Who was Jane Austen? I want to write about Jane Austen to plumb the depths of the enigma. The famous author was full of contradictions. Supposedly, she was quiet and obedient, a devout lady of her time, but she longed for the adventure her brothers enjoyed. She was a sarcastic cynic about human relationships who penned romantic comedies that still make our hearts throb. Jane was forbidden as a woman to publish under her own name, and yet she won fame and fortune through her pen.
History and magic — a powerful combination.
Time travel combines history with magic as magical realism or urban fantasy. A place where the unlikely pops into your ordinary world. The theme of my time travel books is that traveling forward or back in time, the main character grows and even transforms through the experience
I want to write about the impact of seeing the future on Jane Austen. Jane would make a good time traveler, I believe. She’s quick of mind and a keen observer. A playful person. Perhaps given to wonder, though also to skepticism. She’ll come into a strange place where no one wears hats, where carriages are preceded by no horses, and where men and women can go out for tea together unchaperoned.
She’ll visit a place where people discuss the books she has yet to write, and she might gain motivation to write them. Or she might have her heart torn apart and then write better about love and heartbreak.
How Would Jane Austen See Our World?
I want to see how Jane reports on our world, in her funny, penetrating, and tragic way. And of course, my story will include love across the centuries. Jane has to fall in love, doesn’t she? In choosing Jane Austen as my time travel character I hope to give her experiences beyond what’s recorded in her biography — adventures that might make sense of her contradictions.
Time traveling allows me to play the what-if game, reimagining how history might have changed gone differently. How we might now live in alternate worlds, changing who we are. I believe my form of time travel is a kind of magical realism
These are the reasons I chose as my next literary adventure to hurl Jane Austen into the future, into our present. What she finds may well change her past and ours. Look for a new Timegathering Series adventure later this year.
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