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Monday, January 27, 2014

Time Travelling and Dennis Higgins

Welcome to today's guest, author Dennis Higgins. He talks about time travel. Check out his books and enter to win a free copy below.

I would like to thank Jamie Marchant for hosting me for the Indie and Proud yearlong event.

I am Dennis Higgins, author of time travel stories. I am the “Gone But Not Forgotten” guy. My own books are not heavily into science or sci-fi. Time travel is sort of taken for granted and the stories involve the intimate and detailed lives of my traveler which I call Time Pilgrims.

In this segment, I want to explore the many modes of travelling in time from a few different points of view and authors. The guy who started it all was HG Wells and the mode he used was the same as the title of his famous book, The Time Machine. The machine was a Victorian invention which propelled his protagonist into the future. The George Pal, 1960 movie version of this title has actor Rod Taylor amazed at the changes going on around him. He watches a woman’s dress shop and the changing styles as the years move up, making him comment to himself, “That’s a dress?”

In more modern times, Doc Brown creates a time machine out of a DeLorean in the Back to the Future series, which when reaches 88 miles per hour, via the flux capacitor, propels him and Marty to various times.

Jack Finney used a machine and the famous New York City, Dakota apartment building to travel back to the 1800s.

There can’t be a post like this without talking about a time-traveler first seen in 1963 on the BBC in the UK. Doctor Who uses a device that is stuck in the image of an old police box called the TARDIS. The letters stand for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It is infinitely large on the inside and can move the doctor and his colleagues anywhere and to any point in time.

Superman flies around the earth backwards to its rotation, making it literally reversing it in time, while the Enterprise in Star Trek slingshots around the sun to transport them back or forth.

There has been anywhere from body switches with people in the past, to mirrors, to genies in bottles, to totally unexplained phenomenon to transport individuals in time. But there seems to be a common thread to most time travel stories…love. Love can often transcend time and space. It is the most powerful emotion that we humans possess.

The book, originally titled, Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson was renamed after the popularity of its’ screen adaptation to, Somewhere in Time. In it, Richard Collier uses a unique technique to travel back to meet the woman he becomes obsessed with. He goes to an old hotel and removes everything modern from the room. He uses the power of his brain to concentrate on the time that she was in the hotel and eventually makes it. I happen to love this concept. SPOILER ALERT: His fateful mistake was accidentally bringing a modern penny with him. Upon looking at the little cent, he is whisked back to his own time. Remember, if and when you time travel, you must bring the correct currency with you. Especially if love is involved.

Now I will give you the time travel mode used in my books. First, a person has to be born with the God-given ability. Not everybody is, but those who are must realize the secret that is contained in the simple element of water. The same water that is all around us and within us is the water that has existed in every time period since the Earth was formed. It is the conduit to every possible timeline. So it is the same water that character’s Kevin and Cheryl encounter down Route 66 in 1946, that is there when Katya and Cyrus find themselves in the great Chicago Fire of 1871, and when Cathy Callahan finds love in 1906 during the San Francisco earthquake. Water, along with concentration, is my character’s main mode of travel.



Gone but not forgotten. Comment with your favorite person, place or thing from the past for a chance to win a free Smashwords eBook of Parallel Roads (Lost on Route 66). I will pick (3) three winners from my favorite answers.

Dennis Higgins is world traveler and distant relative of Davy Crockett. A native of Chicago, Illinois, he has always possessed a romance with things of the past that are gone but not forgotten.  He now lives in the suburbs with his lovely wife, two dogs and three birds.

Among his influences are:  Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Dean Koontz, Joan Wester Anderson, Peter S. Beagle and Audrey Neffenegger . The Time Pilgrims series is exciting and is treasured and loved by young adults, new adults as well as full blown adults.

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5 comments:

  1. Dennis has a wonderful imagination. You will be thoroughly entertained all the way through these stories.

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  2. Maybe "Gone But Not Forgotten" should be the name of a book, Dennis? Great interview Jamie you did with Dennis!

    Okay...Water, hmmm. I am surrounded by water here in Maine, and I am concentrating hard. But I can't seem to get back to the 1970's. Darn, should I click my heels or something, Dennis? :-)

    Awesome writer!

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  3. Thank you, Cait and Virginia. I appreciate your words.

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  4. Dennis' books are a highly recommended read. thank you for sharing :)

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