Booking a Time Travel Vacation

I’m excited that author, Jennifer Jensen is taking you through the wormhole this week! So fun to find an author that loves time travel as much as I do, so here she is!!

Thanks so much for inviting me to guest post, Pauline, especially on a blog that celebrates time travel! So the question is, if I could travel through time and space, where/when would I go?

First, Madam Time Travel Agent, some requests: I’d like to go without being subject to disease, famine or political executions, or just being run down by a callous nobleman’s carriage! And I’d like to stipulate that anything I do would not mess with history, either creating parallel universes (Star Trek, anyone?) or ripping the world apart (Stephen King!). I’d like to just be there. So here’s what I’ve been thinking:

For general living: I’d like to experience everyday, middle-class life in some different eras. Perhaps first in Europe – can you send me where I can be a bustling housewife of a guild member, in maybe the 1700s? I could help with the business, keep my hearth and stoop swept clean, gossip with other women in the market, mend clothes by the fire at night. I wouldn’t want to be rich – leave the dangerous political maneuverings to others, please – just comfortable.
Book of Kells page, “Arrest of Christ:” Josh Hale via flikr
For childhood dreams: I want to travel on a wagon train headed for Oregon Country in the 1840s or 50s. Don’t send me First Class – no Donner Party Palace Wagon for me! But to cross the plains, gather buffalo chips to cook with; to arrive in the broad Willamette Valley and start farming its rich soil, building a community and a new life after leaving whatever I left back east – oh yes, that’s the adventure I’m after. I know it was hard work and sometimes dangerous, but this is what first captured me as a child and I’m still intrigued by it.
For beauty: Could you send me back to the 800s in Ireland, when monks spent years copying and illustrating the gorgeous illuminated manuscripts that wealthy men commissioned. Vibrant colors and gold leaf and imaginative decorations – what rich art they added to subsistence living! And while my surface impression is probably wrong, I like the peace I imagine when I think of raising sheep, daily prayers and careful calligraphy. Oh – and can you guarantee no Viking raids?
For a particular experience: Take me to Elizabethan England, late 1500s, please. I want to attend the Globe Theater with Shakespeare, maybe when Hamlet was first playing. His plays are so full of inventive language and wordplay (not to mention timeless themes) that I enjoy them both as a writer and an audience member. Besides, with the Renaissance in full flower, the art and costumes and scientific discoveries were incredible!
Pioneer women: Dave Emerson via Flickr, creative commons license
For world-changing events: I’m curious and I’d love to be part of an important part of history, but I’m a bit of a coward, too, so please don’t book me into a village that gets run over in war! With that said, could you arrange for me to witness the build-up to the American Revolution? I’d love to sit in while the Sons of Liberty were deciding just how much they’d put up with from the English government. I can imagine them weighing the safety of their families with the necessity of standing up for what was right, and I’d be proud to be part of that.

And as long as I’m in colonial America, I’d love to watching blacksmiths work at the anvil, or coopers build barrels, or glassblowers create delicate vessels. It was a slower time where everyday people worked hard just to put food in their mouths through the winter, but the focus and rhythm of those days is something our modern lifestyle has largely taken away. I suppose that’s why I chose not to set my book during the Revolution or the Civil War – I wanted to look at regular daily life, not extraordinary events.

So, Madame Time Travel Agent, let me know the costs for these possible trips so I can compare and make arrangements. I can’t wait!

A mysterious pottery shard . . .
A haunted cabin . . .
A shadowy stranger . . .
And no way home
Present Day: Jim has a talent for getting into trouble. Grounded from his model rockets, he goes exploring where he shouldn’t and gets zapped back in time. Can he find the way back home again or is he marooned in the past?
1838: Hannah’s life in her frontier village is filled with a little play and a lot of hard work. A seemingly harmless trick lures a strange, dazed boy from the old haunted cabin. Now Hannah must make a choice – and face the dangers.
Together, Jim and Hannah struggle to unmask a thief and solve a murder while they search for the key to unlock time. It will take courage and wits, plus the rocket motors in Jim’s pocket, just to stay alive.

About Jennifer:

Jennifer Jensen is an award-winning writer who wouldn’t be without her computer or smart phone, but still dreams of living in the olden days. Until someone invents a working time machine, she lives in Indiana and makes do with plenty of imagination, loads of books and as much Dr. Who as the BBC will produce.

She’s a longtime member of SCBWI and has received two Indiana Arts Commission grants for her fiction. Through the Shimmer of Time is her first novel. Connect with her at her blog, through Facebook or on Twitter (@jenjensen2).
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Thank you so much for a fun post! Will book my time travel with you any time. So, dear blog visitors, what’s your favorite time travel destination? Where do you want to go today? Or tomorrow? Comments are entered into my monthly drawing for an AnaBanana gift basket ($25 value). A winner will be announced the first blog post of the new month.