At last, it’s here — my new story of time travel, adventure, mystery, and love. The Time Gatherer is available on Amazon today in ebook and print!
Why I love writing time travel begins with why I love history. You learn so much about the present and yourself from studying how we got here — what in the past brought our civilization, culture, and individual selves to this point. The human condition evolved over a long period. We became who we are through many mistakes and difficulties. It’s part of us now. They say those who ignore the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.
The Complexity of Writing Time Travel
I got into time travel fiction because of history.The richness and layers of history led me to the complexity of writing time travel. Using time travel in fiction seems to me a better way to understand history — folding two eras together, the present with the past.
On an unforgettable art history tour of Northern Italy, I found myself imagining falling back in time. I daydreamed about meeting the artists, adventurers, saints, and leaders depicted in the fabulous art I was witnessing. I wondered what it would be like if you could meet your idol in history? 
That’s how the Timegathering Series idea was born. How did its central figure, the time travel tour guide George St. James, come to be? I wouldn’t have wanted to wander around Rome without a guide, and similarly, wouldn’t plunge into all of history without one. George’s story of becoming that guide is the subject of The Time Gatherer. And I’m continuing to write in the time travel genre because you can pick any era of history — or several — and do a deep dive, learning more. My next era will probably be the American Revolution. And of course, George will be there.
The Evolution of George St. James, Time Travel Guru
As George evolved in The Renaissance Club, I realized he had remarkable qualities of humanity, time agility, and kindness. He was knowledgeable to a fantastic degree — the product of both distinguished degrees and bopping around in history to witness key events — and he was funny. I got more interested i him as I wrote, but good editorial consultants suggested I slim down the stuff about George and his story.
But I was curious — how would it be to discover you could travel through time, and to find that out at an early age? How would it shape your adolescence, for example, that chaotic personal period when you aren’t sure who you will turn out to be, but have all sorts of impulses to try things out?
George began to time travel back simply to listen to vintage rock and roll. Much the way I’d like to do, remembering the rock music of the 60s and 70s, and how exciting it was to be in those concert crowds every weekend, listening to the bands who invented rock music as we know it now. Then, he might take a stroll through an era he was reading about in a history class — perhaps the middle ages, when troubadours strolled the woods and villages, inventing their songs and entertaining at castles and inns. But strolling through history can get you in all kinds of trouble. People can suddenly, for no good reason, shoot arrows at you. You can meet beautiful girls in a forest, or in a Renaissance city. And though you know you don’t belong there, you want to stay. You plow through a wellspring of history and find too many fascinating eras and personalities.
Why I Love Writing Time Travel
So I saved all that historical research and kept writing about George and his adventures in learning to master time trqavel. Eventually, I realized I had not just a short story or novella, but a new novel in the works. The Time Gatherer is George’s origin story. And it made me realize why I love writing time travel books. It sets me a fascinating journey through history. I followed George down all these different pathways and discovered how rich and complex is the history that has brought us to where we are in the present, the good and the bad, the possibilities, and the future ahead.
And now there will be a new time traveler in our series, with a new slant on history — instead of sending someone contemporary into history, this one will bring someone from the past into the present. Here’s why I love writing time travel and want to write about Jane Austen. The reasons are in line with those in earlier books in my Timegathering Series. History and seeing it through the lens of the present and the past at the same time, through the meeting of characters from different centuries. Seeing history through love and its obstacles and resolution.
