The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Key to Happiness” © by Gwyn Cready. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“MacDuff’s Secret” © by Sandy Blair. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Lost and Found” © by Maureen McGowan. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Stepping Back” © by Sara Mackenzie. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Sexual Healing” © by Margo Maguire. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Wild Card” © by Sandra Patrick. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Eleventh Hour” © by Michelle Rouillard. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Pilot’s Forge” © by Patrice Sarath. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Saint James’ Way” © by Jean Johnson. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Troll Bridge” © by Patti O’Shea. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Iron and Hemlock” © by Autumn Dawn. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Last Thorsday Night” © by Holly Lisle. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Gloaming Hour” © by Cindy Miles. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Wish to Build a Dream On” © by Michelle Willingham. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Time Trails” © by Cindy Holby. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Walled Garden” © by Michele Lang. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Catch the Lightning” © by Madeline Baker. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Steam” © by Jean Johnson. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Falling in Time” © by Allie Mackay. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Future Date” © by A. J. Menden. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
INTRODUCTION
Love takes its own sweet time … (sigh)
Have you missed your romantic destiny? Were you fated for a lover who lived 800 years before you were born? Or maybe you were meant for a mate who won’t be born until 3,000 years after you’re gone? Ever wondered what it would have been like to pay a visit to the Wild West and meet your perfect cowboy? Spend some quality time with a sexy Highlander? Or be romanced by a technologically enhanced lover from the far, far future? Do you ever feel like a piece of you is missing and no matter how hard you try, no matter how many frogs you kiss, you are never going to stumble upon your true love? How can you possibly meet the man of your dreams when he is living in eighteenth-century Scotland and you are stuck firmly within the confines of Earth circa 2009! It might all seem unrelentingly bleak at times, but don’t despair — the heartbreakingly tragic barrier of time is no barrier at all when true love is at stake — if you read the right books, that is.
Time-travel romance has had a colourful history. But after a torrid heyday in the 1990s and early 2000s, full of Highlanders, pirates, Regency viscounts, and interplanetary hunks, it subsided into the background as edgier, fantasy-based, modern subgenres like paranormal romance and urban fantasy pushed to the fore to blossom into overnight sensations.[1] Suddenly there wasn’t much room left for time travel. It occasionally saw fantastic flights of imagination from individual writers, but more often than not stayed on the sidelines, something of a wallflower, the plain, shy girl at the dance. But while paranormal romance swept the nation, time travel bided its time. And through the looking glass of the paranormal phenomenon, time travel began to develop some (more) paranormal elements of its own.
The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance is just one of many fresh, modern reassessments of time travel romance (think of the current much-hyped release of the film The Time Traveler’s Wife, in cinemas across the stratosphere!). It’s a brand-new beast, this time travel collection, yet with many, many nods to time travels origins. A massively eclectic collection of timeless romances from a diverse range of writers, some old, some new, but all playing with the conventions of genre, and with a paranormal glint in their eye. And while you’ll still find an array of traditional time travel romances here — contemporary women whisked back to earlier historical periods and flung headlong into the waiting embrace of warriors, lords and lairds — this collection brings the time travel romance genre into the twenty-first century (forget simply travelling back in time, the future holds lots of surprises, too!).
From the ubiquitous Scottish glens and Victorian parlours, we incorporate a bit of the manga-influenced futuristic time travel of the fantastic, but sadly defunct, Shomi collection from Dorchester Publishing, and give a friendly nod to the new Time Raiders series from Silhouette Nocturne (created by the fabulous Merline Lovelace and Lindsay McKenna). Using a little (really little) bit of science, and a whole heck of a lot of fantasy, you’ll not only find fish-out-of-water stories here, but everything in between!
The impossibility of getting a double half-caf venti low-fat mochaccino (or a decent sleep on a proper mattress, if you’ve been flung back into the Dark Ages) pales in comparison to the warmth of your true love’s arms (believe me). New, revamped, reinvented, and reinvigorated, time travel is due its renaissance.
Isn’t it about time?
Gwyn Cready
The Key to Happiness
The man was nondescript, Kate thought. Pleasant but entirely nondescript. Grey hair, grey eyes, medium height and as old as her parents, if not older. A face in the crowd, if this were a movie. In fact it dawned on Kate, as he leaned in to speak, that he’d probably been seated next to her for most of Van Morrison’s “Moondance”, though she hadn’t noticed exactly when he’d slipped into the chair next to her.
“I imagine you enjoyed the cake.” He spoke a little louder than necessary, to be heard over the wedding band. He re-angled his seat a degree and smiled.
The statement was unusual. Not quite a come-on — well, certainly not a come-on, not from someone old enough to have danced to “Moondance” on vinyl — but not your usual conversation starter.
“I did, yes.” She took a quick glance at her plate. She’d eaten two-thirds of the slice — half the cake part and all the strawberries between the layers, but almost none of the frosting — not enough to be called out for overindulgence. She struggled with emotional overeating and had an immediate visceral reaction to any reference to her appetite.
But the man’s eyes held no irony or judgment. The tweedy flecks of blue and green in the hazy irises showed only polite curiosity.
“Strawberries are my favourite,” she said. “In fact, that’s how Carly — the bride — and I met.”
“Really?”
“We were in seventh grade, working the annual strawberry-sale fundraiser for our softball team. We ate more than we sold, I think. God, I was so sick. I threw up for three days.”
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But what is time travel if not paranormal? Hurtling through space and time at the speed of light to land in a world, in a time, not your own seems pretty paranormal to me …