Partners in Time: The Series

Right now, I'm visiting England for the first time. Actually, this is the first time I've ever left the U.S. (aside from the 24 hour trip to Vancouver B.C. that my homeroom class took my junior year of h.s.) It's already given me scads of experiences that I can use in my writing, particularly the sense one feels when they are a foreigner. I mean, the second I open my mouth I think it's fairly obvious I am not from around here...if the way I dress and behave does not already give someone that impression. I've never had this experience firsthand before, so I'm trying to take a lot of mental notes and impressions for writing. TIme travelers get that sort of thing all the time, after all.

Between jet lag, spending time with family, and seeing a lot of sights, I've really been lousy with writing progress. On the flight over here on Saturday, I managed to hack out the whole of Chapter 20, which was awesome. Five pages in one sitting! But after that point I had drained my battery a lot and the layover before the super long flight (to England, which was 8 hours) didn't give me much time to suck up more power. I suppose I could think of it as I got five days worth of progress done at once.

Today my brother and his wife worked, so my mom and I were at their house all day. But I pretty much used that time to catch up on uploading photos, doing some reading about the destinations we're hitting this weekend, and catching up on news back home. The weekend will be quite busy, and I may not take my laptop with me at all.

My mom did ask me if, after what I've seen these few days, would I write PIT2 differently, since that was set in medieval England. I can't say I would. The biggest thing that shocked me is the sunrise and sunset this area has. Being summer, the sun is setting after 10 P.M. and rising around 3 A.M. PIT2, set in January 1191, the sun would probably rise late and set early.

Also, I am going to get so much awesome research done for PIT 7 while here, even though I'm years away from starting it. That probably sounds kind of cryptic, huh.

-K

I was thinking the other day about influences…actually, someone asked me about my influences regarding PIT, so I thought I’d compile a list of the ones I will consciously cop to having. (The subconscious is a whole other level!)

•  The biggest non-writing influence is easily the Back to the Future films. They captivated my imagination at the tender age of 13, and to this day I will get a silly grin on my face seeing the films. The time traveling, the paradoxes, the cause-and-effect, history-repeats-itself…and, importantly, the friendship that developed between two seemingly different characters.

•  The “Blossom Culp & Alexander Armsworth” books by Richard Peck. (There were four of these in various titles.) These are hard to find now – at least I had a hard time scoring any of them when I had my first “meet a writer I know and admire” experience a couple years ago when Peck did a reading and signing at a local Borders – but they definitely inspired the at-times bumpy friendship between Meg and Sam. With the exception of the first book in this quartet, all are narrated in Blossom's first person POV; The Ghost Belonged To Me was told from Alexander's POV. Since I liked ghosts and the supernatural and devoured books (fic and nonfic) on the subject, that was my "gateway" to these stories.

•  “Who Put A Hair in my Toothbrush?” by Jerry Spinelli. I read this book in late grade school (6th grade?) purchased through the Scholastic Book Club. The narration of this book – alternating between a brother and sister first person POV with each chapter – was something that I hadn’t seen before. The idea of telling a story in that way – representing the female and male POVs – inspired me to do that with PIT. I actually reread this book sometime in the last couple years, curious to see if it had held up in quality. (Eh, more or less.)

•  The “Time Team” Serial in the 3-2-1 Contact magazine. I’m absolutely dating myself here – it pains me to realize I'm now three decades old – but in the late 1980’s the children’s magazine started a monthly serial about two young time travelers. (I think they were ca. 13 years old…I can’t remember.) One was a guy, one was a girl. They were tossed together in sharing this secret by accident after the girl’s science project wound up being a time machine. It provoked possibilities to my imagination, though I felt I could do it better. (The writing quality was meh, and some of the adventures were pretty cliché, even to my young point of view.)

What I do find sort of sad (and I do have intentions of correcting this at some point) is that, with the exception of the BTTF films, I own none of these works that inspired me. Not anymore, anyway. Next time I visit my hometown, I should hit up Powell's Books.

In other news, progress comes in inches. This week is final exams for the quarter, so I am buried in grading. Lovely. Also, in an unrelated note, I'm going to start tagging entries in this blog. God knows why I have not done that yet. So I'll slowly sift my way through 'em all to give 'em a proper subject tag.

-KS