Beginning Time

Title: Beginning Time
Buy the Book: Amazon
Release Date: March 8, 2014
Pages: 99
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 Synopsis

Beginning Time is the first of a linked urban fantasy series that explores the possibility of time travel and future events. Set in present day America, it follows the adventure of Fiona Jensen who, about to die in a trolley accident, manipulates time and dimensions to save herself. This discovery puts her into the path of two different groups of fellow time travelers, who were given devices and portals by unseen forces of unknown origin that allow them to travel through time. One wants to preserve time as it exists and one wants to change it. Fiona is the only known person with the power to do it without the use of technology.

One of the members of the group she first encounters, the Guardians, is a man that Fiona has seem up until now only in her dreams. She discovers that this man, Sonder, has also dreamed of her. In the events that follow they are pursued by the other group, the Liberators, the ones that want to change history, until they jump back to their home base. From there the Liberators and Guardians meet, and the Liberators try to take Fiona, so, on instinct, she jumps, taking Sonder with her.

After they land in a small 1970s town they grow closer and he tells her about The Event, an apocalypse that happens 200 years in her future and leaves Earth a barren wasteland. Little is known of this time, as neither of the group can jump to it or beyond it. She also learns of their legends about the Traveler, a person that can jump on their own. That person, she realizes, is her.

Praise

“This is a novel that really sucks you in and keeps you eagerly reading until the very end.”
–Amazon reviewer L. Clifford

Synopsis

There was a logical explanation. She was crazy. Or dreaming. Dreaming would explain it. Her dream man only appeared in dreams, so this was a dream. A messed up dream, with all the blood, but it made sense. Only in dreams did such weird juxtapositions of events happen. She’d had more than a few bizarre dreams in her life.

“I’m dreaming,” she said out loud, meeting the piercing brown of–Sonder?’s–eyes. “There’s no way the trolley and everything could be gone. And there’s no way time slowed down and stopped like that, so I’m dreaming. That’s all there is to it.” She shut her eyes, willing herself to wake up. This was like that stage of pre-sleep when you’re caught between wakefulness and dreaming, and you’re trying to get up but you can’t move. There was a silence so deep she had to peek from behind her closed lids to see if she had woken up in her bed. Please.

Unfortunately, no. The remaining people had all stopped working as well, and were watching the trio, their expressions uniformly grim.

Her semi-shut lids didn’t keep out the chuckle, if such a low, menacing sound could be called that.

“It would be better if it were a dream.”

Her eyes flew open at the undertone of anger in his words, and she noticed, irrelevantly, that the bright sun made the dark burgundy of their one-piece suits glow. If it were another, less solidly built group of people, the one-piece might make them look effeminate, or a throwback to bad 1960s science fiction shows. But, on this group, the suits looked right.

For the first time since the fog lifted, she realized that nobody was on the streets except them. It was rush hour and, despite the accident, there should have been cars and people everywhere. The trendy businesses on Washington Square would be opening, and employees should have been there getting the stores ready. The T should be running every five minutes, and the intersection of Beacon and Washington should have been choked with cars.

“A dream,” she muttered, but that hope was fading as the man she assumed to be Sonder continued to be real…and the pit of fear in her stomach grew bigger.

He shook his head.

“No dream. Cold hard reality. I’m Sonder, Miss…” The trailed off question demanded her name.

“Fiona.” She would have stuck out her hand, but the fierce look in his eyes stopped her. For the first time, she looked at the sandy-haired shorter man, who grinned a little, tilting his body back away from her.

Then she laughed, a sound almost as grim as his. “Reality? This is reality? A trolley jumps the tracks and nobody sees it until it’s way too late? Time slows down to a crawl? This reality didn’t look like anything I am familiar with. People and cars and blood should be everywhere, but there isn’t a trace? Strange people in Star Trek style stupid jumpsuits and me are the only ones on a busy rush hour street? I don’t know what kind of reality you live in, Sonder, but it’s way different than mine.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Yes, it is.”