Past or Present -- Where do I want to be today?

      I love writing time travel because it combines the best of both worlds. I can have a modern, independent, free loving heroine and still have an alpha type hero who’s possessive, self-made, and believes women should be protected and revered. Even those of us growing up in the era of “women’s lib” really, if we’re truthful, don’t mind being taken care of at times.

      In the time travels I’ve written, the heroine always travels back in time. Whether she is stuck there, or can bounce back and forth, depends on the story. But the fact that she knows things the hero doesn’t can lead to some interesting conversations.

       For example, in SPINNING THROUGH TIME (Books We Love), Jaci makes Nicholas and his niece a pizza, which they eat with their hands. Nicholas comments that it’s not bad tasting, but it will never catch on as a dinner dish.

       In INDIGO BAY, dated 1850, (http://wwwimajinnbooks.com) Logan comments to Michaela, “And I suppose next you’ll tell me you should have the right to vote. That will never happen.”

      Things that haven’t been invented yet, or have particular significance in one century or the other, are always fun to incorporate into a story. Ellie, in PROSPECTING FOR LOVE (Books We Love) is discovered with nail polish on her toes, which only the “working girls” at the salon would do. She finds “real junk food” in the form of potato chips and Van Camp’s Pork and Beans in the general store in 1850, believing things like that had only been invented in her lifetime. The opposite side of the coin is that she doesn’t know how to cook without a microwave or start a fire in the stove.

      Some of the challenges inherent to writing time travel are: (1) the methods I use to get the heroine back in time, (2) what can or can’t be transported with her when she goes, and (3) how and when she has an opportunity to return to her own time. The “rules” have to be established before I start writing and then they cannot be broken. I can’t decide half way through the book that Brianna needs her car keys to convince Jake she’s from the future, so she miraculously finds them under a rock somewhere. (LOST KNIGHT OF ARABIA from Books We Love).

      Now that being said, I can have different rules for different books. For example, the methods of taking the heroine back in time are very different in each of my four books. Then, in three of my stories, whatever the heroines had on their person traveled through time with them. However, in INDIGO BAY, the only things that went through the portal were what already existed in 1850. Mica quickly discovered she couldn’t wear a polyester blend into the past. It simply disappeared!

       The real climax for a time travel isn’t finding the treasure or solving the mystery, but it’s whether the heroine and hero stay together. Since my heroine didn’t have a choice when she accidently went through time, I do give her a choice as to whether she stays. There has to be a point where either the opportunity or the threat of “transportation” exists, so my heroine has a free choice in her future. Whether she takes it, and whether the hero can stay with her, either in his time or hers, would be giving away the endings! I hope, instead, that you grab a time travel and stay up late reading to find out.

      Indigo Bay is available through ImaJinn Books, and the other three are instantly available as downloads at http://bookswelove.net/authors/baldwin-barbara/