Author's Note

I haven’t yet been tempted to write anything with time travel in it.  But I can see the allure it has for my fellow authors that have.  It can be an oh-so-handy tool for fixing plot errors, especially in a series.  You don’t like where things have gone? No problem!  Just have one of your characters time travel back, by magical or scientific means, and change a pivotal action or decision.  Voila!  Plot re-boot!  Time travel can also be highly attractive from the perspective of righting a wrong.  Don’t like that Hitler got to choose his death instead of having it handed to him by his enemies?  Have a character time travel and get the job done.  While doesn’t change anything in our space-time continuum, there is a certain satisfaction to seeing a really bad guy get what’s coming to him at the end of your pen.  And from an author’s perspective, it’s awfully handy to be able to get your character crucial information to ensure survival/solve the crime/save the world by having a character from the future show up and share the necessary tidbit.  Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? 

So, how come I’ve never been tempted to write time travel?  It’s a simple thing, really.  I’ve always had the staunch belief that everything I’ve lived through up until this point has contributed to the person I am.  If I changed anything, I’d be someone else.  And I like who I am.  I know I’m far from perfect, but, in my humble opinion, I’m a pretty fun and likable person.  I’d be my best friend if I were someone else.   And if it goes for me, it goes for my characters too.  For example, if Judy goes back in time to warn her mother about the rogue ice cream truck that runs up on the sidewalk and kills her, then Judy and Joe’s mom survives and goes on to live to a ripe old age.  Without losing his mom at 17, Joe never sinks into the deep depression that shapes him into a dark and broody adult.  Since he’s not a dark and broody adult, he’s no longer attractive to Melanie, who likes her guys dark and broody and unavailable.  Joe and Melanie don’t have a baby from a drunken one night stand, so that baby does not grow up into Tim, who saves the world because he feels like he needs to do something spectacular to get the attention of the father who was never there as he was growing up. 

So from my worldview, any time you change the timeline, all your characters are at risk for a radical personality change.  As an author, it’s my responsibility to mark sure that I capture this and give my reader a true story, with no excuses or shortcuts.  Can you imagine how complex that could get in a novel with multiple characters?  There would be personalities and relationships changing in the blink of an eye (in book time).  And what about echoes?  What I mean is, do the characters truly have no memory of what happened in a different time stream, or will Suzy feel a pull toward Billy because they were lovers prior to the time event that changed everything, even though she’s married to Frank in the now and has no recollection of why she should find Billy attractive?

Working out all those characters and plot lines would be really complicated.  But it does sound like fun, doesn’t it?  You know something, I think I just talked myself into writing a time travel story.  Now all I need are a few good plots….

This is a quote I need to tape to the side of my monitor, memorize, and/or paint on my wall.  We writers should not forget this. 

“All considerations of language, of ideas, of symbols and metaphors serve only one function: to convey the soul of a living being to the soul of other living beings and in that process break us out of our isolation and loneliness and put us in touch with the universal spirit.”

~ Floyd Salas

I’ve always known that when it came to stories, to read or to write, I was a fantasy kind of girl.  It’s all because of my dad.  My father was a voracious reader (and fast too!) and because of his job he had to fly a lot.  So he would come home from his business trips with big paper grocery sacks full of paperback books, and he’d spill them out over the coffee table for me and my older brother to squabble over.  Dad was pretty evenly divided between fantasy and science fiction, but early on I showed a preference for fantasy and my brother for science fiction, not that we wouldn’t read the other genres, we just knew what we wanted to go for first.  Because of my dad, I soared with Anne McCaffrey’s dragons, I skulked through the dirty alleyways of Robert Asprin’s Thieve’s World, I rode along for Garion’s epic adventure in David Eddings’s Belgariad, and I loved every single minute of it.  So it only seemed natural that I would write fantasy when I figured out that being a writer was all I ever wanted to be. 

But heroic (or high) fantasy, which is what made up the bulk of my dad’s fantasy reading, wasn’t quite the genre for me.  Sure, I’ve done a few pieces that worked quite well in that genre, but it’s not quite “home.”  Every writer has a genre that for him or her is home base.  I found my home in my late 20s, courtesy of a co-worker at my dayjob.  I’d already been writing in this genre for a little while because I’d figured out in grad school that stories without some kind of supernatural or mythical twist didn’t suit me.  But I didn’t know what to call it, it’s just what I did.  Then Sarah told me I should read Charles de Lint.  I was stunned.  Here was home.  Here was someone with enormous talent, and quite a bit of success, doing exactly the type of stuff I yearned to do.  I was completely hooked.  Welcome to urban fantasy, my genre of choice.

Whoo-Hoo!  The fourth short story I sold to Echelon Press Publishing is up and ready for your reading pleasure as an ebook download.  This one is called “Hounds of Winter” and is one of many of my stories that has been inspired by one of my all time favorite musicians, Sting.  Here is the teaser description:

Winter is a treacherous season.  The ice can cut, the snow can blind, and the wind has teeth.  But some winters are even more perilous, some winters are inhabited by malevolent spirits.  Devlin finds himself alone in such a winter, his lovely FayLinn gone missing.  And when The Wild Hunt shows themselves in the area, he has an idea of where she’s gone.  What would be more dangerous: the winter wind and vicious hunters or the pain of abandonment and a broken heart?

It’s only $2!  Go download it now and get a good shiver!

http://tinyurl.com/houndsowinter

So Saturday my newest issue of Writer’s Digest came in the mail, emblazoned with all those catchy headlines designed to attract writers like moths to a flame.  This month’s headlines seem to focus on productivity, encouraging the muse, finding time to write, and making the most out of the time you do find.  Given that I am embarking on the longest writing project of my life and I’m always kvetching about not having time to write, my inner writer was squealing, “Ooooooo, Shiny!”  Of course, since it’s the January issue, its probably just that they know a lot of writers and would-be-writers are doing the New Year’s resolution thing and these types of articles are going to move magazines at this time of year. 

I finally had some time to settle down with an article last night just before bed.  The article I chose was about making time to write.  Pretty much nothing it said was new to me, but it did make something click in my head.  I had the kind of epiphany that makes you slap your forehead and say, “DUH!” Which scares the cat and she gives you the “bitch, please” look but at that point you’re too distracted by your shiny new epiphany to notice. 

And the epiphany is (insert drumroll please) – using little pockets of time, like 20 minutes or less.  The article author refers to them as “mini-retreats.”  The idea is so very simple.  Arrive early for an appointment and write before you go in.  Put the casserole for dinner in the oven and write while it bakes.  On your commute to or from the office, stop in the local coffee shop and write for 10-15 minutes.  What makes this even more of a duh for me is that I used to do precisely this thing back when I was in grad school and working full time.  It was the only way the copious amounts of reading I needed to do ever got done.  I always had a textbook with me and I read everywhere, even at stop lights (yes, I know that wasn’t particularly safe, but I never had an accident).  Now I just need to get back into that habit, except with my laptop/notebook instead of a textbook. 

Now, I know this isn’t my preferred mode of writing.  I like having long stretches of time where I can really shake loose and stretch out.  There’s time to get up and pace while I twist around a plot point in my head.  I feel like I can stare out into space for minutes at a time to find the right word, instead of feeling rushed because I only have 10 minutes and I’ve got to get as much down on paper as possible.  But beggars, or full-time office workers, can’t be choosers.  I have to keep my day job, it’s what pays the bills, so I don’t have the luxury of long stretches if time on a regular basis.  Until I make it big enough in the publishing world I’m going to have to make do with small pockets of time.  Even if I can only write a few sentences here and there, sentences add up to paragraphs and paragraphs add up to pages, pages add up to chapters and chapters add up to novels.  Mini-retreat, here I come…