I’m Pearl Fane (she/her). I’m in my early sixties, a vintage-wearing, cocktail-sipping swing dancer whose love of mid-century culture has been lifelong. My background is in feminist and mental health work, and I hold Master’s degrees in Visual Communication and Social Work. After early retirement, I returned to writing- the passion that first shaped my imagination, and now explore themes of identity, performance, and the ways women navigate the worlds they inhabit.
AUTHOR LINKS
Amazon UK – iPhone, Therefore I Am (ASIN: B0FP71KXPC)
Amazon Author Page: Pearl Fane
Insta, Threads and TikTok: @pearlfaneauthor
Facebook: /Pearl Fane-author
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Book Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs
What would you do if someone in 1957 found your iPhone? When Yvonne loses her iPhone, it doesn’t just disappear, it slips into the hands of Pearl, a self-invented woman navigating the hidden worlds of 1950s Soho.
As the two begin a seemingly impossible exchange, their lives start to mirror and disturb one another, revealing how identity, freedom, and connection are never quite what they seem.
A time-slip novel grounded in reality, iPhone, Therefore I Am explores how women perform themselves across decades and what happens when those performances begin to crack.
Your standalone time-slip novel, iPhone, Therefore I Am, is out now. What gave you the idea for a time-slip concept, and can you tell us more about the time periods this book is set in?
My series started with a dream: a woman in 1950s red lipstick, holding a pearl in her mouth and I couldn’t shake her. That woman became Pearl. And once she existed, I realised her story wouldn’t stay in one time period. I wanted to explore not just her life, but her impact, how someone can echo across decades without even meaning to.
That naturally led me into time-slip territory, though I don’t think of it as fantasy. I’m interested in what happens when reality is tinkered with around the edges.
Pearl is born in 1920, so across the books we see different versions of her: her early life in book three, her influence filtering into the present in book one (The Archivist’s Mistress), and in iPhone, Therefore I Am, we land in 1957 when she finds something she absolutely shouldn’t: an iPhone.
At its heart, the book asks a simple question: what happens if a woman in 1957 finds your phone? For Pearl, it’s fascination. She has found a ‘Temple of light’. For the owner in 2026, it’s panic. For both of them, it changes everything.
Pearl is a main character in this novel, a woman from the 1950s who finds a 21stC iPhone – but she’s more than that. Can you introduce us to Pearl, and also tell us more about the series in which she stars?
Pearl is a self-invented woman. She starts as a poor girl in 1920s New York, the daughter of a Hungarian émigré and spends her life becoming whoever she needs to be: performer, confidante, muse, enigma.
In book three, we see her childhood and her relationship with the Paper Dolls, a twin dancing act she grows up alongside. In wartime America, she reinvents herself again, performing in exclusive clubs for high-ranking military men.
By the 1950s, she’s in Soho, London. She’s now moving through a hidden world of photography, modelling, and performance. She’s always shaping herself, always slightly out of reach.
Across the series, Pearl is both centre and mystery. Each book stands alone, but together they form a kind of reverse chronology peeling her back layer by layer. Because in my writing, Pearl doesn’t belong to one time. She leaks into others as she did with me during that fateful sleep!
Where did you come up with the ideas for Yvonne’s character, a 21stC woman who loses her iPhone in the past, and for Chloe, the lady Yvonne has spent a long time caring for? What inspired these relationship dynamics?
Yvonne is a very modern contradiction. She’s hyper-connected, her whole life is on her phone but she’s also quietly lonely and desperate to be seen. I drew on my daughter and her friends to create her: a composite of that generation’s awareness, humour, and vulnerability. Through Yvonne, I wanted to explore how we perform identity. We think we’re freer now, but we’re still curating ourselves just with better tools.
Chloe, on the other hand, is rooted in someone real, a woman I knew who lived to 90. She was elegant, sharp, completely engaged with the world. I knew instantly she had to make it onto the page. Chloe is an ex-debutante, a woman who grew up under constant social regulation, trained to perform the “correct” version of herself at all times. I was interested in how that history shapes her later life. When she’s being cared for by Yvonne – lovingly, gently, she resists it. Because to Chloe, care can feel like control in another form.
Alongside her is Pearl, who seems free but is just as carefully self-constructed. Each woman thinks she understands the others. None of them quite do.
What research did you do for the historical portions of the novel, and what is your favourite thing about post-war London in the 1950s? Did you manage to slide in all your favourite elements, or were there fun facts and details that got left out – if so, can you share one with us?
I didn’t want the 1950s to feel like a backdrop, I wanted it to feel lived-in. I’ve immersed myself in mid-century culture since I was 12.
I’ve always dressed in vintage style so writing Pearl felt like the culmination of that lifelong fascination. But I went further. I researched everything: interiors, newspaper headlines, social codes, even how those details shaped daily behaviour.
The mundane matters, because that’s what makes a world believable. What fascinates me about post-war London is that it’s a tipping point. It’s the last moment before everything loosens before colour, rebellion, and the 1960s arrive. It’s a world still ordered, still restrained, still convinced that structure and authority will hold everything together. And then, of course, you drop something like a smartphone into it…
As Pearl and Yvonne communicate, and their relationship deepens across the divide of time, how did you go about imagining these conversations and crafting these scenes of oridinarily impossible dialogue? What challenges did you face as an author as you wrote these scenes, and what is your favourite part of their relationship?
This was one of the most enjoyable parts to write. The challenge was making the impossible feel completely natural so that two women separated by decades could speak as if it made perfect sense. I paid close attention to voice. Pearl speaks in the controlled, aspirational language of the 1950s,she refers to herself as “one,” avoids emotional directness, and frames vulnerability as “nerves.”
Yvonne, by contrast, is open, immediate, and unfiltered. What I love most is how they misunderstand each other, constantly but still connect. And there’s a lot of humour in that. Pearl assumes Yvonne must be wealthy because she owns a washing machine and wears a different outfit in every photo… then is horrified by her lack of gloves and what she considers a “caterpillar” coat. It’s those moments where perception and reality collide that bring their relationship to life.
What’s next for Pearl and her adventures, and/or what other writing projects do you have in the pipeline?
I’m currently writing book three, which explores Pearl’s early life and reveals things about her that subtly reframe the earlier books. After that, I’m planning a fourth novel that will take her into 1967. That feels like the natural point to leave her on the edge of a world that finally starts to resemble our own. But with Pearl, you never quite know. She has a habit of piquing my interest!
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