Why Time Travel?

First of all, I feel like I say this all the time, but only because it's true:

I didn't set out to be a Time Travel Author, but here we are. After following through on a Twitter joke, I now have not one but two stories that feature time travel. One is a novel that will be written in the future (I'm still discovering more about it every day); the other is a short story that will soon be my first published writing. I'll share more of that story soon.

As soon as I dipped my toes in the water of time travel fiction, I couldn't stop myself from jumping right in to see where the current took me. The Twitter joke turned into an emotional story about a girl going back in time to meet her dad, who left her family when she was a baby. The time travel device gave me the freedom to let the story go anywhere (or more importantly, anywhen) -- when I discovered a scene where 13-year-old Hannah is playing baseball with her dad, who also happens to be 13 at the time, I realized the magic that time travel stories can create. 

When I was 13, I played baseball with my friends too (but not with my daughter time traveling from the future, at least as far as I know), and sometimes there would be close plays. We didn't have umpires -- heck, we didn't have bases most of the time, so arguing about whether someone's foot touched the base before the ball hit the glove could get messy. Sometimes one side would give up in the face of a louder or bigger kid's opinion, but sometimes both sides stood their ground, and we had no choice but to call for a do-over. 

We'd rewind time for thirty seconds or so, and reset from right before the controversial play. We'd all check in with each other to make sure we arrived at the same moment in time: it's a 2-1 count with one out and a runner on second, and Timmy just stepped back on the mound after answering his mom's call (ten minutes until dinner's ready!) from across the yard.

Time travel. I've been doing it my whole life. 

I love stories about do-overs: second (or third or fourth) chances, rewriting history, getting the Infinity Stones first so The Snap never happened in the first place. 

I love reading them, I love watching them, and now I love writing them. 

My only regret is that I didn't start sooner.

Maybe I can get a do-over? 

What's in a Name?

A few days ago, someone told me that I always have "snappy" titles for my stories. I felt some pride, but also a lot of humble gratitude for what I see as a lucky streak of stumbling into a title. 

It got me thinking: where do these titles come from? How did I get lucky with snappy ones? Here's a quick run-down...

THE FIRST KID ON MARS

• This is the story that brought me back to writing (a story that I still need to tell here), and the title fell out of the sky halfway through chapter one. All I knew at first was that there was a young girl in a classroom. When the principal called from the office, I found out that the girl, Abby, had been picked for a mission that would make her the first kid on Mars. I did a quick google search to make sure no one else had already used that title, and that was it. 

SEVENTEEN MINUTES OF RAIN

• This story started out as a Twitter joke and took on a life of its own; I discovered new details about it every day, and about a month in I discovered that the 2016 World Series was an important event for the main characters. The 2016 World Series finished with a dramatic rain delay in the 9th inning of a tied game 7. Nobody knows exactly what happened in the locker rooms, but after seventeen minutes of rain the Cubs came out to rally for the win.

BLUE SKIES

• I was invited to contribute a short story to an anthology of time travel authors (I still can't believe this really happened), and jumped into a story that starts with a skydiving accident and time hops to 2142 and back, so a dad can help his daughter save the world. I looked up skydiving lingo and found "blue skies" - a phrase that can mean hello, goodbye, and good luck in the skydiving community. And then it matched up with the lullaby dad used to sing to his little girl, so it had to be the title.

LOOKING FOR KISMET

• I saw a book on a table at the school I teach at, part of a messy pile of books next to a note that said "FREE!" The title of the book grabbed me - Searching for Serendipity - but I didn't grab the book. I did let that phrase kick around in my head for a few days, until it was joined by memories of my old cat Kismet, and an imagined story of neighborhood kids looking for Kismet when she runs away. 

Looking at this list, I guess I do feel like I've gotten pretty lucky with snappy titles. Any other name might not smell so sweet.

To Blog or not to Blog?

That is the question. 

I'm still pretty new at all this -- I started to write my first novel last year at 46 years old, which I believe is a bit older than most new writers out there. I'm told I need a blog and a website, but I don't really know what to do with them yet. 

So, if you're listening, I'd love some feedback -- I like the posts that I've written so far, but I don't know if they're the right kinds of posts to do what it's supposed to do. If that makes sense. 

On the one hand, I kind of enjoy blogging (and I think I'm okay at it for an old guy); on the other hand, I'd rather suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than market myself. 

Oh, Bother

I got a great start on this blog over the summer, but then the school year started and I kind of forgot that I had a blog. 

There's actually been a lot to report, too: I finished the first draft of THE FIRST KID ON MARS, got some great people to read it and give me feedback, wrote a time travel short story called BLUE SKIES, discovered a huge amount of that time travel novel I'll be writing in the future (I found out in one time traveling trip that it's called SEVENTEEN MINUTES OF RAIN, and it's about baseball!), and I wrote a whole bunch of haiku.

And I've been teaching full-time, directing the annual school musical (NEWSIES JR.), and getting two kids through every school day. Fall is a busy time around here. 

But I need to get back to blogging again, even if I feel like I don't have the time or energy - you see, I've got some exciting news to share soon...