Showing posts with label Time-Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time-Travel. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

There are ways to travel back in time—Tricia McGill

 

To be released June 1st

Last year when the fear of an epidemic began to take hold of the world—and in general, my part of the world, Australia, I began to compare the coming disaster with the many others that have befallen our planet. Being an author, of course I began to work out ways of how to create a world where people were fighting to survive. Then the idea struck of what would a character do if she/he was whisked back in time from one crazy period in history to another. To make things easier, I already knew the world where she was going very well, so had no need to invent one. Little did I know when I began my latest book that Covid would turn our world upside down. That is the way with disasters; they strike suddenly and leave a trail of mayhem in their wake.

My family lived through WW11 and as the youngest, I heard stories as I grew about the war years, and how life was back then. Thus When Destiny Calls was born. Why not send my heroine back in time to 1940 Britain, when the Blitz was at its worst? My family lived in North London and that is where I spent my early years. 

Highbury Fields is a large park that features a lot in this latest book of mine. I have many memories of that area so had no trouble recreating it. I was married in the beautiful old church alongside the park, as were two of my sisters. My mother would send me up to the shops along Highbury Barn with a list. No supermarkets back then, you waited your turn to be served just like everyone else. All the shopkeepers knew my mother and her family well. 

One extremely foggy day when, as they say, you could not see a hand in front of your face, and the buses stopped running, I therefore had to walk home from school and the direct route was alongside the park. How I made it home that day I will never know, but I guess a lot of it was just a matter of animal instinct. Later, I joined a netball group and we played on the park courts in the summer evenings.


My one and only remaining sister will be 99 this year, so was therefore about 18 in 1940, just like Minnie in my story. Chloe, my main character cares for the old Minnie in an Australian nursing home. Minnie’s one remaining treasure is a photo album, which contains all her memories of her years as a young woman during and after the war, so it was inevitable that Chloe, who listened to Minnie’s many stories of how they all coped back then, would land back there. Chloe meets up with all the characters from Minnie’s album, and specifically a man named Bill who owns a dog called Tiger (hence the wonderful book cover). Was Chloe, by some strange quirk of Fate, called back in time to meet her destiny?



Saturday, August 26, 2017

A Call Through Time by Tricia McGill



Award winning author Tricia McGill began life in London, England, but moved to Australia many moons ago. Her published books are all romances but cross sub-genres into fantasy, time-travel, contemporary and historical. Her short stories have been published in magazines (Romances of course). A late starter, she took up writing full time after early retirement. A devout animal lover, Tricia devotes as much time and money as she can spare to supporting worldwide conservation groups, and dogs cats and at times horses have appeared in her books, and she would love to feature an elephant one day.

The blurb for A Call Through Time, her latest Time-Travel:

The Lord of Castlegrove Manor, heir to a vast fortune, is a studious History buff who loves reading about the years following the Roman occupation of Britain. Dissatisfied with running his extensive estate, a distraction from Bart’s boredom is his erotic dreams. No woman but his dream lover will ever offer him the satisfaction he craves.
During one of these dreams Bart wakes up miles from his comfortable existence and in the year 450AD. When he comes face to face with Haesal, he knows instantly this is the woman who has shared so many of his heated fantasies.
Most Celts have fled west to escape invaders from over the seas. Haesal and her brother have been captured by an evil barbarian and Bart comes to realise that his mission is to rescue them and return them safely to their home in Cornwall. Haesal’s belief in shapeshifters and the fairy folk helps her better understand the sudden appearance of this handsome stranger in her life who claims to have a deep knowledge of her. But can the love they find with each other survive through time and treachery?

Tricia McGill’s Books We Love author page:
A Call Through Time is available at:


Saturday, November 14, 2015

How to time-travel without a star ship... by Sheila Claydon





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What do you see? Is this just a derelict building gradually falling apart in a piece of forgotten woodland, or is it history?





Visiting Anglesey in north Wales recently, I came upon this tiny stone building while I was walking my dog.  It was at the bottom of a steep hillside, its roof long gone and its doors and windows shored up by wooden struts. My companion walked on without really noticing it but the dog and I stayed behind and did some exploring. Eventually we found a small notice hidden by an overhanging branch. It said The Old Mill 1325.

1325! That really is history.

I immediately went into a typical writer's research mode and discovered that the mill is situated in what, in the fourteenth century, was the village of Llanmaes. Located on the shore of the eastern entrance to the Menai Strait, it was an important medieval port that was briefly the capital of the kingdom of Gwynedd. 

By the end of the 13th century the village had become such an important trading center that it was renowned for its ale, wine, wool and hides. It also held two annual fairs and maintained a busy herring fishery. I could go on and tell you how it was eventually conquered by the English King Edward I, who moved the villagers to the opposite coast of the island, built a castle and a new town, and took over the port, but this post is not about the history written in books, it's about imagining what life was like in the days when the mill was busy grinding the corn into flour for the local population.

Nowadays the derelict mill is the only relic of the original village and the river is long gone, although I suspect the shallow, leaf-clogged ditch beside it will still have a trickle of water in a long, wet winter. There is absolutely nothing else left to show how it might have looked, however. The surrounding land has been turned into a golf course and the local buildings are mainly holiday apartments. Even the carefully managed woodland is more recent.


It has atmosphere though, and because of this the writer in me can see a young girl of about thirteen years old carefully carrying her father's lunch to the mill. She's barefoot and her long, brown hair is blowing around her face. The miller is hot and sweaty and covered in white dust and she can hear him shouting to her brother to hurry up and finish loading the flour. He grins at his sister as he hoists a heavy sack onto the cart while a stout welsh pony waits patiently between the shafts?

That's the beauty of being a writer. I can travel back nearly seven hundred years and populate the village of Llanmaes with villagers, reshape the countryside to fit my imaginings, and create a history that might have a vestige of truth...and if it doesn't, well who will know. 

One day I will write that story. Until then, those long ago villagers will live as characters in my imagination, long forgotten and yet somehow still alive.

A writer can time-travel whenever they want to; backwards or forwards. I did this in my book Reluctant Date. It is set in a place where I once had such a magical holiday that I never forgot it, and when I eventually wrote about it I populated it with my own cast of characters, reliving a wonderful memory.  To do this I had to time-travel forwards a few years in order to imagine what it might be like now and yet also time-travel backwards so I could remember. That's the magic of writing.


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She also has a website and can be found on facebook

Monday, October 26, 2015

Which comes first? Tricia McGill



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The age old question. Is it the chicken or the egg, or the other way round?


    But my query is, what comes first, the characters or the story? This is a question as a writer I am often asked. I always thought it was my characters as I believe my stories are character driven, but looking back I realize this isn’t wholly true.


    Taking my books one by one. Let’s start with Remnants of Dreams.


    This one was easy as the original idea was to tell my mother’s story. I was last to arrive into our large clan so my early years were filled with stories, related mostly by my eldest sister, of life through the difficult years before and during WW11. Alicia, the main character of course is based loosely on our mum. The last time I can recall her actually cuddling me was when I was really young, perhaps 4 of 5, so this tells you a lot about her character. Cherished by all her 5 boys and 5 girls, she was nonetheless not a woman to shower us with affection. But, she was always there for us and I cannot remember a time when there was not a meal waiting for me when I came home, when the fire was not already blazing in the fireplace when I rose on winter mornings when there was ice on the outside of the windows. Never was a woman so liked by her neighbors and those who knew her. My one regret is that she never talked about her early life or days before she met and fell in love with our father. There was a period when my sister and I even surmised that perhaps they never even got married as we had no tangible proof of a wedding. But we have this picture, which we presumed could have been taken on their wedding day in 1914.

    But I have gone totally off the subject. It was easy to create Alicia. Mathew, her husband, was a figment of my imagination. Based loosely on my father, in that he worked for the gas company and was gentle, kind, and a loving husband, he differed in lots of other ways. There were so many other characters in this book, some bearing similar characters to members of my large family, but mostly created to suit the story line. That proves therefore that the story came first and then the characters—or does it? I’ll leave that one for you to sort out.

    Now Mystic Mountains was definitely story first characters second. I attended a creative writing class years ago when I had barely written one or two full length novels that had probably reached draft number two stage and the tutor at this class gave us a task to create an opening scene that featured a character arriving in Australia in the 1800s after being transported from Merrie England. That one scene turned into one of my most popular books. Bella was the girl transported for a misdemeanor against a man of the aristocracy, so it followed that Tiger would be the arrogant Englishman she detested at first sight who would become her allocated Master.


    Distant Mountains was a follow on. It was supposed to be the story of Bella and Tiger’s eldest son, but somehow Bella’s newly transported brother took over and so it became his story. It follows that his love interest just had to be a woman of quality whose father was a bigot who would never agree to his only daughter marrying, or even socializing with a convict.


    I’ve always loved Time-Travels so thought it about time I attempted to write one. Mine was destined to have a twist as I sent a couple, Andrew and Liz, who had totally opposing personalities back in time to meet The Laird. This Laird bore a striking resemblance to Andrew and so Liz half fell in love with him. Now in this book the story most definitely came first and the characters formed in my mind once the story line was set in motion.


    Travis, the Laird’s story, followed. It just had to as I was also half in love with the Laird, and could not just leave him there in the past without finding out how things panned out for him. But when Liz’s friend Beth ended up back in his time Travis was a changed man from the rogue Andrew and Liz left behind. So, story came first as I had to get Beth back there somehow.


    Now, Leah in Love (and trouble) still has me puzzled. I can’t for the life of me remember where this idea sprung from and can only attribute it to my Muse, who does tend at times to go her own way. Leah’s story is the only one I’ve told in first person, but once Leah had established herself in my psyche, what else was there to do but let her have her own way and tell us about herself and the trouble she gets in. Her real name is Violet and as that is a flower what was her occupation to be but a gardener, hence her eccentric aunt, who taught her all there was to know about flora, was born. Sean, her love interest just had to be a PI or how else would she have been involved in so much mayhem simply by working on his garden.


     A Dream for Lani was characters first. This was another one my Muse took control of. I knew I wanted a shy, introverted woman who has lots of money but not much love in her life. Ryan and his children provide her with all the love she requires—after a shaky start of course.


    Lonely Pride is set in Tasmania. I often holidayed in this magnificent state in my early days in Australia with my Tasmanian friend whose mother was one of those characters that once met you never forget. But, I digress. A few incidents that happened on one of my trips there formed the nucleus of this story. I guess I can say that story came before characters in this one.


    Maddie and the Norseman is another of my Time-Travels. I was going through a Viking phase and absolutely knew I had to set my story back in Viking times, and specifically in the period after they had finished invading, ravaging and ransacking in Britain and were in the process of becoming honest tradesmen and traders. York was the obvious setting as it was one of the first towns settled by them. So, Maddie and her Viking Erik came after the plot line had been established. I do have another Viking story on its way some time soon.


    So, there we are, I really haven’t proved anything. Sometimes it is simply an idea that appears in the first light of dawn and the characters have to then decide how they wish to fit into this plot we’ve decided on, and other times the characters rule and insist on going their own way. Whatever, you can bet we authors love letting our characters show us the way.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A word or two about the Vikings--Tricia McGill


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As you can probably guess I have a fascination for the Vikings. There have been many tales told of them and their exploits, their travels, and above all about their raiding, looting, ravishing, and brutality. Most of what we have learned of their exploits comes from findings in graves and digs in places around the world that they inhabited. My main fascination with them is because of their great seamanship and their wonderful skills at building the ships that allowed them to sail to far off places. Their navigational skills set them apart.

The Vikings came from all over the region known as Scandinavia. They didn’t get along with each other and fought with their countrymen as fiercely as they fought with their enemies. The word Viking comes from “vikingr” which means pirate, or “Viken” the area around the Oslo fjord in Norway. They were also called Norsemen (men from the north)

The deck of a longship
Vikings were skilled in metal work and this helped their society to create the sharp axes they used to cut down the wood needed for building their famous ships and houses. After the trees were cut down the land that was left was perfect for the farmers to grow their crops. The Vikings prized their swords and it was said they even gave them names.

Warriors would often be buried with their weapons so they could use them in the afterlife.
A Viking craftsman’s chest was discovered in Sweden in 1936 that contained amazing implements and tools that were used for metal working and carpentry. Is it any wonder their longships were a masterful work.

The Vikings did not invent the runes but adapted a script in use at that time in parts of central Europe. The Vikings had a 24 letter alphabet that was reduced to 16 letters by AD800. Runes were replaced by the Latin alphabet as the Vikings were converted to Christianity.
Viking 16 rune alphabet

Vikings were masters of their environment and because of this their culture flourished. So, coastal settlements obviously became over-crowded. Thus the first adventurers set of in their wonderful ships to find new lands. Early Viking raiders were known to arrive at a new land in the spring, spend the summer there looting, then sail home for the winter.
A Viking jeweler's tools
 
Domestic Viking objects found at Coppergate, York UK
Vikings despised weakness. Even their poor babies who were sickly were often thrown into the sea at birth or left outside to perish so they would not be a burden to the family.
If you watched the series on TV last year “Vikings”, which I would not have missed for the world, it had Ragnar’s wife in a quandary as by rights she should have had one of their babies killed when it was born with a slight deformity, but she refused and clung to the child, which caused all sorts of problems between them. This series was not for the faint-hearted as it contained brutality of the worst kind.

The Vikings loved their rituals. Some were horrific by our standards. They made sacrifices to their gods—of animals and people. Every nine years they held a ceremony in Sweden (according to a writer named Adam of Bremen) where animals and humans were sacrificed and their blood was offered to the gods and their bodies were then hung from trees.

I  could go on for pages about the Norsemen, but guess this is where I should end. 
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