Rachel's Random Reads: Guest Post - How Rowan Coleman writes about Time Travel

Friday, 30 June 2017

Guest Post - How Rowan Coleman writes about Time Travel - Blog Tour

Since I was a little girl I’ve been fascinated by the idea of time travel. The idea that I could somehow go back into the past, and see for myself the biggest events in history and know for sure exactly how they played out intrigued and thrilled me.

But when it came to creating the transatlantic time travelling adventure that is ‘The Summer of Impossible Things’ it wasn’t the those big historical moments that concerned me, but instead the small and intimate choices ordinary people make, that have the power to shape lives for generations to come. Because its true that the actions of our parents and grandparents shape out lives and our children’s lives, and so on, in ways that we can hardly imagine,

So, how to tackle time travel? That was the question.

I knew I didn’t want a time machine, as beguiling as the idea is, (and who doesn’t love a TARDIS) it didn’t feel right for what I wanted to achieve, so instead of looking outward at technology that doesn’t exist, I decided to look inwards, and wonder what it would be like if the potential for travelling through time and alternate dimensions exists within.

While the claim that we only use 10% of our brains is actually an urban myth (humans use pretty much all of their brains) there is still much to discovered in our understanding of neuroscience. And when I see gaps in understanding in science I like to fill those gaps with stories. What if, I asked myself, all of us have an ability to move within space and time hidden deep inside out brains, it just that it hasn’t evolved yet? And what if my heroine, Luna, is the first to uncover this hidden potential.

Then I set out to find out more about what we do know about space and time, reading all the books I could on how science understands the concept of Time, and the Universe and I was pretty pleased to discover that we know for certain so very little of our observable universe, and that even our understanding of time breaks down around certain anomalies like black holes and dark matter. More gaps for me to fill with stories, I thought cheerfully.

Out of these childhood passions, ideas and research I conjured up ‘The Summer of Impossible Things.’ It is a time travel story, and I hope you will find that as beguiling and exciting as I did while I was writing it. But it’s also, at its heart, a love story, not just between a woman or a man (although there is a swooney romance in this book) but between a woman and her mother and her sister.

Because there is one universal force that science so far isn’t studying; Love.

And I believe that Love has the power to change to the world, if we are brave enough to let it.

So tell me, how brave are you?

Well Rowan I'm not very brave, but I did love the book, as you can tell from my review last week. Thank you so much for sharing your interest in time travel with us.