Category Archives: time travel

Happy December: An author chat and a chance to win free books!

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Today, on this lovely (but cold) first day of December, I’m participating in an all-day chat over at Beth Wylde’s Yahoo forum with my fellow Champagne Books authors. A lot of us are hosting mini-contests to win copies of our books, and I’m doing the same. My debut time travel romance, “A Question of Time,” isn’t being released until November 2012, but I do have a copy of my short story, “The Ash-slave”– an ancient Persian retelling of Cinderella– to give away to one lucky commenter on the Beth Wylde chat group.

My question is: If you could travel in time, and be guaranteed a certain amount of safety, what period would you visit, and what would you do once there? The person who posts the most creative answer here wins the story!

Revolutionary Comics

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For the final post of Georgian History month, I’d like to introduce the talented writer and comic artist Laura Neubert, the creator of “The Light Eater” webcomic, a lovely and atmospheric Gothic paranormal fantasy set during the time of the French Revolution. She’s here to discuss her favorite 18th century set comics– focusing mainly on ones set during the American and French revolutions. These comics by groundbreaking comic artists like Lora Innes, Ryoko Ikeda, and Dylan Meconis are all revolutionary comics, in both senses of the word.

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Ahh the 1700’s. What a romanticized point in Western history. Certainly, this is due in no small part to the two revolutions that capped off that century. Is it any wonder that so many artists, authors and artistic types have turned their attentions toward the latter end of that 100 year period? The drama of revolution is inescapable, hell, the word itself means to change, or to turn. Place nearly any sort of character in the context of such turmoil and the drama is just about inherent. In some ways, it seems even terribly fitting that creators of comics would take on this period in time, since William Hogarth’s prints, which are considered an early precursor to sequential art appeared during this time, and often commented on many of the conditions and social misconceptions that helped lead to some of the revolutionary fervor in France. With that in mind, let’s take a step back in time and give the works of a few talented authors a closer look.

First off, let’s handle things a bit chronologically. So let’s turn our attention to “The Dreamer”, arguably one of the most well-known web-comics in America. Written by Lora Innes, the story concerns a young modern-day lass named Bea who seems to travel back in time to the American Revolution when she sleeps. Perhaps it’s only a dream, a vivid, intense dream, but, Bea seems to have an established life in the past, she even has a paramour there, the dashing, charming Alan. It is not only Bea, but also the reader who must wonder which time frame is real and which is the dream. Is our heroine merely imagining this complex story of such an important point in American history, or is she actually rushing back and forth through time? Is she only one person, or two? How can one person exist in two places at once? Continue reading “Revolutionary Comics” »

Author of the Month: an interview with Lora Innes

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For this month’s Author, I’m very pleased to present Lora Innes– the author, artist, and creator behind the the critically acclaimed comic “The Dreamer,” from IDW Publishing. “The Dreamer,” a sweeping time travel romance set in both the modern day and the Revolutionary War, is one of the breakout hits of the webcomic world, because Lora is someone who can do it all: write, draw, paint and conceptualize on an epic scale. (She’s even the co-host of the Paperwings Podcast, which I highly recommend for any creative.) Lora is actually the reason I’m doing interviews in the first place; I wanted to interview her back in 2008, but I haven’t had the chance to do it until now. Lora’s been interviewed many times before about her artwork, but this time I wanted to take a different tack and ask her about being an author.

Lora Innes

Hi Lora! Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Where did you go to school?

I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I lived there my entire life until I went to the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio. Met a boy, fell in love, married him… you know the drill. So I’m still in Columbus. Continue reading “Author of the Month: an interview with Lora Innes” »

Take me back to Camelot

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Camelot with Michael York

I’ve been having a lot of problems with the internet lately– I’ve hardly been able to get online at all, except at Starbucks (which explains why I haven’t been able to blog as much as I would like). So I’ve been reading a lot of time travel romances. That genre has been on my brain a lot, since I just wrote one.

My absolute favorite time travel novels ever tend to be soft science-fiction– I’m thinking mainly of the brilliant and surreal “The Green Futures of Tycho” by William Sleator, Octavia Butler’s classic “Kindred,” and “The Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis, which makes the 14th century so alive, you feel like you’re actually there. But if we’re talking about time travel romance, my tastes vary. There’s “The Mirror” by Marlys Milhauser (an edgy, twisted but sexy book which is really more romance/horror/paranormal)– but I also like books less dark, like Elizabeth Chater’s “The Elsingham Portrait” and Laurie Viera Rigler’s “Confession of a Jane Austen Addict.” I also enjoyed Amy Elizabeth Saunder’s “Enchanted Time” and Rebecca East’s “AD 62,” which is flawed but very fun, with a sexy but scholarly Roman hero. (How often do you see that?) Continue reading “Take me back to Camelot” »

“A Question of Time” and how it came to be

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Let me tell you a story.

Sometime last fall, I was sitting at my desk in my gloomy New York apartment, either contemplating my dwindling funds or the fact that I hadn’t finished an original, non-fanfic story longer than 6,000 words since I graduated from high school. Knowing me, it was probably the latter. I’ve always wanted to write; I’ve written as a matter of habit, since I could remember. Back when I was a kid in the ’80s, I wrote my own Choose Your Adventures, including deathless tomes like “Dreams” or “The Secret of Unicorn Valley.” There was this one boy in grade school who wanted me to write a Transformers Choose Your Own Adventure, but I declined because I was into fantasy and I didn’t like robots. I probably should have done it, since the boy was cute… but alas, I was too into wizards and unicorns. Thus, the joys of Starscream/Optimus Prime slash were thus forever lost to me.

But back to my desk. I remember the thought got stuck in my head… what if I could write something short, and that didn’t require research? I have been trying to write historical epics forever… and the same thing always happens. I always get bogged own in research, or some plot problem arises, and I never finish. I thought of what my friend Stephanie Dray told me: she too used to write grandiose epics, but then she wrote this short little paranormal thing, almost off the cuff, and she sold it almost immediately to Harlequin Nocturne. And now because of that, she’s actually back to her epics and selling them too. It seemed like there was a moral in there somewhere. Continue reading ““A Question of Time” and how it came to be” »