Finished for now

Finished the first draft of The Time Key one hour before my editor, the great Judy Griffith Gill, sent me Forever Woman for editing. (No time to be sad about finishing The Time Key and that is good timing!) The editing work has now been done on Forever Woman and I will place my efforts for the next number of days into polishing the third book in the Forever Series, Forever Clan.

I will now blog about the journey of writing the Forever Series and then continue with PLANET.

Thanks for reading!

Nearing Completion

74, 245 words.

As the first draft of The Time Key nears completion I feel somewhat sad that my characters are finishing their journey that I had the privilege to go on and document for them. If only it could go on forever. . .

Meet you on the other side

The two hero’s are now approaching the wormhole with extreme apprehension as they have no idea what awaits them on the other side.

I had an epiphany: My multi-universe story should have multiple endings. (Explains why I saw so many ways to go.) I am deeply thrilled about this development as I get to spend extra time telling this never ending story!

Timelines and reading aloud

Now at 64, 225 words. It's going well. Thinking about timelines and will the past mirror the future with the same amount of time passing at the same rate. This will affect the story. The question is swirling around my fevered brain today.

I read an excerpt (a chapter) to a classroom of grade 7 and 8 students. It was a surprisingly good experience. I chose one that contained many space-travel facts to engage the boys and some romance to engage the girls. I would certainly do that again!

Back to Earth?

Ah, my heroes are on their way back to Earth.

The only question remaining is will they make it back to their future lives or not? They've done all they can to try to prevent a time-split. Will it be enough? I hope to know soon...

What Jazlyn our heroine from The Time Key is thinking today

What my heroine is thinking about today:

Excerpt:

Jazlyn contemplated the enormous impact of such a discovery in the world. What else could now be changed? Now that information could be sent—albeit expensively—back to the past, would the outcome of wars be changed? Like every new invention there was a dark side, one that those involved in the creative process did not always gleam before it was let lose upon an unsuspecting public. She hesitated to mention this to Josh, preferring instead to consider the wonderful outcomes that this new astonishing technology that he had perfected could activate. Maybe it would help their limited civilization achieve a level one status and help them avoid the negative outcomes that so many of her fellow scientists worried about on a daily basis. It was assumed by most of her colleagues that the majority of the danger now felt on Earth would pass as that juncture. She was personally convinced that Earth’s inhabitants would make it to a level one civilization on the way to the full level three where everyone could safely leave for another galaxy when the Sun finally entered its death throes and most likely consumed Earth in fire. She was convinced because she had to be. She wanted to feel that future generations would evolve to the point that human beings would make it into infinity and beyond.

Falling Down a Wormhole and Dopplegangers

Time travel to the past has created a doppelganger in our story!

Justin Kennedy meets himself, we'll call him JJ. JJ is in far better shape that Justin as he has not under gone the tragedies that have befallen his older self.

Ah, Justin has just met up again with his wife, Angela, who is pregnant and will die in a plane crash in a few short weeks if he cannot stop it from happening. He is unwilling to worry her so he states that he came "back to the past" to share medical advances that will help everyone. Stay tuned, the characters are now in charge once more.

The split-in-time scenario has not occurred as yet as nothing had really changed the past yet, just effected it. But when, (or if) the past is changed, things will become problematic for everyone.

Moon Cruisings

Yesternight my 2 cosmic travelers began circling around a celestial body: the moon. They are looking for the wormhole left for them to find by a future (class 3) civilization. The excitement is building as I write these words and I wanted so to share the experience with fellow book lovers. I'm now holding on tight myself for the ride!

The Time Key stands at 44,769 words this morning. The chapter I wrote last week is the huge life-changing event of the first trip of the RX-8 Atlantis to the moon and the discovery of the Kennedy-Nasca wormhole. This is central to the story and sets off an amazing turn of events that will affect all the rest of the story. This week, the effects of "falling" down the wormhole will be disclosed one day at a time.

Great Books

I have been reading everything I could get my hands on about the physical realms of our amazing universe. After this wonderful journey I now highly recommend the following books:

(1) The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

(2) The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

(3) Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos by Michio Kaku

(4) In Search of the Multiverse by John Gribbins

(5) The Cosmos by Carl Sagan

(6) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

I also thoroughly enjoyed the personal diary of an astronaut that went to the moon in the 1960's. A better understanding of spaceship travel with a rocket ship can only help my writing! It is titled Carrying the Fire.

The moon and other muses

Fabulous writing day. And especially for my lovers in the novel, The Time Key. They got to spend their weekend at The Plaza hotel in New York celebrating. Kind of envy them, though writing about it was also a good experience. I highly recommend writing as a way to escape the bonds of our Earth. There was a very pretty, full moon hanging in the western sky on our way to work (school) this morning. In all my books the moon always plays a key part.

Lovers and other muses

Our heroine, Jazlyn Martin, Jaz for short, and our hero, Will J. Hugh, have fallen deeply in love. This is a wonderful time for a writer because the characters take over completely in their desire and lust and drive the story to new heights!!! I've found this pair of lovers to be quite different from others I have known. They first met in a "mind-meld" where they explored and found each others brains to be very much to their liking before the lust hit. Perhaps because this is a pair of scientists who value intelligence and research above all things. At least until they met . . .

Duality

I have decided as a surprise twist to my story that will keep my main hero, Will J. Hugh, around to love another day! You will also get to find out what happens to our second tier hero, Justin Kennedy, who is the main driver behind the book being a time travel novel. He's travelling to the past to try to save his wife from dying in a plane crash. I won't give the dual-endings away but both parts will hopefully satisfy the reader.

Computer cliches and deja vos

Very little time to write this past 24 hours as I got a brand new computer and the learning curve and setting everything up took all my attention. Hopefully, that part is completed now and I can get back to the business of writing, though I don't consider it a "business", but the way I keep my sanity!

I am wrestling with how the ending will unfold in my book. I'm considering a deja vos ending that loops back to the beginning, much like a closed time loop would do. Seems appropriate, it's just getting there in the best way that's challenging . . .

Characters and loss of control

As I stated yesterday, the characters in my novel now have the control! And it's becoming an even more exciting novel than I envisioned. This is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. Things grow experientially and become so much more than their parts. I can hardly wait to see what else they have to teach me. I feel very blessed today, getting to take part in this journey.

Another thought:

Brian Greene was on Nova a couple of days ago discussing the "eternal inflation" theory of Alan Guth's for the universe. This theory says that new "Big Bangs" and new universes are popping up all the time! Hence multi-verses. This is quite different from the separate time-track approach my novel is taking where an event to the past creates a split in time, but very interesting nevertheless.
But if our hero from the novel gets inadvertently placed on a different time-track will he be able to find his love back in present day? Can I take that chance as a writer?

The RX-8 Rocket

What a great writing bonanza! 5000 plus words spilled out over the two days. The Time Key is now at 30,000 words in total. Things are really heating up and new possibilities are presenting themselves in unexpected ways which means the characters now have the control. In a matter of a few days there will be a test run of the RX-8 Atlantis rocket to the far side of the moon. Will the traversable wormhole be all the scientists have hoped for? This week should tell the tale. . .

Our incredible universe!

“You know what blows me away about our known universe. It’s how it’s so ideally suited for life as we know it. For example, if the protons in an atom were just 0.2 more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and decay into smaller particles. Atoms would not exist and neither would we! If gravity were just slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. It would cause stars to run through their fuel at a fraction of the time and sputter out before life as we know it had a chance to evolve. In other words, the universe is life-friendly. Too many coincidences to be mere accidents according to many scientists.”

Multiverse

*Multiverse: Brian Greene's topic on Nova last evening got me to thinking. Will the separate time track that is created by the split in the past caused by backward time travel actually be a different multiverse instead? If each one is supposedly 'curled up', will a new one uncurl from this planned intervention/tinkering with the past? The show suggested that a vast number of these multiverses exist, perhaps peopled with exact replicas of you and I, but maybe a different outcome is in the range of possibilities? Opens an amazing set of opportunities for a writer. . .

Starships

Been researching an appropriate "starship", using facts and figures from the Apollo 10, an American rocket. As my novel is set just slightly into the future, the RX-8 Atlantis as mine will be known, will have to travel at the subluminal speed of more than 25,000 miles an hour. (It would have to travel 2,000 times faster to travel at FTL or superluminal speed.)
And speaking of superluminal speed or faster than light, a classical rule of the Universe that Einstein thought could not be broken, once more the experiment at the Italian Apennines to the Gran Sasso lab proved to produce speeds in excess of the speed of light, a mind boggling fact. I think Einstein will be spinning in his grave!

The Fabric of Reality

The fabric of reality: Thinking of uni-verse versus multi-verse has invaded my thought processes to the point that last night's dream was of an Earth that had hidden layers beneath it's "carpet" of five inch foam, with another, brighter universe layered beneath it. Like the PBS special on Quantum Mechanics, by Brian Greene, the universe was portrayed as curled up (almost in a sphere) and yet infinite! Like Earth's mirror image or a split-universe.
Began writing before five am this morning and got a two hour bit of writing in. It was a love scene so I started off my day in a happy frame of mind! I highly recommend writing about romance, good for the spirit.

Wouldn't you love to change the past

My interest in time travel has come about because what if you could change the past? Save someone you loved? What kind of events would that set in motion for others. My scenario revolves around a plane crash and the idea of who's on standby to travel next, if the first person is kept from getting on. Who will die?

On an entirely different note: Watched a great special last evening on Quantum mechanics on Nova. Brian Greene really knows his stuff! Note to self, buy his book.