I am currently about half-way through, and finding it an absolutely fascinating story, with very realistic reactions to meeting people of another era, and vivid descriptions.  I would say Jack Finney’s strongest point of his many strong points, is his attention for detail, which really brings each scene alive.

What interested me, however, is comparing the methods of time travel in the many stories available that feature it.  H.G. Wells’ Time Machine is probably the best known.  Like H.G. Wells, Michael Crichton uses technology to transport his characters in his book Timeline. 

A second method that seems to come up routinely is witchcraft or magic.  A sorcerer is the– forgive the pun– source of the switch in time in the movie Just Visiting.  An evil witch does the same thing to her unsuspecting victim in a lesser known book, a romance, called The Gray Ghost.  My favorite childhood novel, In the Keep of Time, by Margaret J. Anderson, fits in the magic category: an ancient ruin of a Scottish keep, whose key at times glows mysteriously– and that is when the switches happen.  I think Diana Gabaldon’s beloved and popular Outlander series would also fall into this category, as the characters travel through standing stones.

Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve movie set on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, relies on the concept that a man can surround himself with the elements of the past and believe himself right back into a different era.  This is the idea Jack Finney uses, although with the twist of an elaborate secret government project, based on Einstein’s theories, in which Si Morley and others like him are trained in self-hypnosis, given extensive training in the era to which they will travel, and left at sites which either are virtually as they were, or can be made, briefly, to be much as they were, in the time era to which the researchers intend to travel.

The recent and very popular Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, has presented the most unique explanation to date: a genetic anomaly.

My own novel, Blue Bells of Scotland, ends with no real explanation as to how the switch might have occurred.  In Book 2, they explore that question, and so far, I have not seen a book that uses the same explanation they find. 

I continue to look for books on time travel, and am interested to find out what other methods have been conjured by authors.   Feel free to comment on time travel novels you’ve read or look into lots of great  Time Travel Fiction at Amazon!  Have fun!

Authors are often asked how they create their characters.  The answer varies from author to author, from book to book, and from character to character.  Sometimes, characters just walk onstage, so to speak, fully formed, absolutely sure of who they are, and behave exactly as they please, regardless of the author’s intentions.  Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, says this is how Claire Beachamp Randall came to her.  She simply walked into a shack full of Scottish Jacobites and announced herself in very un-18th Century language.  It is how my characters Shawn and Niall came to me.  They simply are who they are, they’ve never been anything else, and I couldn’t make them be if I tried.  Interestingly, this even goes for looks.  I have had the experience twice now, of meeting someone who is the spitting image of the character I’ve been writing.  Not that I had an exact face in mind.  But somehow, sometimes, as an author, you see someone, and you just know: that’s him! 

Some characters walk onstage but are a little less clear.  This is how Angus, in  The Minstrel Boy (Book 2 of The Blue Bells Trilogy) appeared.  He walked up to Amy and gave her coffee.  He has caused me no end of trouble by doing this, possibly altering the entire ending of the series from what I planned.  And yet, he is rather reserved, and I’d spent quite a bit of time with him when one day he announced that he plays bagpipes.  Now, why didn’t he tell me that before? 

Many characters are drawn from real life, modified from combinations of people we know, or saw in passing at the store, or spent a few days getting to know on a job somewhere.  I recently read a quote in Voyager, by Diana Gabaldon, to the effect of writers being cannibals: we take various parts of people we know, mix them together, and let them simmer.  Very true.  Ironically, the quote was spoken by one of her characters.

Then there are the characters that take actual work.  You need a villain.  Your main character needs a daughter.  Your protagonist needs a boss.  And you need to create them.  There are many sites out there with ‘character interviews’ and ‘character dossiers’ of various lengths.  One site I really like is www.storyright.com but there are plenty of them.  These interviews cover all aspects of a character– what does he look like?  Short, tall, heavy, thin, hair color and length, facial hair, neat, messy, what does he wear?  What is his personality like?  Outgoing, talkative, reserved, opinionated, slow to form an opinion, expressive, stoic, funny, serious?  What kind of family did he come from?  What is his education?  When you’ve created the answers to enough of these questions, you begin to get a feel for who these people are. 

You’ll know you’ve done the job well when your characters start to act for themselves and ignore the outline you’ve spent months working out to perfection.  This is a good thing, really!  It means they’ve become real people, to you and to your readers.

Diana Gabaldon– pronounced GA bul dohn, short a– writes the Outlander books, a series now numbering seven, which follows the lives of Claire Beauchamp Fraser,  accidental time traveling World War II battlefield nurse, and her 18th Century Highlander husband, Jamie Fraser.  The books now span from Scotland and France in the years before the final uprising of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746 to Colonial America during the Revolution.  Diana reported last night that there will indeed be an eighth book.

As to the books, I enjoy them.  That’s not surprising, since they contain some of the same elements as mine.  In fact, I first heard of Diana Gabaldon when I told people what my novel was about and they asked if it was anything like hers.  I was intrigued and started buying copies as I stumbled across them in thrift stores.   I find her to be a skilled writer who tells a good story.  I appreciate the research that goes into her novels, the detailed descriptions, and the excellent characterization.  It’s easy to see and feel everything.

One of the things I truly appreciate about Diana’s writing is that, unlike some writers of historical fiction, she does not try to force modern viewpoints on Jamie.  He is at times decidedly uncomfortable with some of Claire’s 20th century ways, as I think an 18th century man would be. 

There are hundreds upon hundreds of reviews of Diana Gabaldon’s work out there.  My own is, if you like historical fiction, time travel, or Scotland, if you like a good story, definitely give the Outlander series a try.  

But as to almost meeting Diana herself, I stood at the edge of a good-sized crowd at the Barnes and Noble in St. Paul’s Har Mar Mall last night.  Although I saw her walk right by on her way to start speaking, there was a rather large bookshelf (not that Barnes and Noble has any other kind) in my way, so I heard, rather than saw, her speak, and found her to be a charming and humorous woman.  Here is a true Renaissance woman with at least three degrees, a background in marine biology and computers, who also writes comic books for Walt Disney and historical time travel romance adventures!  Now that’s diversity, not to mention grabbing life by the horns and making it your own. 

But I was impressed, too, by her thoughtfulness.  Apparently, we were supposed to call in advance for numbers, to get books signed.  However, she asked that people with handicaps and mothers with small children please come forward first.  That consideration impressed me. 

And the reason, of course, that I didn’t entirely get to meet her, was that I had to get home to my own children.  So, I’m glad I went, I enjoyed hearing her talk, I recommend her books, and hopefully another day, I’ll get to actually meet her.