Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance by various authors. This blog tour was organized by Lola's Blog Tours. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as an interesting guest post from the editor. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a copy of the book. Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour for more content. Enjoy!
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Authors: Various
Editor: Jonathan Strahan
Editor: Jonathan Strahan
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing
Publication Date: May 10th 2022
Print Length: 330 pages
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
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Even time travel can’t unravel love.
Time-travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures – for better, or worse.
When romance is thrown into the mix, time-travel becomes a passionate tool, or heart-breaking weapon. A time agent in the 22nd century puts their whole mission at risk when they fall in love with the wrong person. No matter which part of history a man visits, he cannot not escape his ex. A woman is desperately in love with the time-space continuum, but it doesn’t love her back. As time passes and falls apart, a time-traveller must say goodbye to their soulmate.
With stories from best-selling and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Alix E. Harrow and Nina Allan, this anthology gives a taste for the rich treasure trove of stories we can imagine with love, loss and reunion across time and space.
Edited by Jonathan Strahan and including stories by: Alix E. Harrow, Zen Cho, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Gailey, Jeffrey Ford, Nina Allan, Elizabeth Hand, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Catherynne M. Valente, Sam J. Miller, Rowan Coleman, Margo Lanagan, Sameem Siddiqui, Theodora Goss, Carrie Vaughn, Ellen Klages
Goodreads * Amazon * Apple Books *
Half Price Books * IndieBound * Indigo *
Kobo * Publisher * ThriftBooks * Waterstones
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EXCERPT:
ROADSIDE ATTRACTION
by Alix E. Harrow
by Alix E. Harrow
THE DAY AFTER Candace Stillwater broke his heart, Floyd Butler decided—with the reckless haste of a twenty-one-year-old who knows they must act quickly, before good sense intervenes—to go time traveling.
It wasn’t a difficult proposition: you simply took Exit 52 off I-70, halfway between Junction City and
WaKeeney, and followed the signs for The World’s One and Only Time Machine. You bought a ticket from
the amiable drunk at the front booth and waited while he unlocked the gate, and then you walked through a
grove of cottonwoods until you came to the time machine, which isn’t really a machine at all. It’s a rough pillar
of sandstone weathered into a shape not unlike an hourglass, carved all over with names and initials and faded
hearts.
There was a lot of fuss when it was first discovered—minor wars, international espionage, secret government
agencies with a bewildering array of acronyms—but when the stone failed to provide either profit or power,
the land was quietly sold to a private entity. The Ticket Through Time Theme Park opened in the early ’70s,
boasting a Chronological Museum, an overpriced supply shop full of pocket dictionaries and period clothing,
and an extensive system of waivers. It lasted four or five years, when it became clear that the number of people
willing to pay exorbitant prices in order to fling themselves like deranged darts through space and time, with
no guarantee of return, survival, or even a good time, was sadly limited.
So the private entity sold the acreage to another, smaller entity, which eventually sold it to a Mr. Anthony
Barton, who found that there were just enough cultists, conspiracy theorists, true believers, historical reenactors, and desperate escapists to cover the salary of one full-time employee and send Mr. Barton to the
Bahamas every January.
If Mr. Barton had been there the day Floyd Butler paid for his ticket, he would have put him without hesitation
in the 'desperate escapist' category, and he would have been half-right: Floyd was running away from plenty of
things (his next shift at the QuikTrip 24-Hour gas station; the deadly flat of the Kansas horizon; Candace
Stillwater’s blue, blue eyes when she broke up with him; and the dizzy sense that he’d lost the plot of his own
life) but he was also running toward something. He just wasn’t sure what it was.
He thought of it as an apple hanging just out of reach, perfectly ripe, gold-limned in the light of some new
dawn. If he’d ever spoken of it to anyone, which he had not, he might have called it his destiny.
Floyd had to tap the glass of the front booth to wake the ticket seller, who squinted at Floyd’s bright blue
backpack—stuffed with all the necessities a person might need on a journey through time or, more accurately,
all the non-perishable food that was available in his mother’s kitchen before dawn this morning, when the idea
had occurred to him—tore an orange ticket from a large roll, and said “Good luck” in a tone suggesting he
would need it.
Floyd was undeterred. He walked through the gate with a swelling, billowing sensation in his chest, as if he
were finally reaching out for that red, ripe apple. He would have touched the stone without breaking stride,
without a second’s hesitation, if it hadn’t been for the man standing in the way.
He was a little older than Floyd, somewhere in that nebulous range between early-twenties and old, which
were Floyd’s only categories. Floyd thought he might have been handsome, in a tensile, whippet kind of way,
if he shaved those embarrassing sideburns and wore 21st-century clothing. His outfit looked as if it had been
stolen from the cover of one of Floyd’s mother’s romance novels: high-waisted pants, a collared shirt, and a
stiff red vest that Floyd suspected was called a waistcoat or a cravat, or possibly a cummerbund.
Floyd knew some time travelers chose to dress in period clothing, but this man’s costume had a geographical
and chronological specificity that struck Floyd as thoroughly silly.
If he’d heard Floyd’s approach, he made no sign of it. He stood before the stone, staring at it with a strange,
lost expression, as if he didn’t know why he’d come or what he ought to do next.
Floyd waited a polite minute before saying “Morning” in the same soothing tone he used to greet stray cats.
The man startled so violently he tripped over his own feet and very nearly fell against the stone. Floyd caught
one flailing wrist—so slim and sharp it was like catching a tossed butter knife—and stood him gently back
upright.
The man blinked several times, panting and rubbing his wrist. “Thank you.” He had a nasally BBC accent
that made Floyd suspect he’d traveled much further than three counties to be here.
“No problem.” Floyd nodded at the stone. “I’ll give you some privacy, if you’re going first.”
“Going…?” The man looked at the stone, then back at Floyd, squinting as if Floyd were standing in much
brighter sunlight than he actually was. “No, I wasn’t—that is, I’m just the, uh, groundskeeper.” He nodded
vaguely at the trees, which seemed to be keeping themselves perfectly well. “You go ahead.”
But he looked so pale and alarmed, his pupils dark beneath the long fringe of his eyelashes, that Floyd found
himself lingering. He extended the travel mug he’d stolen from his mother an hour earlier. “Coffee?”
The man took the mug with long fingers, sipped cautiously, gagged, and said “How kind” in a slightly hoarse
voice. He must have been the sort of person with a Starbucks order and a French press; Floyd generally just
microwaved yesterday’s leftovers and stirred in so much powdered creamer it left a pleasant chemical film on
his tongue.
“You keep it,” he said magnanimously. “I’d better be heading out.” Floyd tightened the straps on his
backpack, hoping he looked like a dashing explorer rather than a Boy Scout.
“Where are you going?”
For some reason—because the man’s eyelashes were really quite long and he was looking at Floyd with such a
pleasingly wistful expression, or because Floyd was filled with the ebullience of someone who has a feeling he
will not be in Kansas for much longer—Floyd told him the truth.
He shrugged, smiling, and said, “To find my destiny.”
He touched the stone and disappeared.
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GUEST POST FROM THE EDITOR:
- What are the best and worst (or most challenging) things about editing an anthology?
Editing an anthology takes a while, sometimes longer than a year, so there are a few ups and downs. The best parts of it are what you might expect. There is a real thrill in coming up with a good idea for a book and being able to deliver a pitch. The moment when a publisher commits to a book proposal and you know it’s going to happen. That would be one of my favourites. I have very fond memories of selling books to publishers over drinks, over BBQs, and sometimes over email. I also get a thrill when an author commits to writing for a project. I confess that even after all of this time I’m surprised and delighted when they do. The two best parts, though, are when stories come in – that’s when you’re get surprised and delighted – and when you hold a copy of the finished book for the first time. There’s nothing quite like that. I can think of specific stories arriving and surprising me completely. That’s what happen with a story like Catherynne Valente’s in Someone in Time, which was completely unexpected. And then there’s having my breath taken away when I see a book for the first time. Someone in Time is gorgeous and I could not be happier with it.
If the best parts of editing an anthology are getting the stories together and then seeing the book itself come to life, the most challenging are the parts in between. I don’t think anyone enjoys writing proposals for books. There are few hard rules about them and, for me at least, they’re like pulling teeth a bit. The hardest part, though, is keeping the project alive through to delivery. Life is complicated and there are many reasons why a writer who has said they’ll write for you might not be able to, so there are always writers dropping out as a book gets towards completion. You have to manage publisher expectations, keep the book on theme and on time, and make sure you keep the book balanced in terms of contributors, if you can, too.
I think people would think the hard parts are actually editing stories or getting the running order right, but I love those parts. They’re fun and not really challenging at all.
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GIVEAWAY:
Five Winners: Paperback of Someone in Time
Five Winners: Paperback of Someone in Time
Five Winners: eBook of Someone in Time
(Open worldwide)
(All the Ups and Downs is not responsible for this giveaway, its entries, or the prizes. Lola's Blog Tours and the author assume all responsibility over this giveaway.)
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