Hi guys,
I had crazy several past months, and no, it is not dues to quarantine, don't worry, I won't bore you with that stuff. For several years I worked on a Sci-Fi story that I temporarily named Cerberus. The concept of the story is quite simple: 2000 years into the future, where police officers are actually robots, with nested human brains and terrorists are using time machines and timeloops to fight the inequality and dictatorships. Not an awfully unique subject, but in writing, I learned that the voice matters because it is unlikely that somebody will reinvent the wheel.
So from this big series, I got the idea for the smaller novellas. When terrorists in the future use timeloops, somewhere in history a rip is created in space/time, and once in a while, someone falls through this rip. The very first two stories I came up with were set in Ancient Rome and Medieval England. At the time I was reading a great deal about mythology and legends, one can imagine how my imagination was influenced. Eventually, I set the stories aside, simply wanting to work on something else. Until about a year ago.
Unsuspectedly and innocently I was watching a ballet performance of The Nutcracker. I really love arts of any form or people with special talents, to see them at work is my version of an ASMR, just visual. The Waltz of the Snowflakes comes on and I kind of space out, to the point, where I begin to daydream. The first image in my head that I get is the marble steps, and ballerina dancing at night, only to tumble down the green grassy hill, ending up somewhere during the day. That was all that I had, but it was such an exhilarating image, that I wanted to write it down.
I remembered that I had started the series that could adopt this lone story, and give it a place in my collection of unfinished tales. Once sure that the story belonged to the said series, I had to figure out who was the ballerina, where did she fell through and how she would get back or survive in this new unknown place. The rolling green hills reminded me of Scotland, although I have never been there, it is the image that I have in my head when I think of Scotland or hills.
Just like so, I was figuring out any questions I had about the story and kept on writing, well, until the very end. Sounds silly, but I would mostly revert to my associations and try to see what would fit, making me very happy with the result. The only thing that bothered me about the book, was that it was time-travel and Scotland, which made me at first worried that the book would be associated with the Outlander. Not a bad thing, but I suppose something that every author faces, at least once in their career. I am a huge fan, but my story was not something that I based on Outlander, as you see, so it worried me, that people would feel like it is a rip-off.
Finally, I simply came to terms with it. Like retellings, fanfiction, and so on, books just happen to be similar, in one way or another. Thus I set my worries aside and can confidently say that people that have an Outlander hangover, feel free to read my story! It is shorter, not as snappy, but has a very clear and readable structure to it.
The Timeloop Romance Series is designed so that a person can read them within one or two sittings. They are to fill the void, instead of creating one. I can only hope that I did a good job, and that you, my dear reader will like the storyline.
Highland Dance comes out on August 25th, but beta reader copies and ARC are available now. Feel free to message me for one!
With Love,
Gina.