TRUE LOVE IS PRECIOUS But, what if the two lovers cannot possibly make their relationship work? The two grew up together. Each often knows what the other is thinking. They get along perfectly. Unfortunately, they belong to different sentient species. There is no chance for them as a couple. Each needs a mate of their own species, but finding a suitable life partner can be problematic. There will almost always be missteps, sometimes even fatal mistakes. There is no such thing as an impossibility in the infinity of years available throughout eternity. The laws of probability imply that given enough time, any event, no matter how improbable, has a chance of happening. The ability to jump through time and space can make things easier or more difficult. It also attracts those who will kill to get the secret for themselves. When all of infinity is available to search for a mate, will it be necessary to go beyond death to find success?
I’ve been pretty busy with the writing thingy lately, but now I’m well into my next apocalyptic story Dustfall. It can be described as Boy meets Girl after most humans are mutated by an interstellar dust cloud that contains mRNA. It’s still evolving, so that’s all I’ll say.
After a slow period (writing doesn’t always flow easily), I finished the 4th Time Equation Novel continuing the story of Kathleen and Cadeyrin. Here’s the list of that series’ stories in sequence with their Amazon ASINs. You can find them all on Kindle with the ASINs, so I’m not providing links here.
B01BW17FM6 Heart of Fire Time of Ice (A Time Equation Novel Book 1)
B01IDRYB9W Paradox: On the Sharp Edge of the Blade – A Time Equation Novel Book 2)
B0718YMV3Z All the Moments in Forever (A Time Equation Novel Book 3)
B08FRT9BCT Time Enough to Live (A Time Equation Novel Book 4)
Time Enough to Live brings back the entire list of characters who now face a new problem. Here’s the description:
NO ONE WANTS TO DIE WITH ALL OF TIME AT THEIR CALL Kathleen’s quantum physics research allowed her to develop a mathematical formula that gave her control of time-travel. Her Paleolithic hunter husband was given a primitive herbal formula by an old Sasquatch. After eating some of the red paste, he discovers a sudden feeling of wellbeing, more energy, and his numerous scars have been replaced with new, smooth skin. Kathleen’s friends realize that the paste contains the secret of a greatly extended healthy lifespan, if not actual immortality. She takes Professor James Wolf back to the future for a physical and finds that the 90-year-old man now has the physique of a 50-year-old. That information quickly leaks out setting up one of Kathleen’s greatest challenges to-date as a shadowy group along with elements of her own government do everything they can to possess the secret of long life. They will stop at nothing in their quest, but Kathleen and Cadeyrin are creative in countering most of the threats. The question is, will they be able to withstand the full might of the forces trying to steal their secret. Only time will tell.
If you like time-travel mixed with romance, adventure, and odd characters – Try Lolita the talking deinonychus or an ancient Sasquatch with the secret of eternal life and the ability to travel in space-time . Plus, Kathleen Whitby, who has become a tour-de-force in her world along with her prehistoric husband, Cadeyrin – you might enjoy this series. A lot of readers have.
A brief warning – for those who are sensitive to violence, inter-tribal war, hunting, etc. These books are written to be as realistic as possible on the character side. The science, of course, is speculative, however I contacted world-renowned physics researcher Fred Alan Wolf for his input on the time-travel aspect. The anthropology aspect is based on the Solutrean hypothesis. It’s been discounted by some academics for various reasons that I’m not sure are compelling, but there are a number of points on which I think it makes perfect sense. On the romance aspect, it’s a slow burn in the first novel. Kathleen’s personality is insecure and she absolutely must feel that she has value to bring to the relationship before she commits.
Note – If you want to find out more about the Pleistocene, the ice-age world of the first story: Heart of Fire Time of Ice, you can find a series of posts on my author blog site describing my background research, animals, climate, language, and rational for the story. I initially included that information in the book, but a number of readers complained, so I moved it.
I’ve decided to post some of my notes from the time I was writing Heart of Fire Time of Ice in order to give you an insight into my writing process and also to explain (partly) the context in which I set the story.
I made the decision, when I was first starting to write novels, to research the known scientific aspects of all of my stories. (Some of my stories involve pure imagination, particularly when other planets and alien life-forms are involved.) There is a fine line between spending so much time researching that the story does not get written and simply making things up to give the story a superficial aspect of reality. I try to compromise, researching enough to provide meaningful and mostly scientifically accepted facts or at least theories, but not getting hung up on becoming an expert on the topics I’m researching. This post involves analyzing the climate factors that would have impacted the world that my main characters inhabit for most of the story.
Readers will know that the story involves time travel with a modern woman inadvertently transferred into the Pleistocene period. My heroine, Kathleen, ends up in the later part of the period known as the Younger Dryas. With that being said, I’ll present my notes below:
STORY RESEARCH and NOTES
Researching the Pleistocene forces one to become aware of the climate. The glaciers were the most prominent feature of life. Their presence modified climate, provided an avenue for man to colonize North America and impacted the migration routes and habits of animals. The glacial ice was thousands of feet thick and extended south past the present day Great Lakes.
Near the end of the Pleistocene, Earth had moved into a warming period, and the glaciers started to retreat and melt. The melt-water runoff mostly flowed down the Mississippi river valley. The water flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, was warmed in the shallows of the Gulf and eventually joined the Gulf Stream flowing north. The Gulf Stream acted as a conveyor belt to carry the warmer water’s heat to the northern part of the Atlantic.
The period of the Pleistocene known as the Younger Dryas was apparently initiated by a perfect storm of adverse events. One theory is that an asteroid struck the thickest part of the ice sheet above the Great Lake area. The impact would have vaporized the miles-thick ice, leaving no crater and no evidence and killed millions of creatures including any humans unfortunate enough to live nearby. This is the scenario that I use in the story. (Cadeyrin, the Clovis hunter who is the other main character, had heard of a huge flood when he was a child, and the weather had changed quickly after that event, causing his people to move westward.)
The meteorite (or possibly comet) would have freed melt-water and chunks of ice that could have blocked the Mississippi river. The theory is that the melt-water was then forced to find a new pathway, flowing into the north Atlantic along the St. Lawrence River.
The cold, fresh water would have the effect of displacing the Gulf Stream. Without its warming effect, the north Atlantic conveyor system would break down. This would have resulted in global temperature drops that would cause the glacial ice to begin to grow again.
The increase in glacial ice would then have locked up atmospheric water causing the climate to become vastly dryer. There is geological evidence of huge dust storms that killed vegetation during this period. This would starve the mega-fauna that depended on large amounts of easy grazing.
Based on what is called the Solutrean hypothesis (not currently held in favor by anthropologists), the Clovis people were present on the eastern coast of the North American continent (in fact, there are far more Clovis projectiles found there than elsewhere, lending credence to this idea). Dust and intense north Atlantic storms would probably have caused them to head west, searching for better conditions. It would be very cold and dry there, also, and that would result in less prey, forcing the humans to fight for resources. This scenario nicely sets up the story’s conflict between the Paleo-Indians and the Clovis people. It also works perfectly for my story, so that is why I selected it. In addition, it involves a migration of people from Europe that was quite likely possible. We know that Vikings reached the new world and possibly humans from Ireland and the British Isles, so why not an earlier migration, especially when the climate would have created very low sea levels, leaving the Grand Banks out of water and allowing men to hunt the forests which have left trees that are still found on the sea bottom there.
Thirty species of animals, including several species of rabbits and skunks, became extinct in the Younger Dryas, and Clovis technology also disappeared. Clovis projectiles were replaced with the Folsom variant and other forms of more modern arrowheads. Possibly the Clovis people themselves modified their signature projectile points into the Folsom form. There isn’t a tremendous difference in the points, save in the fluting. Extending the length of the center flute on both sides of the point seems to be a simple advancement that would allow the point to be re-sharpened and re-used more easily when broken.
The Younger Dryas period saw nearly eighty percent of the mega-fauna disappear, leaving mostly bison with a few of the other species. One would expect the carnivores to survive a little longer than herbivores. In the time of this story, the remaining carnivores have turned to scavenging hunted prey and predating on humans more than previously.
While it’s easy to make the assumption that the presence of humans with enhanced killing skills was responsible for the extinction of the large herd animals, it seems more probable to me that the harsh climate and lack of vegetation impacted the mega-fauna to a greater degree than the relatively few human hunters. Despite the near extinction of the American Bison by meat and hide hunters using firearms in the 1800’s, the Bison survived quite nicely for thousands of years prior to that, even while being hunted by the American Indians using Paleolithic weapons and fire-drives.
As to the thought that fire-drives caused the extinction of most of the mega-fauna, I would say that fire-drives depend upon large, open grasslands with dry grass to provide fuel. Lightning-caused fires often burn such areas, and the fauna would have been at least somewhat used to surviving burning prairies as a matter of course.
Still, without time-travel, it’s mostly speculation. However, this is a fictional story, after all, and who is to say that the world of Cadeyrin didn’t exist?
I wanted to make my story (Heart of Fire Time of Ice) both believable and scientifically possible. That’s a real challenge when it comes to both out-of-body experiences and time-travel. I spent a lot of time investigating time-travel as it relates to quantum physics. There are at least a few physicists who think it may be possible. Of these, I chose to use the ideas of Fred Alan Wolf.
Dr. Wolf’s description of ‘Extraordinary Time-Travel’ fit my needs perfectly. It would have been difficult to have a time machine. I could have done it, but I had a vision of how my heroine was going to travel, and a machine would have been difficult for her to handle. In addition, I didn’t just want to say, “Ta-Da! Behold: Time-Travel!”
That’s the general approach one finds in many stories, so it’s acceptable, but the problem is that it requires full buy-in by the readers. What I mean by that is the readers have to agree (probably subconsciously) that they’ll go along with the more or less magical rules that exist inside the author’s book.
I wanted to make it easier to believe that my heroine could have translated back to the past. To do that, I had to come up with a literary description of Wolf’s ideas. Don’t get me wrong. Dr. Wolf is an excellent writer. However, his description of time-travel is a little too scientific to fit well into a work of fiction.
My problem was that I had too much information in my head. My original description of Kathleen’s work and time-travel was so elaborate that almost every reader would have put the book down in disgust when faced with those sections. I ended up chopping out large sections of what proved to be unnecessary description.
I wanted to include a section on the possibility of time-travel as described by Wolf just in case you, dear reader, want to explore the idea further. As a result of that desire, here are my working notes:
Notes:
Time and possibility are intimately connected in the way that possibilities change to probabilities when awareness enters the picture. The basic idea here is that possibilities exist within your mind, and probabilities exist outside of you. Consciousness is the key to changing from the internal possibility to the external probability.
When you become aware of information, you gain knowledge, and as a consequence probabilities change outside you in what we normally call the real world.
Every situation has a possibility wave representing it. Changing the physical situation will change the possibility wave. This impacts the result of making choices in the wave we’ve just observed. The effect is that we change our awareness.
Quantum computers work with quantum bits (qubits), which are pure number possibilities. A qubit’s possibility wave oscillates between a positive maximum and a negative minimum. This wave represents the possibility of a qubit having the value zero at any instant.
Since a qubit may be either zero or one, but not negative, a negative possibility wave value must be squared in order to convert it to a real number. When two superpositioned possibility waves are squared, they yield a probability curve. Possibility waves may be added and then squared to get a probability curve, and the probability curve is directly related to real world events in a way that the possibility wave is not.
Possibility waves are in the mind and probability curves correspond to reality. We have a probability curve when we become conscious of reality. We deal with possibility waves when we are internally focused.
Experiments done at Princeton’s PEAR lab show that the mind can impact reality, albeit in what most people would feel is a relatively minor fashion. If Wolf is correct, the mind does this through converting possibility waves to probability curves by squaring, thus producing probabilistic effects in the real world.
Physicist John G. Cramer has stated that possibility waves travel through space and time in both directions: from the present to the future, and from the future back to the present.
To generate a usable, real-world result of this bi-directional travel, the original possibility wave must be squared by multiplying it by its complex conjugate wave. The complex conjugate wave is a solution to the same equations solved by the original possibility wave, provided that time runs backwards in the solution instead of forwards.
Cramer calls the original wave an offer wave, and the conjugate wave an echo wave. These waves cycle back and forth until they satisfy a variety of reality requirements and boundary conditions. Then the bi-directional transaction is complete, and that changes the possibility waves into probability curves.
One of the interesting points is that if both possibility wave and complex conjugate wave are real, then time must not be one-way only.
Events of the past must still be around. Events that are to happen must already exist. When our brains remember past events they may not be digging through our memories, instead they may be constructing the past based on multiplying the forward and backward moving possibility waves.
This implies that the future also exists. If so, you are sending possibility waves in that direction, and someone also called “you” in the future is sending complex conjugate possibility waves back through time to be received by the present you.
If the modulated waves reach some resonance or strength level, then a real future or a real past may be created.
The rule seems to be: the greater the probability, the more meaningful the transaction and the greater the chance of it occurring. Past and future are simply reference points based on our sense of “now”. “Now” is defined as the most meaningful sequence with the strongest waves.
Everything we do involves a probability curve as we learn to do it. We get better and better with practice and achieving our desired result becomes more and more probable. Think of a basketball player learning to shoot free-throws. The more he practices, the more likely he becomes to make the shot.
Every skill implies a probability curve in our consciousness and its effect is expressed through time. When we no longer have to pay attention to the probability curve in any skill, we label the skill a habit.
Possibility waves are not available to us in space-time. Probability waves are. Possibility waves seem to reside in sub-space time. So, how do we access sub-space time?
Western culture believes that all human experiences are rooted in the physical world. That is normally an unspoken assumption that underlies everything we do. However, there is no proof to back up this conclusion.
Your awareness of being in your body at this precise moment implies that there is more to you than just your body. Quantum physics tells us repeatedly that the basis of the idea of a real physical world is flawed; that there is something prior to space, time, and matter.
This something is an infinitely dimensional sub-space time. Quantum processes are vital here, and somehow, consciousness appears to play a fundamental role at the level of even the most primary matter. Even at the level of atoms and subatomic particles.
Possibility waves appear to exist purely within sub-space time, while probability curves mark time and link the person and the mind. Possibility waves form what may be viewed as interior consciousness and there, in the interior, the mind can be free from the present time.
With discipline, the mind seems to be able to draw meaning from sub-space-time. In the process of dealing with probability curves, the mind moves from the purely imaginal realm into the physical realm. There are two processes involved in the squaring operation: a mathematical squaring operation that focuses the mind and a second squaring that allows the mind to let go or unfocus. That happens in this way:
When we direct our attention to something, it is at first a large blur, then a sharp focal point, and then a smaller blur. This is the rule in normal time order that we are accustomed to. When a sequence of such triplets reaches the point that the first blur and the second blur are the same size, we are then able to predict the sequence in the future.
Consciousness acts in the universe similar to adding energy to a refrigerator, reversing the law of entropy. The act of focusing and focusing creates our sense of time. Thus, a form of time-travel is a necessary part of the way the mind functions and the way time works. We can individually move forward and backward through time either faster or slower than the rate at which objective time moves. The old saying that, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” thus becomes literally true.
Our egos seem to tie us to this time stream in our effort to survive in a hostile world. Freeing ourselves from our ego may then release us from the time stream.
What we think we are, and what we truly are, are not identical. The ego is a boundary separating the outside world from our internal existence. It does so as an evolutionary attempt to enhance survival.
Time thus seems to be a projection of mind. It is as real as thought. If we can defeat our ego, Wolf thinks we can become aware of our ability to time travel.
Since physics shows (surprisingly) that time travel is a necessary part of physics’ structure, then it is a necessary part of the universe. Wolf thinks that far-reaching time travel paradoxes can be avoided as long as there is only one person involved. For big changes to be made in the past involving parallel universes, many people would be needed. The past may not be fixed, but instead may be subject to the uncertainty principle.
The common human desire for spiritual change may be a sign of our waking from our belief in linear time. When we realize we aren’t limited by space and time, but are continuous and eternal, we can return to the timeless realm.
The most likely mode for this transition would be through a lucid dream or out-of-body experience. Dr. Wolf has stated that if time-travel were to happen in this way, one would simply awaken from a conscious (lucid) dream in another time.
In my opinion, we are an energy waveform at our most basic expression of existence in this universe. As the material manifestation of a complex energy structure, I think we could transition to other times, provided that our spiritual development permitted it. We would have to be in an altered-state to make this translation. Such a state could most likely be induced through drugs or strong emotions.
Stripped of all of the physics explanation, this is the basic mechanism that I used in the story: Kathleen is an accomplished out-of-body practitioner who is placed in an untenable situation. To avoid this situation, she slips into an altered-state. While in that state, she squares the possibility wave functions, creating a probability of +1 that her energy wave is else-when. When she awakens from this state, she finds she has transitioned to another time.
If you’re interested, I hope you decide to read the story. It’s usually placed in the top 5% of its category on Amazon.
Note: Probabilities statistically have a range of 0 to 1. They may not be negative numbers, and they do not exceed 1. To exceed either of these limits makes no physical sense. The number 1 represents something that has actually happened. The number 0 represents something that has absolutely no chance of occurring.
This story is the sequel to Heart of Fire Time of Ice, which introduces Kathleen and Cadeyrin. I’ve finished the first draft and am now working at editing. Here’s an action scene from one of the early chapters:
A sense of presence warned her. Kathleen turned slowly to see a large, ugly creature rising up from where it had been resting in some thick bushes. It was covered with fine yellow down-like feathers and looked like some gargantuan baby duck, except its huge mouth was full of awful teeth. It opened its mouth, showing teeth that she instantly equated with those of a T-Rex. An incongruous cheeping sound came out as it stepped one large step forward, its leg pushing through the bushes as if they weren’t there.
The thing was too large for the nine millimeter to make much of an impact, but perhaps the sound would discourage it. It had turned its head to look at her better from one side, reminding her of a chicken eyeing a bug that it was about to peck. She aimed carefully and shot at the large eye. The yellow dinosaur recoiled and made a nasty hissing scream, raising one of its arms and raking it against the damaged optic.
This was no T-Rex. Its arms were longer and more capable. She backed up while it was distracted, then turned and dashed up the ridge towards the rocks. The creature made another hissing scream and began to follow, its legs moving deceptively slowly. Its stride was so long that it quickly began to catch up to her. She dodged through a thick stand of trees, hoping that would slow it down. It followed her directly through the trees, simply pushing its way through the trunks, and leaving two of them leaning sharply.
She continued up the slope. The rocks might be some shelter. They were piled high and her pursuer didn’t look particularly agile. Perhaps it couldn’t climb very well. She was panting as she reached the first of the stones. The yellow thing screamed again from close behind. She whirled and fired five shots into its opened mouth. That slowed it down. It stopped and raked at its face. Blood was coming from the back of its throat and running between its teeth. The yellow feathers on its breast were rapidly becoming crimson stained. At least the bullets had some effect, even though they would never be adequate to stop it permanently.
She used the brief respite to work her way up a crevice in the rocks, then quickly climbed beyond the creature’s reach. She was safe, unless it could climb. Panting, she paused to regain her breath. As she rested, a thought struck her. She’d panicked like an idiot. It could never reach her as long as she saw it coming. She could simply duck through time. If she moved an hour or even a few minutes, the creature couldn’t possibly catch her, unless it was extremely luck and happened to be in location when she re-appeared. She was glad that Cadeyrin wasn’t there to see how poorly she’d reacted, but perhaps he would have been alarmed also. He wasn’t any more used to dinosaurs, even feathered ones, than she was. His experience was in hunting the mega-fauna of their adopted home period.
The creature had recovered and was scrabbling ineffectually at the crevice that she’d climbed. It was still interested in her, turning its head to the side to stare balefully up at her perch with its undamaged eye. She didn’t want to harm it irrevocably, but it seemed intent on hanging around until she came down.
The next time it turned its head to look up at her, she fired a round into its eye. The 110 grain bullet hit with a splat and the yellow creature squawked, then began to blunder around. Her shots had either blinded it completely or damaged its vision enough to make it difficult to see. It crashed into some rocks, then knocked a small tree over.
She stood, determined to escape while it was distracted. Below the yellow creature moved into an open area. There was a flash of brightly colored feathers and a much smaller bipedal dinosaur leaped up and clung to the yellow one’s ribs. The smaller one made a convulsive movement with its feet, cutting large channels with its talons. Blood spurted and ran in rivulets down the yellow dinosaur’s side. Big Yellow hissed again and spun ineffectually. The brilliantly colored one dropped off and dodged making a quick flash of green, blue, and red feathered motion.
Kathleen noticed that there was a second feathered creature watching the battle from a vantage point on a low rock. She hadn’t seen it arrive. The two small dinosaurs reminded her of colorful birds of prey. Their eyes had the same distant, uncompromising gaze as that of an eagle.
This second one was a little larger than the first. She judged that this one probably massed about as much as she did. It swayed back and forth, gauging the distance. When Big Yellow came close, it leaped, timing its jump to land along the big one’s spine. It climbed quickly upward, digging in both fore claws and the huge hind talons as it climbed. The big one screamed again as the smaller creature reached its neck. It tried to claw the rider off, but the smaller dinosaur was too quick to be caught by the big one’s blunt claws.
The first two colorful dinosaurs were suddenly joined by a third, slightly smaller one. This one appeared out of some low bushes at the side of the clearing. Kathleen was fascinated, despite the danger.
The small ones looked like some maniac’s version of a roadrunner combined with a threshing machine. They were covered in bright, almost iridescent red, blue, and green feathers. Their pretty aspect was marred by the presence of seriously deadly-looking claws on their arms and their feet were armed with a large claw that they kept raised until they flexed their toes to use it. She could see the results of their kicks with that claw. There were rib bones showing through the gaps in the big yellow creature’s side. The claw must be as sharp as a ceramic knife.
The smaller creatures also had teeth, but didn’t use them in their attack. Instead they waited for openings, their brightly feathered bodies blending surprisingly well into the undergrowth. When the big creature turned, the two that remained on the ground would leap in, grab with their fore legs and kick hard with their hind claws. The large creature’s downy yellow coat was streaked with bright red blood. The damage was having a definite effect. Kathleen was impressed at how deadly this type of attack could be.
The smaller dinosaurs were about her size, seemingly too small to attack such a giant, but they were systematically cutting the huge one apart. The battle would have been more equal if the large one could see, but her shots had greatly increased its vulnerability. Big Yellow must have out weighed them by thousands of pounds. She guessed it was nearly thirty feet in length.
The action was amazing. She had a momentary thought that a modern paleontologist would pay any amount to be able to see such an attack. Kathleen’s thought brought her back to her own position and she moved slightly. She’d been so impressed by the smaller animals that she’d neglected to think about how they might view her. She’d be far easier to kill than the big one. Of course she could move in time, but these three seemed very clever. They were coordinating their attack in a way that made them seem almost human.
She drew up her feet and prepared to slip down the other side of the rocks. She’d better use the moment to escape. As careful as her movement was, the smallest of the colorful creatures saw it. It turned and looked directly at her. Its mouth opened and to Kathleen’s utter astonishment, it said, “Stop,” in a tone that left no doubt that it meant what it said.
Paralyzed, she sat there wondering just what had happened. She must have been mistaken. Dinosaurs didn’t talk, even if they looked like colorful birds. They most definitely didn’t speak English and use the words in a meaningful manner. What was this creature?
The battle below had paused for a moment. Big Yellow was breathing heavily and weaving unsteadily, suffering from blood loss. The small ones were now back in the trees watching it expectantly, waiting for it to collapse. During the quiet, she heard a slight rustle as something pulled itself over a boulder. She spun, aiming the pistol at a man who was working his way up the boulders behind her.
He grinned and held up his free hand in a surrender motion. “You’re safe, Miss. I was just coming up to help you get down,” he said.
Kathleen took a deep breath, then said with a degree of satisfaction, “Jason Gridley, I presume?”
I wanted to make my story (
