Time's Twisted Arrow Advances to ABNA Semifinals!

One of these books will move on to the Finals, and will then compete with four other genre-winners for the ABNA Grand Prize in late May.  That stage of the contest will be determined by votes for the excerpts posted at Amazon.  Stay tuned for details!

Time Travel 101: Writing with Primary Sources

We Are All Starving Together

November 3, 1907

S. Wrenn

Interview with Harriet Scott Palmer

Lake Grove, Oswego, Oregon

Harriet Scott Palmer is more than seventy years old, but her voice is clear and unwavering.  This is the fourth of seven trips I'm scheduled to make this month to Oregon, where the women's suffrage movement is poised for a long-sought victory later this year.  Harriet's older sister, Abigail Scott Duniway, is at the forefront of that campaign, but Harriet tends to stay out of the limelight, possibly because of a rumored divorce in her past.  The historical records are unclear on exactly when this divorce occurred.  At some point between 1880 she ceased to be Mrs. William McCord and became Mrs. Isaac Palmer. But I don't ask--this is an era where the stigma of divorce is still strong, even in western states like Oregon where the social mores aren't quite as rigid as they are on the East Coast.

Harriet takes a sip from her cup of tea and then begins to tell me about her trip along the Oregon Trail. "Altho I was but a girl of 11 years I distinctly remember many things connected with that far-off time when all of our western country was a wilderness... We were six months in crossing the plains in ox-wagons.

"In our home, in Illinois, in the early fifties, there was much talk and excitement over the news of the great gold discoveries in California -- and equally there was much talk concerning the wonderful fertile valleys of Oregon Territory -- an act of Congress giving to actual settlers 640 acres of land.

"My father, John Tucker Scott, with much of the pioneer spirit in his blood, became so interested that he decided to "Go West"....The spring of 1852 ushered in so many preparations, great work of all kinds. I remember relations coming to help sew, of tearful partings, little gifts of remembrances exchanged, the sale of the farm, the buying and breaking in of unruly oxen, the loud voices of the men, and the general confusion.

You Have to Figure Every Penny

First in a series of three installments. CHRONOS student historians interview Connecticut residents during the Great Depression. Interested in submitting your own student post?  See the information for students in the menu on the right. 

November 3, 1938

G. Morrell

Interview with Elizabeth Newsome

Thomaston, Connecticut

Like most rural areas, the city of Thomaston was hit hard by the Great Depression.  This small Connecticut town was once booming, but now it has widespread unemployment and industrial decline. One of the biggest employers, the Thomaston Knife Company, burned down and the city’s main industry, clock making was declining at the same time.  Many people lost their jobs.  The goal on this trip is to dig a bit deeper and see what impact this had on the lives of people living in Thomaston -- not just the factory employees, most of whom were male, but also the women in the town.  

You can see the old factory from where Mrs. Elizabeth Newsome lives. Her "double" house is on a hill just above the Waterbury highway.  She’s about 75 now, but she worked for many years at the factory.  She seems a little suspicious of me at first, but when I explain that I’m interviewing people to learn about the knife making industry, she welcomes me..  

“Why, I'll be glad to 'elp you if I can. Lord, I 'aven't thought much about the knife business lately. Seems as if it's died out completely the last few years. And look what it's done to this 'ere village. Half the people are gettin' 'elp from the town, if they ain't on the WPA. This chap next door, 'e ain't workin'.

No More Whippins

This submission is one in a series of "undercover" assignments by CHRONOS historians posing as interviewers for the Federal Writer's Project during the Great Depression. 


May 8, 1937
A. Wainwright
Interview with Aunt Sally Graves
Skidmore, Missouri


I made a visit to Skidmore, Missouri to interview Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, who spent her childhood and adolescence as a slave. Now 87, Sarah lives in a comfortable, well-kept house with her grown son, Arza. Her house is well-furnished, including a radio and a stack of daily newspapers in the corner.

As I came into the living room, I could see that her immaculately washed, stiffly starched print dress and apron were unwrinkled, as though she had been standing since putting them on. In spite of her years, most of which were spent in grueling labor, she is rugged and healthy and meets the world with a smile and ready sympathetic laughter.

 She began. “My name is Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, but ever'one calls me Aunt Sally. Yes’m that’s a lot of name an’ I come by it like this. My husband was owned by a man named Graves, and I was owned by a man named Shaw, so when we was freed we took the surnames of both masters."

New Trailer for Time's Twisted Arrow: Book One of the CHRONOS Files

A Brief History of CHRONOS

The scientific principles of time-travel were discovered in the mid-22nd century by a small team of researchers, headed by Ian Alexander, Ryan Jefferson and Madison Grace.  Funded primarily by the U.S. government, the activities of these researchers have never been fully revealed to the public, although a flurry of exposes published in 2161 claimed that government operatives were manipulating the timeline to benefit U.S. and European interests.

The most prominent of those media outlets, The Hourly Intrepid,  mysteriously disappeared from the historical record. The masthead suggests that the journal was in circulation for more than sixty years, but the only record that we have of their investigation, or of their very existence, is contained in a small file of government records that were protected from chronological tampering and released to the public over a century later.