John A. Heldt

Author of the Northwest Passage and American Journey series

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The wonder of Hawaii

I admit the biggest draw was my granddaughter. No place, not even one as stunningly beautiful as Hawaii, can compete with a 19-month-old walking, talking bundle of energy who wants you to read Go, Dog. Go! every ten minutes. That said, Hawaii — specifically Oahu — was a close second. As a vacation spot, it met my expectations and even exceeded them in some respects. It served as a splendid retreat for someone who plans to do more traveling in his "golden" years.

With my wife, Cheryl, I visited our son Matthew, daughter-in-law Mikayla, and granddaughter Sarah this summer and experienced an island I had only seen from afar. As I did, I saw many venues I had heard about and even written about but never actually visited.

As many of my readers know, I set The Refuge, my nineteenth novel, in Hawaii. I built an entire story, in fact, around a string of towns on the Windward side of Oahu, a part of the state I got to know well.

On my vacation, I visited Laie, where the Lanes, my protagonists, sought refuge from their enemies. On the North Shore, I saw where Japanese fighters first entered U.S. airspace on their way to Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Later, I saw Makapu'u Beach, where my time travelers beamed themselves to 1963. I even stopped at a grocery store in Kahuku that resembled the one used in Chapter 65.

Needless to say, Oahu is a different place now than it was during World War II. It is mostly a big city wrapped around an island that looks like it was chiseled from volcanic rock, which, of course, it was. It is a delightful blend of natural and man-made treasures that still draws nearly six million tourists each year.

Though we saw the big attractions, like the USS Arizona Memorial and the Nuʻuanu Pali Lookout, we also saw smaller ones, the kind travel sites often overlook. On July 3, we sampled authentic Chinese cuisine in a hole-in-the-wall diner in Honolulu. The next day, we celebrated America's 250th birthday at a spirited community parade in Kailua.

With the addition of Hawaii, I have now visited 48 of the 50 states. Only North Dakota and Alaska remain on my shrinking bucket list. I hope to see them in the next few years, the ones retirement experts identify as the "Go Years." In the meantime, I will appreciate the latest stop on my travel journey, a place that can never get too many raves.

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America at 250

I was 14 when the USA turned 200. Mired in the adolescent no man's land between the eighth and ninth grades, I was a boy focused more on baseball, fishing, and girls than the larger world around me.

Even so, I paid attention to the bicentennial. Like many others in the spring and summer of 1976, I found it impossible to ignore the hype, the commercialism, and the unabashed patriotism of the time.

Bicentennial clothes, coins, buttons, posters, and other collectibles filled the shelves in stores. Patriotic public service announcements competed with patriotic advertisements on the airwaves. [No one had cable then. Trust me.] Politicians of all stripes rushed to microphones to embrace the red, white, and blue. Nearly everyone caught the Spirit of '76.

On July 4 itself, millions watched 200 ships from 30 nations, including 16 tall ships, sail into New York Harbor. Later, they attended picnics, baseball games, and fireworks displays. Even in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, they celebrated the nation's birthday with cheer.

Things feel different this time. Though people can still find pomp and patriotism in the usual places, they cannot do so as quickly or easily as they could fifty years ago. America at 250 is a different country.

The United States today seems less a united nation than a large collection of warring tribes — each with its own interests, identities, and often divisive agendas. It is a place where unity in public life, in the culture, and on social media is increasingly rare. It is a far cry from the country of July 4, 1976, or even the one of a generation ago.

Many saw this coming. John Adams warned that republics collapse when public virtue declines. Thomas Paine worried that tyranny, complacency, and abandonment of natural rights could unravel the American experiment. George Washington feared factionalism. Ben Franklin told a citizen outside the Constitutional Convention, "You have a republic, if you can keep it." Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, an admirer of the United States, said that democracy contained the seeds of its own decay. Even before the Civil War, he saw problems.

As a student of history and an author who recently published a trilogy on the American Revolution, I care about civics, our social fabric, and the traditions and laws that used to bind us. Like many Americans, I wonder if the next 250 years will be better than the last 250. Like de Tocqueville and our Founding Fathers, I see the challenges.

But I also see the promise. I see it when communities come together for a cause or defend the rights of others. I see it when people speak civilly in public forums, engage in civic duties, and honor our flag and our anthem at sporting events. [If you are looking for an inspiring anthem singing, here is a good one.] Even in our difficult times, I see evidence that Americans still want their noble experiment to succeed.

I saw it up close this summer when I visited the USS Arizona and other memorials at Pearl Harbor. I witnessed the kind of reverence and love of country that one cannot manufacture or sell in a store.

I have even seen it among foreign visitors. One highlight of watching the World Cup has been watching soccer fans from around the world embrace our culture and hospitality. Scots sang "Sweet Caroline" at a Boston Red Sox baseball game. Japanese fans savored barbecue in Texas. Others discovered Buc-ee's, football rituals, oversized trucks, road trips, and American abundance and ingenuity. They found much to like in a country that is often maligned, even (sadly) by its own citizens.

Many today believe that America's best days have come and gone. They see a nation and even a people in decline. I do not. I believe our problems are mere potholes on a road to a better place. On this July 4, I am more optimistic than pessimistic about the future.

I don't anticipate being around for the tricentennial. I would need some wonder drugs and perhaps divine intervention to make it to 2076, so I will instead celebrate today. Like a person who appreciates what is and not simply what can be, I will raise a glass to my wonderful country.

Here's to you, America. If you are not perfect, you are still worthwhile. You are the place that has given me liberty, opportunity, and perspective for more than sixty-four years. May you live long and prosper.

[timetravelauthor]

Postcards from the Edge

They are the Rodney Dangerfields of the collectible world. Whether compelling or plain, they rarely get respect. They prompt smiles and laughs but usually little else. They carry short, fleeting messages.

Even so, I love them. Postcards are more than art, history, and geography rolled into one. They are candid snapshots of life and society, pictures often sprinkled with poignancy and humor.

Though I have collected postcards since college, I have only collected them seriously since January, when I paused my novel writing and resumed several hobbies. As with other collectibles I wrote about in March, I began looking at them with a sharper eye.

I started with a core collection of postcards from the 1980s to the 2020s. Most were souvenirs sent by relatives and friends from places like California, Florida, Colorado, and even England and New Zealand. They were pleasant messages from people who were having better vacations than I was.

I kept them in part because I did not know what to do with them. Like a lot of people, I assumed they might someday have sentimental value, if nothing else.

My collection grew exponentially when my wife, Cheryl, gave me cards that been sent to her grandfather as a boy in Iowa between 1900 and 1920, a period considered the golden age of postcards. Though a few were plain, most were not. They bore beautiful illustrations and touching messages from a different time.

From that point on, I jumped into the hobby with a passion. I began collecting postcards not only from people I knew but also total strangers who lived and died long before I was born. I gathered them as artifacts from decades I studied, heard about, and even wrote about.

As a collector, I like postcards over coins, stamps, and baseball cards because they bring so much to the table. Many bear artwork as compelling as those in any museum. Portraying a variety of themes, fashions, and social circumstances, they evoke distant eras, forgotten voices, and the quiet poetry of everyday life. They remind us of the beauty of oil paintings, watercolors, and even sketches.

Other postcards remind us of our history. In big ways and small, they anchor our collective memory in a single moment. They pique interest in places and events in ways that other media cannot. Among my recent acquisitions alone are postcards from Coney Island, Ellis Island, and seven world's fairs, including Chicago (1893), St. Louis (1904), Portland (1905), Seattle (1909 and 1962), New York (1939), and Spokane (1974).

I wrote about the Chicago (The Fair), Portland (The Fountain) and New York (Mercer Street) fairs in my novels, so getting my hands on souvenirs from these notable expositions was a treat. I hope to add more exhibits in that postcard sub-collection in the years to come.

Of course, the historical value of a postcard is not limited to the image on front or the subject matter. There is also the postal handiwork on the back side to consider. Serious collectors seek not only postcards that are old and rare but also ones that have distinctive stamps and postmarks — the collectible’s DNA.

By examining both, collectors can usually pinpoint a mailing date even when the full postmark is not legible or listed. While researching the age of a postcard portraying a Gibson Girl "fishing" for men, I learned that it was mailed from Hales, New York, in December 1908, just weeks before its post office shut down.

Collectors also care about the physical properties of postcards, such as their composition, print quality, and texture. They seek everything from the lithographs imported from Germany in the early 1900s to embossed cards to the linen products of the 1930s to 1950s. They pursue paper artifacts that are as compelling as the images they bear.

Then there are the messages on the postcards. Usually handwritten, sometimes typed, the short narratives provide a sometimes personal glimpse into the lives of ordinary people. On occasion, they also foreshadow things to come, including monumental events that shaped world history.

The best example in my collection is a typewritten message from a woman named Maude to relatives in Illinois. On the postcard of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, Maude wrote, "Things are humming over here with war preparations." The card was postmarked on July 2, 1941 — five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II.

As with my other collections, I expect to expand my postcard compilation — as my limited budget allows. Unlike serious investors who spend thousands of dollars on rare historical treasures, I won't spend more than a few bucks even on a postcard I really like.

I'm okay with that. For me, the upside of collecting postcards is owning another kind of history — the ordinary, everyday kind that is recorded every time someone puts a message in the mail.

[timetravelauthor]

Filling the holes in a plot

Plot holes are the bane of every novelist. Sometimes large, sometimes small, they are things that keep writers up at night and drive them bats on the eve of publication. They are problems that hide in plain sight.

If authors are lucky, they or their editorial assistants will spot them in a novel's formative stages. If they are not, they will hear about them from readers after the opportunity to fix them has come and gone.

As the writer of time-travel novels, I must be particularly vigilant about inconsistencies in the narrative. I must keep track not only of universally accepted facts and circumstances but also of ones I create.

The night before I published The Fire, I planned to celebrate the novel's release by hosting a dinner for my editor. Instead, I spent a good part of the evening fixing a plot hole. With his help, I took care of a matter that should have been addressed weeks, if not months, earlier.

I would do it again, with less drama, in later books. In the American Journey, Carson Chronicles, and Second Chance series, I labored for weeks to work out the particulars of time portals that were, for all practical purposes, smoke and mirrors. Though time travel is fantasy, it is fantasy that has to make sense. In some cases, entry and exit times in portals had to be worked out to the exact minute.

Despite my best efforts, I haven't always gotten it right. In Class of '59, I left behind a plot hole, or at least a serious omission, that I chose not to fix. When Donna Ryan traveled from 1959 to 2017 to permanently rejoin her sons, she left Charlotte, the beloved family cat, behind.

I thought of the many close calls this week as I put out another fire, a plot hole in my current work in progress. By going through my first sixteen chapters, line by line, I was able to eliminate a potentially serious problem, in this case another time portal issue.

For that reason and others, I have taken a slower, more deliberate approach in producing this novel. I have attempted to address issues when I see them and not put them off for another day.

As for the book itself, it is coming along. I still expect to publish The Time Spring, my twenty-seventh novel, in December.

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Thanks a million

Sometime this morning, an unknown reader made my day. Responding no doubt to the Book Bub and Fussy Librarian promotions running today, he or she downloaded an American Journey book on Amazon.com. In doing so, they completed my one millionth sale.

I am honored and humbled to say the least. When I published my first novel, The Mine, more than fourteen years ago, I did not expect to sell more than one hundred copies. Like other authors going the independent route, I quickly learned that selling a book to strangers in a competitive marketplace is much more difficult than writing one.

But I also learned that hard work pays off. I discovered that anything is possible with perseverance, imagination, and assistance from bloggers, beta readers, and others who believe in the power of a story.

I don't plan to go for two million sales. I would need a public relations firm, a dedicated sales team, eight to ten more books, and the energy of a younger man to even come close. Even so, I will keep writing and marketing books. I am already ten chapters into The Time Spring, my latest work in progress and my first stand-alone novel in more than a decade. I will do what I can to get it out by the end of the year.

In the meantime, I will take moments like this to appreciate the thousands of readers and listeners who have purchased or borrowed my books since 2012. Because of you, I reached a bucket-list milestone that once seemed impossible. For that, I am profoundly thankful.

[timetravelauthor]

Review: Masters of the Air

When preparing a novel, I like to read books and watch programs that give me a glimpse of the people, places, and times I'm writing about. I find the easiest way to understand another world is to escape to that world, if only for a few hours. This past week, I did it again.

For nine episodes, I watched Masters of the Air, an Apple TV Plus production that the BBC calls "a big old-fashioned war drama, glossed up with dazzling special effects and stocked with some of today's hottest young actors." I immersed myself in a different age.

For those who have not seen the series, Masters is part drama, part history, and part spectacle. It is exactly what one would expect from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who produced the series along with Gary Goetzman of Playtone fame. It is a gritty offering that takes chances and pushes boundaries, as I suggested in a review of historical works in May 2024. It is what television should strive to be.

Though the series features countless characters, it focuses on Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, Maj. John "Bucky" Egan, and Lt. Harry Crosby, three American airmen who are capably portrayed by Austin Butler, Callum Turner, and Anthony Boyle, respectively. The men are part of the Eighth Air Force's Bloody Hundredth, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber unit stationed in England during World War II.

Based on the book by Donald L. Miller, Masters is the 2024 companion piece to Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), two sweeping series I also enjoyed. Along with the earlier works, it offers viewers a gripping, if not always accurate, portrayal of history's worst conflict.

Though I liked the big picture, I liked the little stories, too, such as Crosby's dalliance with Sandra Westgate, a saucy British spy played by Bel Powley, and the heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen, who lend a big hand to the Allied effort in Episode 8. Each of the subplots added texture and substance to a massive entertainment undertaking.

Like Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air documents the trials of actual people, whose real-life resumes are compelling by themselves. It also gives viewers a thrilling, often sobering glimpse of the daily lives of genuine American heroes. For those reasons and more, I would recommend the series to anyone. Rating: 5/5.

[timetravelauthor]

Gearing up for No. 27

I admit I have taken my time. Unlike with past books, I have not rushed into my current work in progress like a music lover rushing into a concert venue. Instead, I have made the most of a long break.

The break is now over. With the creation of a still unfinished chapter summary, I have moved toward producing my twenty-seventh novel — and my first true stand-alone in more than a dozen years.

In my next book, two friends, recent college graduates, will stumble into the 1940s. After discovering a Florida spring that can send people through time, they will wander through the world of World War II.

Though the novel will borrow themes from earlier works, it will break some new ground. The two main protagonists, B-24 crewmen, will tell the tale of America's air war in Europe. A third character, a girlfriend, will assume the role of detective in 2026. Florida and England, minor settings in a few previous books, will get significant play.

Readers who like WWII, split time frames, difficult choices, and suspense will find much to like in this one. They will once again get a chance to ask "What would I do?" if put in similar circumstances.

I expect to finish my chapter outline in April and begin writing the book itself in May. I hope to publish the novel before Christmas.

[timetravelauthor]

Review: The Madison

In The Madison, the latest series from producer Taylor Sheridan, two things are on display: grief and Madison County, Montana.

Grief unites and divides a wealthy New York City family after its patriarch, Preston Clyburn, played by Kurt Russell, dies with his brother on a day trip to a remote fishing site. Madison County brings out their best and worst qualities in the days following a tragic plane crash.

Michelle Pfeiffer stars as Stacy Clyburn, a society woman who manages two unruly daughters, two curious granddaughters, and a hapless son-in-law when they arrive in Montana to settle the dead men's affairs. As she does, she relives her happy marriage through flashbacks, current events, and a poignant journal her husband left behind.

The six-episode series, airing on Paramount Plus, shares many themes and settings with Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923, Sheridan's other acclaimed creations. Among other things, it gives viewers heavy doses of class divisions, family turmoil, and regret, something that hangs over the production like a dark cloud. It also gives them Montana.

As a former resident of the Treasure State, I enjoyed getting yet another glimpse of the mountains, valleys, and rivers that make up God's Country — or at least the part that lies south of Interstate 90. In The Madison, I saw a part of the state I had camped, fished, and explored several times. I particularly liked the segments set in the town of Ennis, where I took my family to Fourth of July parades in the early 2000s.

I liked other things, too, including the general storyline and the growth of characters who were not all that appealing at the start.

I cared less for the regional stereotypes. Nearly all of the New Yorkers were politically correct, potty-mouthed navel-gazers who could not see the forest among the many trees. Some of the Montanans they encountered were clueless hayseeds unfamiliar with even Peloton bikes. F-bombs and "ain'ts" punctuated an otherwise compelling script.

Even so, I enjoyed the series immensely. As with Sheridan's other creations, I found yet another reason not to give up on television in an age of meager offerings. I would recommend The Madison, which has been renewed for a second season, to any viewer in search of a gritty family drama and outstanding natural scenery. Rating: 4.5/5.

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Review: The Wild Blue

For most of my life, I have considered George McGovern a historical footnote — the liberal senator who lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. But as I learned in The Wild Blue, a 2001 work by Stephen Ambrose, he was much more than that.

Among other things, I learned that McGovern, the peace candidate in 1972, was something of a bad ass in World War II. The South Dakotan flew 35 missions over Europe as the pilot of a B-24 Liberator, an aircraft that turned the tide in the campaign against Nazi Germany.

Though Ambrose does not focus exclusively on McGovern, he gives the captain and his crew ample play. He tells the stories of several men who battled everything from enemy fighters to deadly flak in winning the war in Europe. In exacting detail, Ambrose paints the kind of picture that made him one of our most celebrated historians.

In The Wild Blue, we see McGovern not as a war hero or a man destined for greatness but rather as a shy pastor's son who joined the U.S. Army Air Forces to do his part in the fight against tyranny.

As he did in Band of Brothers and other works, Ambrose gives us the soldier as the everyman. He presents McGovern as a common man who rose to the challenge of uncommon times. In doing so, he makes the airmen and their experiences more compelling and real.

Though I am no stranger to Ambrose's works — I have read several and was a minor contributor to his son Hugh Ambrose's companion piece, The Pacific — I did not peruse The Wild Blue until recently. I picked up the book to learn more about the experiences of B-24 crews and begin a journey of discovery for my next novel, due later this year.

As a research tool, The Wild Blue had limited utility. In covering McGovern's crew, which flew missions from Italy, Ambrose did not tell me a lot about the crews that operated out of England, the primary setting of my book. Even so, he provided much. He gave me a clear idea of what it was like to serve as an airman in World War II.

The author also told me a lot about McGovern, who later served as a history professor, congressman, and senator and developed a reputation as a thoughtful statesman. (I had the privilege of meeting the then former senator after a lecture at my college, the University of Oregon, in December 1983 and found him friendly and engaging.)

I would recommend The Wild Blue to anyone interested in McGovern, B-24's, and the air campaigns of World War II. Rating: 4/5.

[timetravelauthor]

Confessions of a collector

Sometime in 1973, when I was 11, my grandfather, Andy Hoeme, gave me an 1883 Liberty Head nickel. Enamored by the "ancient" coin, minted when Chester Arthur was president, I tucked it away and vowed to get more like it. I loved the idea of owning a piece of the past.

I no longer have the nickel. I lost it somehow in the shuffle of youth, but I did not lose my passion for gathering tokens of times, places, and events. For more than fifty years, I have collected coins, stamps, buttons, passes, stickers, postcards, business cards, photographs, family records, coasters, receipts, menus, theater programs, and other memorabilia. If it can be put in a scrapbook, it is fair game.

Many of my holdings, like sports cards, event tickets, and autographs, are common collectibles. They are the kinds of things many hobbyists acquire. Other items are more unusual. Among my more "exotic" treasures are stamps from the Soviet Union, a D.C. transit pass, a matchbook cover from a bistro in Maine, a Ken Griffey Jr. bobblehead doll, a Glacier National Park pin, and a UK penny from 1936, when three kings sat on the British throne.

Many items are souvenirs of experiences. They include a ticket to a 1981 Rolling Stones concert, a program to a "Mary Poppins" performance in Montana, a ticket to the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, lift tickets to several ski resorts, and a day pass to Disneyland. I took my family to the park in 2005, its fiftieth year.

Though I have collected memorabilia for decades, I did not seriously examine or inventory my collection until January, shortly after I published my last novel and began a much-needed break from writing. Only then did I grasp what I had amassed over the years.

I no longer had a few boxes and notebooks of keepsakes, but rather several. I spent the next seven weeks inspecting, sorting, and arranging the currency, coins, and ephemera in my closets. As I did, I realized something profound. When people collect like I have for as long as I have, they do more than fill albums and scrapbooks. They preserve a bit of history. They gather the odds and ends of their lives.

Though all of my souvenirs, mementos, and collectibles are valuable, at least to me, some are particular noteworthy. These include several items that remind me of relatives, friends, and acquaintances who have passed away. Foremost in this group are signed cards and a long thank-you letter from Harmon Killebrew, a baseball legend who knew my mother, Mary Heldt, when they were youths in the small town of Payette, Idaho. (I met the slugger himself at an exhibition game in Tacoma, Washington, in 1974.) Killebrew wrote to my parents after they wished him well following a surgery in 1990. I inherited his thoughtful correspondence after my mom died four years ago this week.

From my father-in-law, I acquired foreign bills, stamps, and coins, including some from nations that no longer exist. Bert Fellows, who passed away in 2024, was a world traveler who rarely passed up an opportunity to collect and preserve the interesting and new.

Another item, a paper coaster from the Gibson House in Seattle, reminds me of a night on the town in 1982. Like two of the four fraternity brothers who drove up from Oregon on break to help me celebrate my twenty-first birthday, the gritty, eclectic bar is no longer around.

Some keepsakes are too big for a scrapbook. Take the U.S. flag I ordered for my father, James Heldt, when I worked in Washington, D.C. for a congressman. Workers hoisted the flag over the U.S. Capitol on June 22, 1984, folded it, boxed it, and mailed it to my dad. He kept it, in pristine condition, until he died last year. It is now back in my hands, waiting for the day I can again pass it along.

I will set collecting aside in the coming months. I have people to see, places to visit, and another novel to write, but I will not give up gathering and preserving memorabilia. As I have learned in five decades of collecting memories, once you start, you cannot stop.

[timetravelauthor]

A nod to Valentine's Day

In the minds of many, time travel and romance go hand in hand. They are like the peanut butter and jelly of literature and cinema.

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, the gold standard of the genre, combines the two elements. So do Time and Again, Somewhere in Time, Timeline, and even 11/22/63, works written by men.

I have combined time travel and romance, to varying degrees, in each of my 26 books. Since publishing The Mine, my first novel, fourteen years ago this week, I have found it difficult to send a character through time without providing him or her with a suitable companion.

Even Silas Bain, my worst villain, finds romance. In The Refuge, he builds a relationship with Ellen Dale, a fetching heiress, when not causing mayhem in Hawaii in 1941. He displays his softer side.

I inject romance into my stories to make them more interesting and believable. When writing time travel, it is easy to portray characters as superheroes who defeat bad guys, conquer mountains, and change the world. It is more difficult to portray them as vulnerable human beings who simply want companionship or even a night on the town.

Then again, there lies the fun. If there is one thing I enjoy about writing time-travel romances, it is putting different fish in different ponds and watching them interact. It is creating scenes only possible in fiction.

In Indiana Belle, Cameron Coelho, a doctoral student from 2017, and Candice Bell, a society editor from 1925, visit the dystopian world of 2041. In Let Time Fly, Jake Maclean, a boy from 2024, dances with Rachel Ward, a girl from 1780, on American Bandstand in 1958. In Duties and Dreams, Paul Carpenter and Emilie Perot, old souls from different eras, are thrown together as young adults in 1918 France.

Like Joel Smith in The Mine, Kevin Johnson in The Fire, and characters in other books, they create a rich social life in worlds they were never supposed to see. They make the most of their circumstances.

Of course, many of my protagonists find more than dates and distractions on their travels. They find mates. More than twenty marry people they meet in the past. Others form serious attachments. All find at least a smidgen of romance as they traipse through time.

Expect my next protagonists, U.S. Army airmen, to do the same. Stationed in England in 1944 and 1945, they will no doubt find plenty to keep them occupied. I hope to tell their story by the end of the year.

In the meantime, I will continue to promote books that combine two of my favorite things. Happy Valentine's Day to one and all!

[timetravelauthor]

Stone Shed series

As readers know, I like to recycle themes, props, and characters. I do so for the reason some people choose the same vacation spot or ice cream flavor time and again. I like them better than the alternatives.

I have written about war, disasters, fairs, sheds, caves, malt shops, drag races, taverns, reporters, librarians, and teachers enough times to make even a casual reader suspicious. On occasion, I even recycle settings — like Southern California, New England, and the Pacific Northwest — because I never tire of their lasting appeal. I go back to the well.

In the Stone Shed trilogy, I went back to the well again. I revisited a brothers-and-sisters trope that worked so well in Class of '59 and gave it a fresh spin. I built a new series around an old idea.

In Class of '59, the plot was simple enough. Through the magic of time travel, two sisters from 2017 met two brothers from 1959, worked out a few kinks, and began a series of adventures in the present and the past. The older siblings clicked immediately. The younger ones did not. In the end, both couples, along with the boys' mother, settled in 2017.

In the Stone Shed trilogy, I flipped the script. Noah and Jake Maclean, brothers from 2024, traveled back in time and met Abby and Rachel Ward, sisters from 1776. The younger siblings clicked. The older ones, at least initially, did not. In the end, all four protagonists, despite some predictable difficulties, decided to remain in the perilous past.

When I created this series, of course, I wanted to do more than write about couples who bridge time and differences. I wanted to write about generals, spies, battles, and life in the age of muskets, mobcaps, and spinning wheels. I wanted to explore the American Revolution.

So I did. Before writing a word, I immersed myself in the 1770s. I read books, perused journal articles, and watched documentaries about the nation's founding. I brought myself up to speed on a fascinating era.

Yet even as I waded into history, I did not forget that this story was first and foremost about people and relationships. I often reminded myself that the Stone Shed novels, like Class of '59, were ultimately about two adventurous couples discovering each other and their limits.

I reminded readers too. Early in The Patriots, Jake, 15, and Rachel, 14, greet each other as he rides past her rural Pennsylvania estate on July 31, 1776. He tips his hat. She offers a wave. The time traveler and the merchant's daughter don't know each other, but they will. With subtle, curious smiles, they plant seeds that will last a lifetime.

With a few spoilers, here is a candid look at the Stone Shed series, a focused, immersive trilogy that is arguably my best work.

THE PATRIOTS (2024): Literally and figuratively, The Patriots is my War and Peace. It is a massive book that addresses not only war and peace but also society, class, and human nature. Like Leo Tolstoy's epic masterpiece, it is a sprawling story with a large cast of characters.

When I first plotted the novel, I almost walked away. I did not think I could do all the things I wanted to do in a single book, even one that exceeded 155,000 words. I considered splitting the novel in half and turning the Stone Shed trilogy into yet another five-part series.

I am glad I did not. By eliminating a few storylines and tightening others, I was able to achieve each of my goals. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell in one big book.

Set in Philadelphia, The Patriots is the tale of two orphaned brothers who inherit a mysterious stone shed and a host of family secrets when they bury their grandfather in 2024. The shed, located on their property, can send people and objects through time.

When Noah and Jake finally test their inheritance by traveling to 1776, they intend to remain in the past for only a few weeks. Then they meet the fetching daughters of a furniture maker and an educational field trip to the eighteenth century becomes a transformative journey.

From the start, I wanted to fill this book with history. So I featured giants like Ben Franklin and John Adams and gave cameos to George Washington, Lafayette, and Peggy Shippen. I cited historic events at every turn and seized opportunities to give readers a feel of a turbulent time. I gave Noah and Jake Maclean an adventure to remember.

Then I did something else. I repeatedly tested the resolve and commitment of four headstrong characters. I asked two young couples to give up everything for love. I did what I did in Class of '59.

As readers know, I did not do so lightly. To force the hand of the book's conflicted lovers, I put them through violent trials that produced as many tears as answers. I raised the stakes in a winner-takes-all game.

Though The Patriots, in 1770s time, spans only fifteen months, it is, for all practical purposes, a two-year novel. As such, it served as a template for books two and three in a trilogy that unfolds over six years.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 98, Jake Maclean rides his horse to a safe position as a column of redcoats marches toward Philadelphia.

Jake did not look back. He did not even glance at the road until he reached the top of the ridge, a bushy clearing that loomed about a hundred feet over the surrounding area. He was afraid of what he might see. Then he looked at everything. From a high position that was hidden from the heavily traveled road, he watched hundreds of troops march around a wide bend in a perfect formation. He witnessed a foreign invasion. The British soldiers looked surreal. Wearing scarlet coats, white breeches, black tricorn hats, and black leather boots, they looked like extras from a lavishly funded Hollywood movie.

THE WINDING ROAD (2025): In The Winding Road, I reminded readers that the Stone Shed series was not just about Noah and Jake. It was also about the elderly relatives they had abandoned in 2024.

If Douglas and Donna Maclean are minor players in the first book, they are major players in the second. They confront investigators, reporters, and questions as they try to clean up the mess their missing grandnephews left behind. They attempt to hide an ancient family secret as they carry out an elaborate ruse.

I liked writing this part of the story because I knew readers would be able to relate to it. Who has not been left behind to clean up a mess made by others seeking fun? Who has not worried about loved ones in dangerous situations? Douglas and Donna are the grown-ups in the series. Like Lachlan Maclean, the Keeper of the Shed in the 1770s, they are the people who act responsibly, put out fires, and take care of business.

Even so, Noah is the star. From the first chapter, when he rides off to war, to the last, when he rides back to it, he is the focus of the story. He joins the Continental Army, survives Valley Forge, fights with valor in the Battle of Monmouth, becomes George Washington's aide-de-camp, marries Abby, fathers twin boys, and survives a British manhunt.

Though I struggled with this book, I also had fun with it. I enjoyed developing Noah's relationships with Abby and soldiers like Jasper Jennings. Even more, I liked introducing a villain, writing a battle scene, and exploring the world of espionage, a key part of the rebellion.

I also liked sending characters on "day trips" through time. In The Winding Road, Noah travels to 2009 to get supplies for his comrades at Valley Forge and Jake and Rachel sneak off to 2024 to get guns and modern amenities for family members. Later, the teens travel to 1946, where they gather penicillin and spend a day in Atlantic City.

When Noah uses some of the guns to kill enemy soldiers, the British respond. They deploy an agent to investigate and eliminate the rebel officer with the "magic pistols." They put Malachi Maine in play.

I loved drawing Major Maine, though I admit I did not create him entirely from scratch. I modeled him after British Captain John Graves Simcoe, the cruel, sociopathic, and oddly refined villain in TURN: Washington's Spies. [The real Simcoe was apparently much kinder and gentler.]

Though I mostly tackled big subjects in The Winding Road, like war, liberty, and politics, I did not shy away from the little things that make stories special. I added spice to the narrative whenever I could.

Rachel gives Noah Snickers bars, acquired in 2024, as he rides off to war in 1778. Douglas compares FBI agents in his home to Mulder and Scully of The X-Files. Lachlan befriends a crow named "Curious Clive" before ambushing British soldiers. Abby, stirred by oysters and wine, seduces Noah on the last night of his leave. Like other characters in other situations, they reveal themselves in delightful ways.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 42, Noah comforts Buttercup, his horse, before charging into British lines at the Battle of Monmouth.

"Listen, girl, I know you are nervous. I know this is new. I know I am asking a lot of you, but I also know you can deliver. I know it because I can see the roaring fire in your eyes. Today, you are not a workhorse or an old gray mare or even a girl. Today, you are freaking Man o' War."

LET TIME FLY (2025): As I suggested here on December 8, I like bringing stories to a conclusion. I like solving mysteries, answering questions, and tying loose ends. I like giving readers closure.

In Let Time Fly, my last series book, I did all that and more. I not only completed a massive family saga but also emptied a chest of props, tropes, and notions. I put everything but the kitchen sink into one of my favorite novels.

As many readers know, this is Jake and Rachel's story. The younger couple, secondary players in the first two books, come to life in this one. No longer playful, carefree teenagers navigating the treacherous waters of adolescence, they are bold young adults making their way in a dangerous world. Jake becomes a man in Let Time Fly. Rachel becomes a woman. Both take on duties and responsibilities their siblings have shouldered for years.

I took my time writing this novel. I did not want to rush a story I had developed in my mind for years. I wanted to attend to every detail.

In keeping with the spirit of the series (see above), I brought back tried-and-true themes. Heroines confront villains. Friends become lovers. Unlikely warriors face critical tests. Outcomes are foreshadowed and then realized. A number of wistful souls drive down Memory Lane.

In Let Time Fly, I used two thematic devices to propel and then end a thoughtful story — the sentimental sojourn and the reflective letter.

In the sojourn, Jake and Rachel travel to 1958, where they appear on American Bandstand. They celebrate their innocence one last time before letting go of their youth. In the letter, one of my protagonists looks back at the past fifty years and reflects on a life well lived.

If the second device sounds familiar, it should. I used it at the end of Indiana Belle, where Cameron Coelho sends a letter through time to his handler, Geoffrey Bell. Hollywood also used it at the end of TURN: Washington's Spies, where Abraham Woodhull sends a letter to his son and reflects on the decades following the American Revolution.

One final note: When I finished this series, a saga about two couples, I realized I did not include something that many consider essential to a good love story — a proposal. Though Noah "proposes" to Abby under fireworks on July 4, 1777, his actions are never described. Jake does not propose to Rachel at all. In the end, it does not matter. From the beginning, I indicate clearly where the couples are headed. Their future, unlike the future of the fledgling United States, is never in doubt.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 36, Rachel Ward ponders two very different eras as she awaits her appearance on American Bandstand.

As Rachel awaited "Bandstand Boogie," her cue to pull her partner onto a large linoleum floor, she thought about how much different this time was from her time. She found the differences stunning and stark. In July 1780, Pennsylvania boys were farming, toiling in shops, and fighting a war for independence. Girls were cooking, sewing, and attending to babies many had as teenagers. All were working. Few were playing. In April 1958, teens were cruising in hot rods, eating hamburgers and fries in malt shops, kissing in cars in outdoor theaters, and cutting classes in school to get on television. They were having the time of their lives.

As I noted last month, I plan to set series aside. For the time being, I will write only stand-alone books. Though my future works will no doubt cover a wide range of time periods and themes, they will still feature the elements I favor most — time travel, history, and romance.

I will publish my next novel, a World War II story, this fall. As always, I will post updates, trivia, and important notes along the way.

Thanks once again to the readers who have supported my works over the past 15 years. I appreciate you more than you can imagine.

[timetravelauthor]

Second Chance series

In her September 2022 review of The Fountain, reader Lara Girdler asked the central question of the Second Chance series:

"Imagine, if you will, the ability to live your life a second time. Would you take that risk, knowing you might end up in a world that looked vastly different from our technology-riddled world of today?"

Bill, Paul, and Annie Carpenter did. The widowed, childless siblings — battling grief, terminal illness, and depression — decided that a chance to relive their lives as healthy young adults was well worth a dangerous plunge into the great unknown. Following a trail of superstition to the mountains of Baja California, they made the call of a lifetime.

In my first trilogy, I dove into not only a fountain of youth but also the questions that have baffled humans for centuries. I tapped into the hopes and fears of three troubled souls who still had dreams and ambitions. I used time travel and a healing spring to explore possibilities that both intimidated and encouraged. I gave the Carpenters a second chance.

I loved writing this series, where Bill, Paul, and Annie, senior citizens from Portland, Oregon, become 23-, 17-, and 14-year-olds and begin new lives in Oakland, California. I particularly loved the trilogy's many challenges, including writing credibly about siblings from 2022 who bring old minds and young bodies to the early twentieth century.

As a Baby Boomer, I could relate to many of the experiences Bill, Paul, and Annie carried through the series like excess baggage. I could imagine their frustrations and concerns as they tried to adapt to an era of limited communications, rigid social customs, shoddy safety standards, and diseases that doctors had not yet conquered. But I could also picture the possibilities. I could imagine the thrill and excitement of living life a second time and getting a lot of things right.

When creating the series, I researched not only real people, places, and things but also fictional ones. I spent weeks learning about the fabled Fountain of Youth, a restorative spring once believed to bubble on Bahamian island of Bimini. I put the fountain in Mexico. Inspired by the sight of the Sierra de la Laguna range, which I discovered on a trip to Cabo San Lucas, I gave the Carpenters something closer to home.

When I wrote the trilogy in 2022 and 2023, I did so from the perspective of a man who had just turned sixty and lost his mother. Like the Carpenters, I could understand longing, hopes, fears, regrets, and the unstoppable passage of time. I could easily place myself in the shoes of three very different characters who were ready for a life change.

With a few spoilers, here is a look at a trilogy that is as much a sentimental journey through the first half of the twentieth century as it is collection of books. Second Chance is by far my favorite series.

THE FOUNTAIN (2022): If my book collection had a soul, it would be the reflective tome I published on August 14, 2022. No other novel asks as many big questions or asks them as often as The Fountain.

At the start of the story, the Carpenters are a sad lot. Bill, 81, has just buried his beloved wife. Paul, 75, has terminal lung cancer. Annie, 72, is a paraplegic with broken dreams. Depressed and directionless, the siblings face an uncertain future in their childhood home.

Then Bill, a retired professor, learns that the Fountain of Youth, his obsession for decades, may be more than a myth. Within weeks, he and the others begin a fantastic journey that leads to 1905, the San Francisco Bay Area, and a never-ending stream of challenges and moral dilemmas. Once in Oakland, the Carpenters must decide how much, if anything, to tell friends and loved ones about an earthquake that will claim 3,000 lives. They confront the curse of time travel.

In The Fountain, I describe not only the joys of living life a second time but also the sorrows. I remind Bill, Paul, and Annie that immortality, even limited immortality, sometimes comes with a steep price.

I also describe a contradictory world that is as stylish and elegant as it is unprincipled and crude. I give readers a 1905 taste of San Francisco, Baja California, and even Portland, which hosted the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, the West Coast's first world's fair.

As mentioned above, one of the challenges (and joys) of drawing the siblings was navigating their transition from old people to young. Bill is a young man who can marry again and have children. Paul has healthy lungs and can play sports. Annie can move. Crippled in a car accident in her first run through life, she can now walk, run, and dance.

The Carpenters can also find work, make friends, and explore their potential, which they do at Oakland Preparatory Academy. They cross paths with Principal Edward Miller, literature teacher Cassie Lee, and graduating seniors Andy Lee and Pauline Wagner. They become intertwined with people they were never supposed to meet.

Though I wrote The Fountain around these relationships, I did not do so at the expense of action. As I did in The Fire, September Sky, River Rising, and my other "disaster" novels, I gave readers the spectacle they wanted. I put America's greatest earthquake on a plate.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 78, Cassie Lee experiences the 1906 earthquake from the balcony of her San Francisco row house.

Cassie looked with awe as more animals streamed out of buildings and raced toward the bay with reckless abandon. Then she looked with horror as distant structures started to sway and the ground began to rise. In the blink of an eye, a terrestrial wave, maybe twenty feet high, rose in the west and disrupted everything in its path. It crumpled buildings, buckled the street, and moved east like a tsunami. It hit a teacher with blunt force.

ANNIE'S APPLE (2023): When I originally conceived my twenty-second novel, I imagined something light and bouncy. I pictured Annie Carpenter taking a city by storm like Marlo Thomas in That Girl or Mary Tyler Moore in her eponymous sitcom. I wrote something else.

In Annie's Apple, set mostly in New York City in 1911 and 1912, I produced my darkest work, a loose collection of nightmares, violent events, and tragedies that cost me readers and reviewers. I went down a different path.

In the first few chapters, garment workers, victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, fling themselves out of windows or down elevator shafts. Andy Lee is shot at the start of the book and stabbed in the middle. A beloved new character goes down with the Titanic. Annie herself threatens to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. Three romantic relationships end badly. Annie's mentor, a society editor, grieves her lover and their child decades after losing them. Bill and Cassie battle infertility. No one is spared.

If I had to write the book today, I would not change a thing. I believe each of the storylines was necessary to propel the narrative forward and illustrate the hardships of living in a deceptively tranquil age.

Annie's Apple is a treasure trove of contradictions. Annie, a witty young reporter, and new characters like Prudence Rusk frequently punctuate a somber novel with lightness and laughs. Hopes rise and fall like an ocean tide. Though the story moves between four countries, two continents, and an infamous ship, it largely stays put. It is the only one of my books that does not contain a single act of time travel.

Set against all this is my best love story. In Annie's Apple, I throw Paul Carpenter, an Army sergeant, into the arms of Shannon Taylor, a beautiful young housekeeper with secrets of her own. I introduce a character who adds intrigue and spark to an already complex plot.

Though Annie's Apple is a harrowing novel that puts Bill, Paul, and Annie through often brutal trials, it ends on a positive note. As author Heather L. Barksdale observed in her September 2023 review: "The ending is fitting for the rest of the tale — a little sad, a bit romantic, and hauntingly hopeful. It set the tone for the next book in the series."

One final note: The title of Annie's Apple is derived from the name of the novel's main protagonist and the Big Apple, the city she calls her own. My illustrator created the book's distinctive cover using a 1911 drawing by Charles Dana Gibson, a public-domain image generously provided by the Library of Congress' Prints and Photographs Division.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 4, Bill Carpenter digests newspaper accounts of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of March 25, 1911.

People on the ninth floor had it worst. Unable to reach the roof or the lobby or the ladders that extended only to the sixth floor, they leapt to their deaths. Some jumped alone. Others jumped in groups. All tugged at the heartstrings of more than ten thousand witnesses in the vicinity. One young man helped three young women out of a window and gently dropped them to the street. Then he assisted a fourth, gave her a kiss, and escorted her to heaven. He answered horror with humanity.

DUTIES AND DREAMS (2023): I never tire of writing about war. In 15 years as an author, I have written about war or the advent of war many times. Seven of my novels are set against the backdrop of World War II, three against World War I, three against the American Revolution, and one against the Civil War. One book is set against two wars.

In Duties and Dreams, I tell two stories, separated by a quarter century, that eventually come together. I follow Andy Lee and Paul Carpenter as U.S. Army officers in World War I and Shannon Taylor and Emilie Perot as French resistance fighters in World War II.

I loved writing this novel. I loved it, in part, because I was able to split timelines, feature a villain, reveal secrets, recycle beloved characters, and tell a story from several settings, including my native Pacific Northwest. I was able to put many of my favorite things on center stage and bring my first trilogy to a satisfying conclusion.

Though Duties and Dreams is a "war" book, it is so much more. It is a story of love, duty, and profound sacrifice, the kind that prompts serious questions and pushes comfortable people out of their comfort zones.

Three things drive this novel: a crippling war wound, a terminal illness, and two fountains that offer hope to the hopeless. They test marriages, add intrigue, and provide an unlikely means to a gratifying end.

When I wrote Duties and Dreams, I did more than create a thriller that spanned three generations and six countries. I tipped my hat to my childhood home, my father, and even my humble beginnings.

Much of the book is set in Western Washington, where I spent most of my adolescence. Fort Lewis, Tacoma, Puget Sound, and Mount Rainier National Park, an important setting in The Mine, get significant play.

Regarding the second matter, I dedicated Duties and Dreams to "Dad," my father, James Heldt. When I did, I did not realize that the acronym of the book's title was, fittingly, "DAD." So I ended up paying an extra tribute to a humble man who died at age 93 last February.

As for me, I did something only authors can do. When I realized the Carpenter saga would end in 1961, I did more than pick a random date. I picked a special one. I ended Duties and Dreams and the Second Chance series on December 30, 1961, the day I was born.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 27, Nazi soldiers chase sabotage suspect Emilie Perot into a cave and push her off the fence of indecision.

Then the Nazis pushed her off it. When they flooded the cave and raced toward the darkening room, they reminded a prospective time traveler that there were worse ways to die than to dissolve in a vat of acid. Emilie glanced down at the once luminescent pool as it grew darker and stiller and dropped nearly a meter. She gathered her courage and stared danger in the face. She did what she had done for years. Then she did something else. The confirmed agnostic said a quick prayer and made the sign of the cross. She said hello to a childhood friend and jumped into a dark abyss. She took the leap of her life.

I published Duties and Dreams weeks before I retired and collected my first Social Security check. Though I was ready to adopt a slower pace and write only stand-alone novels, I did not. I jumped into a trilogy I had wanted to write for several years. Next: The Stone Shed series.

[timetravelauthor]

Time Box series

In 1895, H.G. Wells produced the definitive work on time travel. Entitled The Time Machine, it featured a device that propelled a scientist to the distant future and the regressed world of the Eloi and Morlocks.

Since that time, authors and screenwriters have created countless different machines to send human beings and other objects through the corridors of time. They have reinvented Mr. Wells' wheel.

In the Time Box series, I took my turn. I built a five-book set around portable devices that send a modern family to some of the most interesting and challenging periods in American history.

In the series, Mark Lane, a noted physicist, acts boldly when he learns his corporate partner wants to use his inventions for evil purposes. Using his time boxes, he takes his wife (Mary) and four children to 1865 and begins a thrilling and dangerous journey.

Like the Carsons in my third series, the Lanes are an interesting lot. Mary peddles cosmetics. Son Jordan is an Army captain. Laura and Jeremy, the middle children, are college students. Ashley is a seventh grader.

Individually and collectively, the Lanes find love, adventure, and purpose in 1865, 1893, 1927, 1941, and 1963. As they wander from coast to coast, they find everything they need except peace.

Silas Bain makes sure of that. The ruthless hit man, my first true villain, stalks the Lanes from the first book to the last in an attempt to retrieve the time boxes and return them to Robert Devereaux, a calculating billionaire who runs a Virginia corporation named Janus Enterprises.

Though I researched the books heavily, I completed the series in less than two years. I took advantage of COVID layoffs to finish the project months ahead of schedule. With a few spoilers, here is a look at the Time Box collection, which I consider my best five-book set.

THE LANE BETRAYAL (2020): I released The Lane Betrayal on February 29, 2020. Four weeks after returning from Virginia and Washington, D.C, the book's primary settings, I hit the publish button on Leap Day, a calendar comet that appears every four years.

I also ventured into the world of suspense. For the first time as an author, I wrote a bona fide thriller. I threw the Lanes and Silas Bain into the drama and turmoil of the final weeks of the American Civil War.

Historical figures add spice to the narrative. Abraham Lincoln appears in the novel. So do Mary Lincoln, Edwin Stanton, John Hay, Walt Whitman, and John Wilkes Booth. All interact with at least one of the time travelers.

While in D.C., I visited Ford's Theatre, the setting for Chapter 65. It was a relatively small facility, a venue that had been remodeled in the 1960s. Even so, I could feel the history between its walls. I could see the Lincolns in the presidential booth and a festive audience watching the comedy Our American Cousin mere days after Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox.

I loved writing a story set against this backdrop, but I loved developing my characters even more. In The Lane Betrayal, readers see Jordan begin a tender relationship with a pretty war widow and Laura, a nurse, befriend a legless soldier at a hospital. They also see Mary Lane as a tough-as-nails mama bear and Silas Bain a conflicted killer.

Crammed into just 12 weeks, The Lane Betrayal is my most compact story. [Let Time Fly, by comparison, unfolds over 29 months.] The Civil War book also features one of my favorite covers and one of the best audio narrations, thanks to veteran voice artist Todd Menesses.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 78, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton considers how to deal with the meddling wife of a federal prisoner.

The secretary asked himself if he had the stomach to prosecute and possibly hang a woman for a capital offense. He wasn't sure. Though Mary Lane was probably as guilty as Mary Surratt, she was a far more sympathetic figure. She was the kind of woman who could play with the press and perhaps muddy an open-and-shut investigation.

THE FAIR (2020): In The Fair, I raised my game. I sent not only a hit man after the Lanes but also a serial killer. I added even more suspense to a novel set mostly in Chicago and Virginia City, Nevada, in 1893.

I also gave my time travelers very different experiences. While Mark, Mary, and their three youngest children seek fun and thrills at the World's Fair, Jordan heads west to clear his head and deal with the loss of a lover.

The Lanes make friends in The Fair. Laura finds a bestie in Irish illustrator Prudence O'Leary and Jeremy a girlfriend in frustrated socialite Ivy Trudeau. Out west, Jordan literally bumps into his future wife, a shy, beautiful librarian named Jessie Cole. Mark, Mary, and Ashley make their peace with an exciting era. For the first time, the fugitives from 2021 consider settling down.

Then Silas Bain and H.H. Holmes, a man who killed at least nine people in his Murder Castle, complicate things. Each reminds the Lanes that life in the nineteenth century can be as horrifying as it is pleasant.

I enjoyed writing The Fair. I liked drawing Prudence, Ivy, and Jessie and exploring the buildings, exhibits, and rides of the World's Columbian Exposition, arguably the greatest public spectacle in history.

As in The Lane Betrayal, the Lanes see a president speak. Several weeks after watching Abraham Lincoln deliver his storied second inaugural address, they watch Grover Cleveland open the Chicago World's Fair with a rousing speech. They witness history up close.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 27, Jeremy Lane weighs the pros and cons of starting a relationship with the Rose DeWitt Bukater of Chicago.

Jeremy gazed at the critic in his glorified canoe and wondered once again where they were going. Though he wanted to spend every minute of every day with the sassy charmer, he questioned if he could. Ivy was not a girl he could date. She was an engaged woman who met him in secret once a week in a public place. She was a moth flying ever closer to a flame that could consume more than her reputation.

SEA SPRAY (2020): When I write a book, I try not only to tell a story but also to capture an age. I attempt to give readers a comprehensive feel for a time, a place, and an era. I aim to bring the past to life.

Sea Spray, the second of my quiet, reflective novels, is my unabashed ode to the Roaring Twenties. Set mostly on Long Island, New York, in 1927, it provides a feast of the celebrities, music, themes, and customs that defined the time. Charles Lindbergh is part of the book. So are Babe Ruth, George Gershwin, flappers, bootleggers, socialites, speakeasies, and ticker-tape parades.

Like the Carsons in Indian Paintbrush, the Lanes hit the reset button in Sea Spray. They try to live a normal life in a not-so-normal time. They seek peace and happiness in a deceptively tranquil decade.

Sea Spray is also my "sisters" book. Laura and Ashley Lane, secondary characters in The Lane Betrayal and The Fair, take center stage in this one. Laura manages relationships with Ted Price, her charming neighbor, and Randy Taylor, her 2021 boyfriend and a man who tries to protect the Lanes from Robert Devereaux, Silas Bain, and harm as they traipse through the past. Ashley, now 14, forms an endearing friendship with Ted's sister, a bright, mischievous classmate named Maddie.

Though Sea Spray has its lighter moments, it is a somber novel that deals directly with death and grief. Two protagonists lose loved ones who literally die in their arms. Others cope with the aftermath.

Like Indian Paintbrush, another series bridge, Sea Spray ends on a sobering but hopeful note. With a twist that complicates the most important relationship in the series, it propels a family saga forward.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 55, Mary Lane finds more than great music and great company at a July 25, 1927, concert in New York City.

Mary clapped with the others as Gershwin stood and bowed and further cemented his place as a music immortal. Then she glanced again at each member of her wonderful family and started to cry. She realized that she had finally reached the destination she had sought for more than a year. She was not just happy. She was home.

THE REFUGE (2021): In early 2021, I packed my bags. I mentally and physically prepared for my first trip to Hawaii, where I hoped to research the setting of the fourth series book. Unfortunately, the Aloha State, battling the COVID-19 pandemic, did not accommodate my plans.

So I did what I did with The Fair and Sea Spray. I learned about a place from afar. I read books, perused articles, and watched movies about Oahu in 1941. I did what I could to research the setting of The Refuge, which many readers consider my best novel.

In the book, the Lanes fight back. Tired of being hounded by Silas Bain, they seek both refuge and advantage when they travel from 1927 New York to 1941 Hawaii. While most of the family settles in the isolated village of Laie, Jordan scours Oahu for Bain, who — acting on Robert Devereaux’s orders — plans to alter the events of December 7 and delay America’s entry into World War II. The travelers try to save themselves and their country from two evil men from the future.

Each character grows. Mark and Mary befriend a Hawaiian family. Jordan and Jessie have a baby. Jeremy and Ashley start relationships. Laura wrestles with an unplanned pregnancy. Even Silas, the merciless killer, finds romance with a charming heiress. Back in the 2020s, Robert, Randy, and others try to manage events at Janus Enterprises. All act in big ways and small as an infamous date draws closer.

I grew as well. While researching The Refuge, I learned much about Oahu's geography, culture, cuisine, wildlife, place names, economy, and history, including the events before, during, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I completed a master class on an island.

Though I did not go to Hawaii in 2021, I did accomplish something as a traveler that year. I learned a lot about Baja California on a trip to Cabo San Lucas and applied much of what I learned in The Fountain, a book set partly in Mexico. I plan to visit Oahu this summer. With my wife, I will see places I could only imagine when I wrote my nineteenth novel.

Favorite Quote: While viewing ships at Pearl Harbor in Chapter 15, Silas Bain meets a stranger conducting his own surveillance mission.

Silas smiled as Tadashi Morimura, aka Takeo Yoshikawa, turned and walked away to points unknown. He did not fret over curtailed conversations or missed opportunities. He knew they would speak again. Unlike Takeo, an officer at the Japanese consulate, he knew that their relationship was just beginning. He would manipulate the diplomat, one of the most famous spies of World War II, for as long as he could.

CROWN CITY (2021): Unlike with Oahu in The Refuge, I did not have to rely on media to understand the principal setting in Crown City. I was able to visit the venue — Coronado, California — in person.

As I noted on April 3, 2021, I was able to walk the streets and see the hotels, houses, beaches, and shops in person. I was able to get a firsthand look at the only one of my many book settings to get its own novel.

In Coronado, aka "Crown City," the Lanes make their last stand. They settle their business with Robert Devereaux, Silas Bain, and other enemies at Janus Enterprises.

They also establish roots. Jordan and Jessie get a place of their own. Laura has a baby and marries Randy. Jeremy weds Sarah Gustafson, his flame from The Refuge. Ashley shines as a freshman at Crown City High School.

In this novel, one of my favorites, I close loops, tie loose ends, and solve problems that began in The Lane Betrayal. I bring another family saga to a memorable conclusion. I do so against the lively backdrop of the Beach Boys' California and the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

As in The Refuge, the Lanes eye a future date with sadness and dread. Like they did with December 7, 1941, they make their peace with November 22, 1963. Even so, they don't roll over. They forge a new and productive path with their knowledge and tools as time travelers.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 87, Craig Henderson, a Lane ally, tries to save his wife and ailing daughter from their troubled life in 2023.

A moment later, Craig pulled his family close, said a quick prayer, and brought his old life to a close. He reached down to touch the beta box, the oldest, simplest, and most reliable of the world's time machines. Then he closed the deal. He pressed a green button. He triggered a device and started a process. He took the first step in his journey to the future, a magical place where hope and cures and miracles awaited.

By the time I released Crown City in November 2021, I was burned out. I had written twenty novels and four exhausting five-book series and was ready for a serious change. Then my wife, Cheryl, an avid reader, suggested that I cut back: "Why don't you write trilogies instead?"

The next week, I dusted off my notes from Cabo San Lucas, read a few articles about Ponce de León's Fountain of Youth, and began plotting a very different kind of series. In the months to come, I would write not only about time travelers but also about old people who become young. I started down a new path. Next: The Second Chance series.

[timetravelauthor]

Carson Chronicles series

In the American Journey series, I told five time-travel tales from the perspective of five twenty-first-century families. In the Carson Chronicles series, I told five from the perspective of one.

For the first time, I sent the same protagonists to markedly different decades, places, and situations and showed how they changed over a span of several years. I entered the wonderful world of saga.

The Carsons of Flagstaff, Arizona, are a family of achievers. Parents Tim and Caroline are professors, oldest son Adam an engineer. Greg and Natalie, the middle children, are an English teacher and a television reporter. Twins Cody and Caitlin are standout high school seniors. For all in the autumn of 2017, life is good.

Then Tim and Caroline disappear on a hike, leading Adam, 27, to search for answers. After learning that his parents are secret time travelers who may be stuck in the past, he leads his siblings on a rescue mission that takes them to 1889, 1918, 1944, 1962, and finally 1983. He commences a cat-and-mouse chase for the ages.

In the Carson Chronicles, I employ not a basement passageway as a time portal, as in the American Journey series, but rather "magic membranes," huge translucent sheets that pop up near strong magnetic fields every three months. I give time travel a creative spin.

I also test the Carsons by putting them in five pressure cookers, stories that test their courage, humanity, and ultimately their resilience as they seek to reunite. I push a family hard for more than two years.

With a few spoilers, here is a look at my third series, a five-book set I published between September 2017 and September 2019.

RIVER RISING (2017): In my eleventh novel, several readers asked a simple question: How could five time travelers, with the benefit of a quality education, settle in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in early 1889 and not know one of history's greatest floods was headed their way?

After speaking to many others, I settled on an answer. The Carson kids did not know about the flood because they grew up in Arizona. Like me and others educated in the West, they learned more about pioneers, railroads, and gold rushes in high school than a mostly localized deluge thousands of miles away.

Even as a history major in college, I had only a rough notion of the event. I knew more about a flood that damaged Heppner, Oregon, in 1903 than the one that hit Johnstown in 1889. Needless to say, I remedied my ignorance. For several months, I read books, watched documentaries, and even traveled to Pennsylvania to learn about the disaster. As a result, I was able to describe the flood like someone who lived through it.

River Rising was my first foray into the 1800s. Set in a century when even phones and cars were novelties, it was the first of my novels to show the shocking limitations of an age. It would not be the last.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 96, flood survivor Natalie Carson wanders through acres of rubble in what was once a thriving community.

The conditions were bad enough. On the morning of June 1, 1889, Johnstown was a sea of squalor, devastation, and hopelessness. In every direction, once sturdy buildings, some fifty feet high, lay in ruins. Fires burned on water. Broken bodies mingled with broken boards. Hungry rats ruled the streets. The stench of death was everywhere.

THE MEMORY TREE (2018): If I broke new ground in River Rising, I plowed a field in The Memory Tree. I scattered my protagonists across two continents, explored different cultures, climbed several family trees, and built a story around a minor character from an earlier book.

In my twelfth novel, the Carsons travel far and wide in 1918. Adam goes to Minnesota, Greg to Mexico, Natalie to France, and Cody and Caitlin to Pennsylvania, where they reunite with Emma Bauer, a 47-year-old matriarch they met as students in Johnstown. All push boundaries galore in pursuit of their missing parents.

The elders do things too. Tim and Caroline meet their ancestors in Duluth and Ensenada. Caroline delivers her own grandmother.

In The Memory Tree, I told a tale set against World War I, the Mexican Revolution, and the Cloquet Fire, a blaze that killed 453 people and displaced 50,000. I threw everything into a 140,000-word novel with 24 settings with ten protagonists.

Along the way, I borrowed from the stories of Andy Hoeme, my maternal grandfather, who lived like Indiana Jones in Baja California, Mexico, from 1918 to 1920. I posted a bit about him on his 120th birthday.

In 2021, illustrator Michelle Argyle revised The Memory Tree's original cover. She did what others did for The Mine and The Mirror.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 103, Greg Carson assesses the pistol-packing firecracker he marries in El Paso on December 17, 1918.

The bride wore white. Standing before her groom, a minister, Adam, Natalie, and thirty guests on a spacious patio that faced the mountains, she wore a white cowgirl dress, a white cowgirl hat, and white cowgirl boots that shimmered in the afternoon light. Greg laughed to himself as he stared at his beaming, pint-sized wife-to-be. Though he thought her Annie Oakley getup was a little over the top, he did not complain. He thought Patricia O'Rourke was the most adorable thing on earth.

INDIAN PAINTBRUSH (2018): In Indian Paintbrush, the first of my "quiet" novels, I set aside natural disasters, turmoil, and even travel and gave the Carsons a break. I let them settle in one place (Phoenix, Arizona), recharge their weary souls, and live a fairly normal life.

Even so, I did not free them from the challenges of the home front during World II or the complications of romance. The younger siblings find employment and love in the middle book of the series, set mostly in 1944.

Natalie and Caitlin find happiness at a training base, where they clean aircraft and befriend dashing pilots Nick Mays and Casey McCoy. Cody finds it at a Japanese internment camp, where he delivers supplies and woos a pretty, spirited teenager named Naoko Watanabe.

Indian Paintbrush is my most thoughtful story, but it is not devoid of spice. It features my best foreplay scene, a car chase worthy of Smokey and the Bandit, and a poignant encounter where Nick comforts a grieving character by quoting lines from Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," my favorite poem. I repeat the "splendor in the grass" passage in a similar scene in Sea Spray, my other "quiet" novel.

The Carsons grow in Indian Paintbrush. Adam and Bridget O'Malley, who marry in River Rising, have a daughter. Greg and Patricia conceive a child. Natalie finds her life mate. The time travelers move on.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 85, Adam Carson tries to drive his family to a Pennsylvania time portal before local police can stop him.

For the next minute, Adam pushed the Chrysler, Nick shot at the cops, Cody pressed his wounded arm, and five other adults looked on in terror. Only Camille, sweet little Camille, managed to cope like a pro. She slept in Bridget's arms like she hadn't a care in the world.

CAITLIN'S SONG (2019): In the Carson Chronicles, each of the five siblings gets a novel. Adam dominates the narrative in River Rising. Greg and Natalie do much the same in The Memory Tree and Indian Paintbrush, respectively. Caitlin gets her turn in book four.

So do college life, the Cuban Missile Crisis, serial killers, and moral quandaries. Each subject receives a thorough examination.

While in 1972, Tim and Caroline learn that Caitlin was murdered in 1962 in Boulder, Colorado, where the Carson children have set up an unplanned residency. Unable to travel to 1962 to save their daughter directly, they race to 1941 to prevent the conception of her killer, the product of a rape. They try to alter a horrifying timeline that seems set in stone.

Because of its dark themes, Caitlin's Song was a difficult book to write. To get it right, I researched subjects I would have preferred to avoid. I built a suspenseful novel around a prospective Ted Bundy.

Caitlin's Song is more than a crime story. It is an often humorous look at college life in 1962, one that covers dating, dorms, and fraternities. Caitlin and Cody, new freshmen, come of age in the book. So does Dennis Sawyer, a fellow student who joins the Carson entourage.

Fun Fact: In each of my 26 novels, the title appears in the text — sometimes often, sometimes not. "The mine" is mentioned 37 times in The Mine. In Caitlin's Song, "Caitlin's song" is referenced only once. Dennis Sawyer utters the words before serenading Caitlin with Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" at a campus talent show.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 62, Cody Carson, a college freshman, leads twenty boys in a "panty raid" at a nearby girls dormitory.

"This is it, guys," Cody said. "Beyond that door lies twenty rooms, forty girls, and enough panties to fill a department store. When you reach each room, knock twice, give the greeting, and take what the ladies give you. If they shut their doors, let them be. We're not looking for trouble. We're looking for underwear we can use as party props in February."

CAMP LAKE (2019): My fifteenth novel begins with a dream. In 1983 in Phoenix, where the Carson siblings have settled again, Cody has a nightmare about Emma Bauer, Naoko Watanabe, and Molly Perdue, three pretty girls he has loved and lost as a time traveler.

The spirited ladies serve as Cody's jury in his Old West trial for "heart rustling." Emma offers love and forgiveness, Naoko indifference, and Molly unbridled scorn. All tell a "judge" that their former flame has much to answer for.

Though the dream has little to do with the rest of the book, it does serve a purpose. It reminds Cody that romantic relationships are dicey undertakings that offer promise and peril.

Like his siblings in earlier books, Cody finds both in equal measures. In Camp Lake, he discovers that even the love of one's life can come with serious strings.

Inspired by my experience as a camp counselor in Maine in 1983, Camp Lake is the final novel in a five-part family saga. It is a book that features old and young versions of Tim and Caroline, whom Cody, Caitlin, and even Dennis Sawyer meet as camp counselors.

It is also a tale of love, regret, heartbreak, and hope, a story that introduces readers to Karen O'Reilly, a bubbly counselor who catches Cody's eye at camp, a beautiful young woman with cystic fibrosis.

I dedicated Camp Lake to Douglas Susens, my wife's cousin and the namesake of our son Douglas, who is mentioned in my American Journey retrospective. Though Doug battled cystic fibrosis, he attended our 1986 wedding and even participated in wedding weekend activities, such as a float of the Boise (Idaho) River. He died in 1987 at age 23.

As with The Journey and Hannah's Moon, I drew heavily on personal experience in writing Camp Lake. I needed only to consult memories and stories I collected at Camp Cobbossee, a prestigious summer camp that still operates on the wooded shores of Cobbosseecontee Lake.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 35, Caitlin learns that Cody, her twin and fellow counselor, shares an interest with their married brothers.

"This is unreal," Caitlin said. "It's beyond unreal. I mean first we had O'Malley. Then we had O'Rourke. Now we have O'Reilly. It's like my brothers are chemically addicted to Irish girls."

Though the Carson Chronicles series contains enough tragedy and hardship to fill a truck, it ends on a positive note. The Carsons reunite, the family grows, and Cody and Caitlin get their HEA's. Camp Lake casts a warm eye toward the future. Like the first four books, it ends, fittingly, with the word "forward." Next: The Time Box series.

[timetravelauthor]

American Journey series

If the Northwest Passage series was chaos, the American Journey series was order. For the first time as an author, I brought rhyme and reason to a collection of books. I built a series the right way.

I did so by tying five very different stories to a single protagonist, a secretive, personable physics professor named Geoffrey Bell. From 2015 to 2017, I wrapped a saga around a person and a portal.

The person was Bell, a childless, 52-year-old academic who looked and acted like Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka. The portal was a chamber in Bell's Los Angeles mansion, a subterranean passage that led from the basement to the backyard and became a wonder when activated by crystals.

Starting and ending the series in California was a deliberate decision. Though four of the books are mostly set in Texas, New Jersey, Indiana, and Tennessee, I wanted all to have ties to the Golden State. I wanted to retain possibilities and West Coast storylines I had worked out long in advance. Though my characters wander across America in the 20th and 21st centuries, they inevitably return to Los Angeles.

Jeanette Bell, Geoffrey's wife, also plays a key role. She softens her husband's rough edges, embraces the many travelers who access the time portal, and guides her spouse when his health fails at the end.

Building on the example I set in Wallace, Idaho, when writing The Fire, I made research pilgrimages to four settings in the American Journey series. I visited Galveston, Princeton, Evansville, and Chattanooga and gathered much from each trip. I learned about the fifth setting — Pasadena, California — through movies, books, and websites.

Here is a candid look at my second series. As with last week's Northwest Passage retrospective, beware of occasional spoilers.

SEPTEMBER SKY (2015): My sixth novel features a big story and a small one. The big story is the 1900 Galveston hurricane. The small one is the evolving relationships between reporter Chuck Townsend; his college dropout son, Justin; and the people they meet in the past.

I wrote September Sky with "epic" in mind. From the first page to the last, I wanted to overwhelm readers with history, suspense, storylines, thrills, and characters they would long remember. I aimed for lasting impact.

I started with a good foundation. As many know, the Galveston hurricane was more than a storm. It was a tempest that killed at least 8,000 people and nearly wiped a city of 40,000 off the map. That said, the characters, especially the secondary ones, carry the novel. Charlotte Emerson and Emily Beck, the Townsends' librarian love interests, bring spirit and compelling life stories. Wyatt Fitzpatrick, Chuck’s distant ancestor, shows grit and savvy as an innocent tycoon accused of murdering a lover.

When I visited Galveston in 2014, I saw reminders of the hurricane, including a massive seawall that stretches ten miles on the Gulf side of the island. Workers raised the city itself up to 17 feet in the years following the storm. Museums, memorials, and surviving structures still tell the tale of the natural disaster, one of many in my novels.

Favorite Quote: This passage, the beginning of Chapter 77, is perhaps the best I've ever written. It summarizes Emily's situation to a T.

Emily took a swig and passed the bottle to her mother. She didn't like whiskey. She didn't like the taste or the smell or what it did to men on a Saturday night. But when you rode out a hurricane with your parents in a dead woman's bedroom, you learned to like a lot of things.

MERCER STREET (2015): Speaking of violent weather, I finished Mercer Street on the "dark and stormy night" of July 4, 2015, and honed it in the aftermath of Hurricane Joaquin, which caused serious flooding in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where I vacationed that October.

Of course, Susan Peterson, mother Elizabeth, and daughter Amanda walk into a bigger storm when they travel to New Jersey in the deceptively quiet months before World War II. Though the ladies find love, adventure, and purpose, they also find intrigue and danger.

Like September Sky, Mercer Street offers readers a feast. Set mostly in Princeton in 1938 and 1939, it gives them Albert Einstein, Orson Welles, The Wizard of Oz, the New York World's Fair, Eleanor Roosevelt, admirals, diplomats, college life, and young men with Nazi ties. I loved writing about The War of the Worlds broadcast, the fair, and the doddering genius who set the world of physics on fire.

I needed 294 days to produce Mercer Street, second only to September Sky's 307. When I finally released the book on October 22, 2015, I did so not at home, as with my other books, but rather at a Starbucks in Huntsville, Alabama. Daughter Amy proofed the last chapter and gave me a final okay and a hot coffee. It was publishing in the digital age.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 51, Amanda Peterson assesses an unexpected breakfast guest, her grandmother's newest friend.

Amanda watched Einstein sit down and then pulled up a chair opposite him at the table for four. She took a moment to study the man and found him to be exactly as advertised – disheveled, uncombed, and a little distracted. He wore a shaggy blue sweater, baggy gray pants, and hair that wouldn't quit. Even at age sixty, he looked like his caricature.

INDIANA BELLE (2016): As an author, I like natural disasters. I have written about the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the Big Burn of 1910, the 1900 Galveston hurricane, the 1889 Johnstown flood, the 1918 Cloquet fire, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

In Indiana Belle, I gave the 1925 Tri-State tornado its due. I began my third-shortest book with a storm system that killed 800 people, injured 2300, and turned large parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana into kindling.

Then I ventured into the world of flappers, bootleggers, and the KKK and sent two characters to a distant, Orwellian future. I dove into mystery, intrigue, and hard science fiction. I also set a story from coast to coast, expanded Professor Bell's personal story, and used a photo of a real person on my stock-art cover. I gave graduate student Cameron Coelho and society editor Candice Bell a ride to remember. In countless, creative ways, I broke new ground.

I loved drawing Candice, Geoffrey Bell's great-aunt. She was as much fun to write as Virginia Jorgenson and Annie Carpenter, my other fearless female journalists. Like Virginia and Annie in The Mirror and Annie's Apple, she gave a story added spirit, depth, and beauty.

I end Indiana Belle with a letter that spans time. In the message, Cameron defends his life choices to his handlers. Jake Maclean does the same in Let Time Fly. Some ideas are too good to use just once.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 14, Cameron notices a fellow refugee as he rides out the 1925 Tri-State tornado in a lighted storm cellar.

Cameron lowered his eyes and stared at the floor as a spider raced toward the door. He watched it closely as it stopped near his foot and appeared to weigh two unpleasant options — death by tornado or death by shoe. Like a deer in the headlights, it stayed where it was.

CLASS OF '59 (2016): Like many, I am fascinated with the 1950s. I watched Happy Days as a kid and loved movies like Grease, Back to the Future, and Pleasantville. I pictured heaven as a malt shop filled with jukeboxes, red vinyl booths, and Fonzies and Peggy Sues.

[Speaking of "The Fonz," is there an American male over 50 who did not jump – or dream of jumping – over four or five trash cans on his chopper bike in the 1970s? I know I did.]

In any case, I love the Fifties. So when I finally got a chance to squeeze a 1950s story into a series, I seized it. I threw everything into a novel that was a sheer pleasure to write.

In Class of ’59, Mary Beth and Piper McIntire, sisters from 2017, meet Mark and Ben Ryan, brothers from 1959, through the magic of Professor Bell’s Tunnel of Love, setting off a romp filled with romance, danger, angst, and adventure. They find their own Happy Days.

If this story sounds familiar, it should. I flipped the script in the Stone Shed trilogy and sent two brothers to the past. Only the names (Noah and Jake Maclean, Abby and Rachel Ward) and dates (2024, 1776) were changed to protect the innocent. I loved using this trope.

In addition to sock hops, gangsters, and a cameo by Marilyn Monroe, Class of ’59 features a LOT of time travel. My amorous couples travel between 2017 and 1959 at least a dozen times. In most of my other books, the main characters travel only once or twice, if at all.

Bloopers: I must report two. First, the discs in the jukebox on the cover are CD-ROMs, not vinyl records. [I still like the cover.] Second, when Donna Ryan, Mark and Ben's mother, joins her sons in the future, she forgets to bring Charlotte, the family cat. You can't win them all.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 34, Piper tells Mark about a time when Mary Beth defended her from a pack of grade-school bullies.

"She threatened them. She said, 'If you don't leave my sister alone, I'll have you all spayed and neutered.' Mary Beth didn't even know what the words meant. She heard them on a TV commercial. But her warning worked. The bullies never bothered me again."

HANNAH'S MOON (2017): As an author, I am often reminded to write what I know. In Hannah's Moon, I did just that. I told the tale of Ron and Claire Rasmussen, a couple battling infertility. I began by showing the two cradling their first child — a stillborn son named Ronnie.

On November 8, 1993, my wife, Cheryl, gave birth to a stillborn child — a four-pound, 18-inch, 33-week-old boy named Douglas Kyle. We endured a hardship that no parents, even in literature, should ever have to bear.

I needed three weeks to write that first chapter. Even with a solid command of the subject, I needed time to describe a hospital scene that demanded patience, care, and detail.

When I finished, I used my experience as an adoptee and an adoptive father to guide Ron and Claire in what became one of my best novels. I turned life into art.

Of course, Hannah's Moon is more than a sentimental journey about parenthood. It is a thriller set in 1945, a book that details the hopes and fears of Americans in the tense final months of World War II.

Hannah Rasmussen, Ron and Claire's adopted daughter, is the star of the show. Inspired by Tabitha Stephens, the towheaded toddler in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched, she was the first character to get her name on a book. [See Caitlin's Song and Annie's Apple.] I dedicated the novel itself to my daughter, Heidi, whom Cheryl and I adopted in 1992.

Though most of Hannah's Moon's is set in Chattanooga, seven chapters are set on or near the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser that sailed into history in July 1945. I spent several weeks researching the doomed ship, which remains the most compelling of my book settings.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 62, I describe the guests that greeted helpless sailors, including Ron Rasmussen, on July 31, 1945.

The sharks that came on Monday did not go away. Many struck in groups, terrorizing sailors for hours. Others hunted alone, picking off individuals with reckless abandon. Some gave warning by approaching along the surface. A few struck without notice from the depths. By sunset on Tuesday, the cold, conscienceless killers had maimed or consumed dozens of men and harassed or terrified countless more.

In the American Journey series, I pushed boundaries, pushed myself, and opened doors for future works. By the time I published the last book, I no longer looked at novel writing as a hobby. It was a passion, one with a life of its own. Next: The Carson Chronicles series.

[timetravelauthor]

Northwest Passage series

Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages — it’s better not to see them being made." The 19th‑century German statesman knew it is often best to focus on a finished product and not its construction.

The Northwest Passage series is my string of sausages. Cobbled together between 2012 and 2014, it is a collection of books only an author and perhaps understanding readers could appreciate.

When I wrote The Mine, my debut novel, I did not anticipate a second act. I expected to move on to the next item on my bucket list and leave writing behind. Then I got the notion to proceed. I wrote The Journey, a mostly unrelated story, and then The Show, the afterthought sequel to The Mine. By the time I finished The Fire and The Mirror, which continued the tales of the Smith and Johnson families, I had a hodgepodge on my hands.

The novels do have some things in common. Each is set in my native Pacific Northwest. Members of the Smith and Johnson clans mingle a few times. And Joel Smith appears in all five stories. Readers see Joel as a college student in The Mine, a toddler in The Journey, a young husband and father in The Show, a middle-aged professor in The Fire, and a grandfather in The Mirror. Cindy Smith, Joel's mother, is the only other character to appear in every book.

I broke down this series once before. On March 20, 2014, I answered common questions from readers. I won't do that today. Instead, I will try to answer uncommon questions and offer new information. With spoilers galore, here is my second examination of a splendid collection.

THE MINE (2012): Though The Mine is mostly set in Seattle, it begins in Helena, Montana, a town I know well. I moved my family to the storied gold-mining community in June 2000, barely two weeks after Joel Smith visited it in the novel. Unlike other settings in the book, I did not have to research this one. I lived in it, worked in it, and played in it.

Helena, as I wrote on July 4, 2014, is a special place, filled with Gilded Age mansions, quirky shops, and alpine scenery. I picked the city as a major setting because I wanted Joel and later Grace Vandenberg, his love interest, to see what I saw every day. I also wanted Joel's shocking transition from 2000 to 1941 to take place in a simpler, less hectic environment.

Joel, as readers know, handled the transition with aplomb, much to the chagrin of those who wanted him to grieve more about what he had left behind. Needless to say, I struggled with this. Though I wanted to present Joel as a disciplined problem solver, a man who did not easily break, I could have made him suffer more. Most people, suddenly torn from everything they have ever known, would not be able shake off crushing adversity so quickly and easily.

I faced other challenges, of course, including some I documented in The Mine's tenth anniversary post. After confronting the realities of crafting a novel, I added fifteen chapters to the first draft, changed story arcs, and updated props and attire. Aluminum foil became tin foil. Chocolate chip cookies became Tollhouse cookies. Grace's wardrobe on a trip to Mount Rainier was changed from a blouse and blue jeans to a dress.

I also changed the ending. In my first outline of The Mine, Grace reunited with Joel as an old woman, much like Jane Seymour with Christopher Reeves early in Somewhere in Time. After much thought, I decided to have them reunite in 2000 as young adults. A few critics dismissed the ending as a deus ex machina. I still consider it perfect.

Favorite Quote: In this Chapter 48 passage, a favorite among readers, Ginny Gillette tells Joel Smith that her best friend is worth pursuing.

"Grace may never be someone you can read or understand. She may never be someone anyone can understand. But she will always be worth the effort and the wait. Beneath that delicate exterior is a strong, resolute woman who does nothing halfway. Never take her for granted and never underestimate her. She will amaze."

THE JOURNEY (2012): My second book is something of an outlier. With 244 pages, sixty chapters, and two protagonists, it is by far my smallest work. It is also the only novel set in a fictional community.

Inspired by my high school years in the rodeo town of Pendleton, Oregon, The Journey was the first of my books to draw heavily on personal experience. In describing the carhop restaurants, drive-in theaters, school dances, classrooms, teenage customs, and even weekend nights "cruising the gut." I needed only to consult my memories and yearbooks.

The Journey was also the first of two books that introduced older characters to their younger selves and the first of seven set at least partially in an American high school. It tells the tale of Michelle Preston Richardson, a 48-year-old widow who is rudely propelled back in time to her senior year of 1979-80.

It also tells the tale of three major events that dominated news cycles that year: the Iran hostage crisis, the Miracle on Ice, and the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens. As an 18-year-old living in Oregon, I vividly remember all three events, particularly the eruption, which hampered the Northwest for months and affected how residents lived, worked, traveled, and, in my case, fared in a track and field meet.

On May 19, the day after the eruption, my high school hosted an invitational for the also-rans who failed to qualify for district. As usual, I ran the 1500 meters. As usual, I ran fourth in the six-man race through the first two of the four laps. But I didn't remain fourth for long.

Beginning in the third lap, the runners ahead of me dropped out of the race. Affected by the invisible but noticeable volcanic ash that permeated the warm spring air, they wandered off the track, dropped to their knees, and gagged or vomited. I pressed on. Equipped with a slightly better air filter, I seized a rare opportunity and outsprinted my remaining competitors to win a running race for the only time.

Favorite Quote: The first paragraph of Chapter 57 was a hard one to write. For the first time, I said goodbye to a novel's protagonist.

In the last minute of her life, Michelle Preston Richardson Land noticed and appreciated the beauty around her. She took in butterflies and flowers, a chipmunk on a log, majestic hemlocks and firs, and a young deer that had stopped to look at her from a few feet away. They were all amazing creations that she wanted to savor one last time.

THE SHOW (2013): I wrote The Show in five weeks. In a burst of NaNoWriMo energy in November 2012, I penned 92,000 words and produced a sequel that was as out of order as a caboose at the head of a train. I produced a third book that should have been a second.

I also produced a book that put me at odds with readers for the first time. In The Show, where Grace Vandenberg Smith stumbles through a time portal and travels from 2002 to 1918, my protagonist, then a married mother of two, makes two unpopular choices. She starts a relationship with a caring U.S. Army officer and literally pushes her parents, a young couple in 1919, into the 21st century.

Many readers ripped Grace's decisions as selfish and reckless. I believe they were practical, understandable, and most of all, defensible. Though Grace loved and missed her husband and daughters, she had no reason to believe she would ever see them again. She was a "single" pregnant woman in an unforgiving age. Captain Walker offered her love, marriage, and a home. Later, when Grace sees a chance to return to 2002, she ends the relationship but complicates another. She reclaims her parents, who died in a 1937 auto accident and left her an orphan. She rewrites the historical record.

Most people, I dare say, would not take the noble route. They would make the best decision with the information available to them. Even so, I appreciate the counterarguments, and if I wrote The Show today, I might heed at least one of them. I can imagine a compelling ending where Grace says so long to her parents in 1919 and lets them live the life they were meant to lead. I can picture a much different story.

On the plus side, The Show was a fun novel to write. It offers a fair amount of humor and features my best marriage proposal, wedding, and honeymoon chapters. It is my ode to Valentine's Day.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 25, Joel Smith, the perpetual playboy, counts his blessings as he marries Grace Vandenberg in Hawaii.

Joel looked at the vision holding his hands and then at the ocean behind her and wondered again whether he had won a cosmic lottery. Saints didn't deserve beach weddings in Kauai, much less spoiled, cocky frat boys who cheated on their taxes, dumped pre-law students who looked like models, and gambled on horses and greyhounds.

THE FIRE (2013): Wallace, Idaho, is the Center of the Universe. I'm serious. You can find incontrovertible "proof" on a manhole cover at the confluence of Bank and Sixth streets. I have seen the intersection on many occasions, including once on June 21, 2013, when I crossed it at exactly the same time protagonist Kevin Johnson did in The Fire.

Needless to say, I did not see Kevin, my curious young time traveler, but I did see a lot of Wallace, a silver-mining community of 900 souls. For three days that June, I researched a book setting by immersing myself in it.

Wallace screams Old West. Every downtown building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Most are survivors of a massive wildfire that roared through town in 1910. For me, it was a perfect place to send a carefree college graduate who inadvertently wanders into danger, adventure, and a love triangle after discovering a time portal on his deceased grandfather's property.

I wandered into a bit of danger myself when I had Kevin, 22, divide his affections between Sadie Hawkins, an unrefined local girl, and Sarah Thompson, a polished teacher from Indiana. Though both ladies were beautiful, smart, and kind, they were one too many for some readers, who formed competing camps. In the end, I let fire and fate, not whim, determine which woman survived to join Kevin in the future.

Though I am superstitious about Friday the 13th, I threw caution to the wind on Friday, September 13, 2013, when I hosted a 50th birthday party for my wife, Cheryl. We dined with friends in Wallace, of course, at a historic saloon called the 1313 Club. Life was never so good!

Favorite Quote: Taken from Chapter 80, Kevin Johnson's final reflection as he drives his family home is still my best ending.

Kevin smiled. He knew that even if the sky were gray tomorrow, it would remain blue in his mind. His last mental snapshot of Wallace, Idaho, would not be of fire, smoke, and death but rather of sunshine, giggles, and kisses. That, he concluded, was progress.

THE MIRROR (2014): Part of the fun of writing fiction is occasionally taking a leap into the unknown. In The Mirror, I took two. I jumped into the world of 2020, assuming it would look like the world of 2014, and jumped into the heads of two teenage protagonists, assuming they would think like me. I soon learned it is never wise to assume.

As most people know, 2020 was not like previous years. COVID-19 took care of that. I did not anticipate a global pandemic when I sent Ginny and Katie Smith, the twin daughters of Joel and Grace, to a country fair near Seattle on September 11, 2020. I did not have the sisters mask up or practice social distancing. I envisioned a different future.

When an author writes about a time he has never seen, he takes a risk. When he writes about people who are much different than himself, he takes a bigger risk. One reader, a woman, let me have it: "This is exactly what you'd expect from a time-travel book about teenage girls written by a middle-aged man."

I shook off the criticism. If there is one thing I have learned as an author, it is that you cannot please everyone. All you can do is tell your story as best you can. So I did just that. In The Mirror, I told a story about 2020, 1964, and 19-year-old sisters and also tackled difficult subjects like racism, domestic violence, and terminal illness for the first time.

Oddly enough, one of the earliest fans of The Mirror was my daughter Amy, a 19-year-old college freshman in 2014. "I liked it, Dad," she said in a telephone call. "I liked it a lot." That was enough for me.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 68, Ginny Smith describes the scene at the Beatles concert in the Seattle Center Coliseum on August 21, 1964.

Then there were the sights – the surreal, stunning, mesmerizing sights that seemed stripped from a newsreel. No matter where Ginny looked, she saw movement – random, constant, violent movement. She saw young girls bounce in their chairs, tear at their hair, and clutch their throats and older ones throw jellybeans, flashbulbs, and themselves at an open stage. She saw wild women and girls gone gaga. She saw estrogen on fire.

Fun Fact: As a University of Oregon graduate, I am a diehard Duck, but I write positively about my University of Washington protagonists in the Northwest Passage novels. That is like a Michigan author lauding Ohio State characters or an Alabama writer speaking fondly of Auburn alums. Sometimes you do what you have to do to tell a story.

With 475,000 sales and more than seventeen thousand reviews, Northwest Passage is still my most widely circulated series. Though I do not plan to write about the Northwest again, I inevitably will. Authors rarely stray far from home. Next: The American Journey series.