously uncertain.
J J Noad invites readers beneath Blackpool’s famous Winter Gardens, where a hidden machine has the power to alter behaviour, reshape recollections, and disturb reality itself.
A Secret Beneath the Winter Gardens
Set in 1962, Original Echoes follows Frederick “Fred” Langley, a former wartime intelligence officer who has since become a journalist. His experience makes him a careful observer, the sort of man who understands coded language, concealed motives, and the quiet dangers of unchecked authority.
Fred is sent to Blackpool to assess Project EUNOMIA, a confidential government programme operating beneath the Winter Gardens. Officials have discovered a Victorian apparatus that continues to draw power almost seventy years after its installation. The machine was created to influence public behaviour through sound, atmosphere, and psychological suggestion.
The government views the apparatus as a possible answer to growing social uncertainty and Cold War anxiety. Its ability to encourage obedience could offer officials a powerful means of restoring public order. The very idea raises an unsettling question: what happens when people follow instructions without realizing their minds have been altered?
Fred’s assignment appears straightforward. He’s expected to observe the project and submit a report. The available evidence soon becomes unreliable. Documents contradict one another, earlier test subjects have disappeared, and certain memories no longer match recorded events. His former commanding officer also seems to know far more than he’s willing to reveal.
When the Past Begins to Change
As Project EUNOMIA moves toward a full-scale test, Fred realizes that the apparatus may possess capabilities beyond psychological influence. The machine appears to disturb the structure of reality, connecting the government project to a mysterious performance held at the Winter Gardens in 1895.
Blackpool documented that performance, yet the town somehow forgot it.
When the apparatus is activated, Fred passes through a fracture in time and arrives in Victorian Blackpool. The familiar town has become an uncertain place. He has no secure identity, no obvious route back to 1962, and no guarantee that the history he remembers will remain intact.
His investigation leads to the Welcroft Society, an influential group determined to impose its own vision of social and moral order. Its members intend to use the apparatus to direct human behaviour. Their plans revolve around Clara Langdon, a young woman whose voice is required for a ritual she hasn’t freely chosen.
Fred gradually discovers connections between the machine, an older rite, and a concealed chapter of Blackpool’s history. The society’s desire for control has awakened a force that exceeds human understanding. Names disappear from official documents. Streets transform. People lose all memory of those they once knew. Every alteration threatens the truth Fred is trying to protect.
Dr Jeremy builds suspense through shifting evidence and mounting uncertainty. Readers experience Fred’s growing unease as observation becomes insufficient. He must choose whether to intervene, protect Clara, and risk placing himself inside the mystery he hoped to solve.
The novel blends time-slip fiction, historical mystery, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror. Its movement between 1962 and 1895 allows both periods to influence each other, creating a layered story about freedom, obedience, identity, and institutional power.
About the Author
Dr Jeremy J Noad is the author of the two-book Echoes Mysteries series, which combines time travel, historical intrigue, and psychological tension. His debut novel, Fractured Echoes, was a finalist in the 2026 Page Turner Awards and received a silver medal in the Best Debut Novel category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
After spending many years in Lancashire, Dr Jeremy developed a strong connection with Blackpool. Its theatres, hotels, piers, and visible layers of history provide fertile ground for his fiction. He uses recognizable locations as foundations for imaginative events, giving the mysteries a convincing sense of place.
Dr Jeremy also works as a commercial practice consultant and co-authored The Sales Professional’s Handbook series. His professional interest in evidence, assumptions, and decision-making carries naturally into his novels. His characters must continually examine what they know, what they believe, and what they may have misunderstood.
The Truth Waiting Beneath the Surface
As the second book in the series, Original Echoes reveals Fred Langley’s earlier story and expands the events behind the wider Echoes mystery. It can also serve as an entry point for new readers who wish to begin with Fred’s journey before exploring Fractured Echoes.
With its atmospheric Blackpool setting, shifting timelines, government secrets, and disturbing questions about manipulated memory, Original Echoes offers a compelling experience. Dr Jeremy leaves readers considering how easily truth can be rewritten when power reaches inside the human mind.
We had the privilege of interviewing the author. Here are excerpts from the interview.
Hi, thank you so much for joining us today! Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
I’m Jeremy Noad, an author and commercial consultant based in England. I write fiction that blends time travel, historical mystery, and psychological suspense. My Echoes series is set largely in Blackpool and explores what happens when the past begins to affect the present.
My debut novel, Fractured Echoes, introduces a mystery that reaches back to Victorian Blackpool. Original Echoes takes readers to 1962 and follows Fred Langley back to the events behind that mystery.
Please share your journey with our readers.
I spent many years living in Lancashire, and Blackpool became a place that stayed with me. Its history, architecture and changing identity gave me the setting for a story in which different periods could exist side by side.
Fractured Echoes was my debut novel, published in September 2025. Writing it meant building a story across the present day and 1895–96 while keeping the characters and the mystery at the centre. The response has been encouraging: the book received a silver medal in the Best Debut Novel category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and became a finalist in the 2026 Page Turner Awards.
Original Echoes grew from a question I wanted to answer after the first book: how did Fred Langley become involved in these events, and what happened before the story readers already knew? Rather than simply repeat the first novel, I wanted to open another part of the world. The result is a story set in 1962, rooted in the nineteenth century, with a secret government project beneath the Winter Gardens.
The journey has also taught me that finishing a book and developing a series are different challenges. Each novel must work for the reader, while the wider story must remain consistent across time.
What are the strategies that helped you become successful in your journey?
I try to focus on the work rather than on the idea of success. Awards and reviews are welcome, but they come after the main task: writing a book that readers want to finish.
Research is one part of my approach. I use real places and historical detail to give the fiction a foundation, but I don’t want research to slow the story. The question is always whether a detail helps the reader understand the place, the character, or the mystery.
I also believe in testing assumptions. In my consulting work, I have learned to separate what we know from what we think we know. That carries into writing. A scene may make sense to the author because the author knows the whole story, but the reader only has what is on the page. Feedback and revision help expose those gaps.
The other lesson is to keep going. Writing a novel involves many decisions, and not every decision will be right the first time. I find it more useful to complete the work, assess what needs to change, and make progress than to wait for every sentence to be perfect.
Any message for our readers?
I would encourage readers to try stories that take them somewhere they would not normally go. Historical fiction and time travel can offer more than a visit to another period. They can make us think about how people lived, what they believed, and how much our own lives depend on events that came before us.
If you enjoy mysteries that unfold across time, I hope you will visit the world of Fractured Echoes and Original Echoes. You do not need to have read the first book to enter the second, although each adds to the other.
Most of all, I hope the stories leave you with questions. What would you do if you discovered that something you believed about your past was wrong? And if you had the chance to change what happened, would you take it?
Thank you so much for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!