Word Hoarder Extraordinaire!

My name is Pippa Jay, and I am a hoarder, of both physical and digital things. My stories are no exception. I never throw anything away! I have files full of the early drafts of my first published novel - all the paper versions I wrote, and every version I sent out to agents as I sought the traditional path (I rewrote it every time I sent it out). I kept all the digital versions too, though the computer they were written on has long since gone to the great junkyard in the sky. I just can't bear to delete them.

But it's not all pointlessly taking up space. Some of the earlier works from my teenage years have been reworked into later pieces. Characters, names, planets, storylines - many have been recycled and found new life in another form or book. I even have a OneNote file called Bunny Plot Storage Facility where random names, words, one sentence ideas, pieces of technology or random scientific discoveries are hoarded for a time I might need them. Because while I might be a hoarder, I don't like anything to go to waste if I could find a use for it later on.

For example, the tyrant and her medic and race in Keir's Fall came from a very early Doctor Who short I wrote as a teen (what's now called fan fiction). My main character Quin came from one too. 

So when my editor says cut, nothing gets deleted. It just joins the other plot bunnies in storage to be resurrected in another time and place (sometimes quite literally). Why let a good word (or several) go to waste when some days finding any is like pulling teeth?! 

A #Romance Across Time #amwriting #timetravel #scifi

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories to engage your emotions. And my main romance series includes time travel. Why?

Rocking my Anakin cosplay on the Iron Throne!

Well. While I'm a huge Star Wars fan (and it's the universe I tend to focus on for my cosplay creations), I'm also a life long Whovian. My parents were fans. My earliest memory from Doctor Who is The Planet of the Spiders--the final adventure of Jon Pertwee, the Doctor's third incarnation, and the episode I can possibly pin my spider phobia on! His companion Sarah Jane Smith was my first heroine inspiration.

Me aged 18, with the then 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy

So perhaps it's not surprising that my debut novel and the main series it started are time travel romances/adventures. Even the book I refer to as my 'Star Wars' story--Gethyon, set about twenty years before my time travel series and sharing some of the same characters as well as the same universe--still has a time travel element to it. While not a romance, my hero accidently catapults himself twenty years back in time to meet a girl he falls for. He comes to learn and hate some of the restrictions this kind of travel carries while being thankful for it as well.

Gethyon

But in my main series I have to deal with how and why they time travel, the limits of their abilities, the benefits and consequences. For example, at one point my heroine has to face an ancient nemesis responsible for the death of her sisters, her home world, and even the powers she considers more of a curse than a blessing. But she can't kill her because it would directly impact the very existence of the hero and cause a paradox. She also can't leave the woman free to cause any further harm. What to do?

There are also things they can't go back and change. Their method of time travel involves a certain amount of focus on a place or person to work. So if someone dies, the knowledge of their death stops anyone from going back to any point in their life before their death and possibly preventing it - a psychological block rather than a physical or temporal one. There are also certain worlds that can only be accessed by special portals - gateways.

So it's a little more complicated than jumping in a TARDIS, though probably just as haphazard. The thing I love most about time travel romance is I can have my characters jump anywhere, any time, exploring alien worlds but also the ups and downs and complexities of time travel, and how even love can cross such barriers between those destined to be together.

Keir

Keir's Fall

Want to chat? Find me at my website or blog, but my favourite place to hang out and talk all things geek and scifi romance is as @pippajaygreen on Twitter.

A Quintology crossing Time and Space #timetravel #scifi #romance

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of Scifi and the supernatural. This month we're celebrating the first book in a series at Romancing the Genres. My first series book was also my debut novel, making it a first in more ways than one. When I wrote Keir originally, I had no plan in mind. Certainly no intention to write a series. All I had was an unfinished old short, a need to find myself, and a flood of words waiting to break free. By the time I'd finished the first draft of Keir some six weeks later after frenzied scribbling and a real epiphany, I realized I had two very separate stories. I split them and focussed on Keir. But once that was finished and I turned to the second story, I realized muse wasn't done. By the time I was ready to submit, I was querying Keir as book one of a five book series. Yes, five books. I knew roughly where I wanted the overall story to go although I didn't write book three until a year later. And while I call it the Redemption series, I also refer to it with a smile as a quintology. Why? Well, quintology means five. But it so happens my heroine is called Quin.

With book one re-released last year and book two just last month, I'm currently working on a side story due to release in May. The draft of book three is done but in serious need of an overhaul - I've learned so much in the almost four years I've been published. Books four and five are half done disaster zones, and another side story is knocking on the door. Rather like Douglas Adams whose Hitch-Hiker Guide books became a 'trilogy in five parts' the Redemption series is sprouting extras!

Will it end at five books? Well, the fifth has a very definite finale. The working title is Endings. But I can always do more side stories from the series, and I have plenty of other characters in the same universe shouting for their own adventures that I know I will never be done with it completely.

If you'd like to know more about the series, you can check out the books on my website, on both the Available Works and Coming Soon pages at http://pippajay.co.uk, or I always love to chat on Twitter as @pippajaygreen