This week, continuing my series of conversations on writers talking about their writing (see the previous conversation here), Anastasia Ames discusses her debut novel Touching Time. Set in the tumult of late-1990s Moscow, the book revolves around a sensitive young artist Natasha and her love for Paul, an elusive American banker. Complicating the girl-meets-boy plot, however, is the sense that their meeting has upended Natasha’s consciousness in a very odd way, allowing her sudden glimpses of alternative lives and other times. The first book of a trilogy, Touching Time draws readers into Natasha’s sensibility and takes them from there to some unexpected places.
KD: How did the idea for Touching Time come about? Was it a sudden inspiration or something you’d been thinking about for ages?
AA: The idea had been building up for a few years, but I ended up writing Touching Time pretty quickly this past spring—almost like a manic burst of energy. Since getting into my forties, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting—looking back at my life, analyzing the choices I’ve made, the people I’ve lost, the paths not taken.
Around that time, I was also reading a lot about quantum immortality and multiverse theory, and it really hit me. The idea that there could be other versions of your life playing out somewhere else—that maybe the people you’ve lost aren’t truly gone—stuck with me. That’s where the emotional core of the book came from.
KD: Your life bears similarities with Natasha’s: you grew up in Moscow, you’re a talented artist, and you formed your first impressions of the United States as a young woman. What is your relationship with your protagonist? Do you see her as a version of yourself—someone who behaves the same way you might (though the situations are fictional)? Or did you consider her a fully separate being?
AA: Yes, Natasha is incredibly close to me—there’s a lot of myself in her. Her inner world, her way of observing things, the way she feels everything so deeply—that’s very much me. But at the same time, she’s not just me. She’s also a composite of people I’ve known, loved, and sometimes lost. Friends, strangers, girls I once was or saw from a distance. I think of her as both a reflection and an invention. Some of her choices are things I might have done, some are things I never would—but I understand where they come from. Writing her felt like writing a memory and a dream at the same time.
KD: I’m interested in an author’s writing process. Did you have a writing routine, a particular writing space, or any rituals to get you in the headspace? Did you plot beforehand or let the story take its course? Did you use a word processor or write long-hand?
AA: I didn’t have much of a routine—I wrote whenever I could, usually in short, intense bursts. It wasn’t planned or plotted out in advance. The story came almost like a wave, and I just tried to stay with it. Some days I wrote late at night, some days in the middle of the afternoon with kids running around. I mostly wrote on my laptop, but I kept notes in my phone or scribbled thoughts on paper whenever something came to me. There were no real rituals—just this overwhelming need to get it out of my head and onto the page. It felt urgent, like the story had been waiting a long time.
KD: What was it about writing fiction that especially appealed to you?
AA: What I love about writing fiction is the freedom. There are no limits—you can be completely honest, completely creative, and explore emotions or ideas that might be hard to say out loud in real life. It gives you space to tell the truth in a different way, through characters and moments that feel more real than reality sometimes. There’s something liberating about that.
KD: The city of Moscow often seems like a character in itself—the vivid descriptions and the way it changes through the seasons. I particularly loved the way you painted the transition between winter and spring, and also the way it presages Natasha’s love affair:
By early May, Moscow had softened. The stone buildings wore a thin veil of dust and light. Tulips bloomed in manicured squares and wild dandelions pressed through cracks in the sidewalk. The air no longer bit—it wrapped. There were smells again: asphalt, wet grass, flowering trees.
How would you describe Moscow’s place in the novel?
AA: Moscow is absolutely a character in the novel. I grew up there, and the city lives deep inside me—it shaped how I see the world. I wanted to show it not just as a setting, but as something breathing, changing, responding to Natasha’s inner life. The way the city shifts with the seasons mirrors her own transformation—how she opens up, falls in love, gets hurt, keeps going. That early spring feeling in Moscow, when the light returns and everything is raw and tender—that always meant something to me. I tried to write it the way it feels, not just how it looks.
KD: The book mixes genres in a way that reminds me of Mary Stewart (one of my favourite writers) in that there’s a touch of romance, a touch of fantasy, and a touch of travel memoir. And, as is often the case in Stewart’s books, it’s also a bildungsroman; Natasha is changed by her experiences—at the end of the book she says “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same”. Are there any authors or books you consider touchstones or references for your own work?
AA: I love that comparison—thank you. I’ve always been drawn to books that don’t stay neatly in one genre. Touching Time came out of that in-between space: part love story, part memory, part coming-of-age, with touches of the surreal. Some of my biggest influences are Elena Ferrante, Marguerite Duras, and Tove Ditlevsen—women who aren’t afraid to go deep into the emotional and psychological layers of a character. But I’ve also been shaped by the darker, more chaotic voices—Céline, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Gogol—their work taught me that literature can hold contradiction: beauty and decay, humor and despair, all at once.
At the same time, I really love novels that are just fun to read, the kind you don’t want to put down. Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella has that addictive, charming energy I admire. I also love books by Emma Straub and Maria Semple—stories that are smart, sharp, but also full of warmth and wit. That mix of emotional honesty and levity is something I find really inspiring. I think my writing lives somewhere between those worlds.
KD: Your descriptions are full of precise visual detail and sensory richness. For example, here’s a description of Natasha:
She had green eyes, sharp in shape but softened by a gaze that often flickered downward. She was skinny, with long arms, broad shoulders, and pale blonde hair she always tied up in a loose bun that somehow made her look sleepier than she was. She didn’t think of herself as pretty. When she looked in the mirror, she saw someone awkward. A girl who slouched too much and didn’t know how to pose her mouth in photos. She wished she could be one of those girls who radiated confidence. The kind who strutted down Tverskaya Street like they owned the asphalt. But she was not that girl. She was the kind who changed outfits five times and still didn’t like any of them.
I suspect that this richness has something to do with your background as a visual artist, which trains a talent for observation. Would you say that writing fiction is similar to drawing in some ways, or is the process completely different?
AA: Yes, I do think there’s a connection. I’ve always been a very visual person—I’ve loved drawing and painting since I was a kid, even though I never went to art school or studied it formally. But that habit of observing closely, of noticing how light falls or how someone holds themselves, definitely influences the way I write. When I’m writing, I often see the scenes in my head like pictures, and I try to translate that onto the page—not just how things look, but how they feel. So in that way, writing and drawing come from the same place for me: trying to hold onto a moment and make it real.
KD: The second part of the book describes a trip Natasha takes to the United States. Her adventures there brought to mind books about the Russian émigré experience in the US, like Eduard Limonov’s His Butler’s Story, Oksana, Behave! By Ukrainian Maria Kuznetsova, and The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar. The clash or combination of cultures seems to naturally make for narrative interest as a character is forced to confront or traverse differences and to examine their own identities.
AA: Yes, I think there’s something very powerful that happens when you’re taken out of your familiar world and dropped into a completely different one. That sense of dislocation—of being both invisible and exposed—can really shake something loose inside you.
For Natasha, the U.S. isn’t just a setting, it’s a kind of mirror, reflecting parts of herself she hadn’t fully faced before. And that part of the story is very close to my own experience. I came to the U.S. in 2000 as a young woman, and it was intense—beautiful, strange, disorienting. So much of what Natasha goes through during her time in America is drawn directly from how I felt in those early months. The clash of cultures forces you to confront yourself in unexpected ways. It strips you down, and you start to ask: who am I without the people, language, and places I’ve always known? That’s where the story really starts to deepen.
KD: Can you give a hint about what happens in the next book?
AA: Without giving too much away—I can say that the storyline with Paul definitely continues, and it becomes even more intense, emotional, and complicated. Natasha is drawn back to him, but what unfolds is darker, deeper, and filled with new questions about love, memory, and fate.
In the next book, time travel begins to take shape—not through machines or science fiction tropes, but through astral projection, reality shifting, and the multiverse. Natasha starts to experience other versions of her life, other timelines where different choices were made. It’s about grief, longing, and the possibility that somewhere, somehow, the people you’ve lost might still be with you. The boundaries between dream, memory, and reality start to dissolve—and that’s when everything changes.
Note: Prints of Anastasia’s artwork are available at her online stores here and here.
