The More Things Change...

First some exciting news! I submitted Screwing Up Time to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. And I found out that my novel made it to the second round!! I’m very excited. (The winners of the next round will be announced March 20.)

More good news. I’m over 75% done with the second big edit of the sequel to Screwing Up Time. I’d love to have it done by the end of next week, but I’m also having some editing burnout. And even chocolate isn’t soothing it.

Besides fixing plot holes and tightening up the words themselves, I also use the second edit to verify facts. I like to have two sources for each fact. So I’m reading sources that I didn’t read the first time. And I’m always amazed that sometimes ancient texts could have just as easily been written by my next-door neighbor.

The SUT sequel is set in an ancient, but fairly literate, society. Which means that there are a fair amount of primary sources. Though this doesn’t mean that they all have tremendous historical value, they do teach us a lot about people. For example, I was reading the translation of a particular tablet—a loose, condensed translation is “Several years ago we loaned you a certain amount of money for your travels. We have yet to see one coin of repayment.” The translator of this tablet and many others went on to say that he’s translated many tablets where parents complain about their children, businesses try to collect on loans and purchases of goods, etc. The translator comments that while times change, people stay the same.

I think that’s the reason that historical fiction, time travel fiction, science fiction, and even fiction in general is so popular. We see someone in very different circumstances—a king, a concubine, and a soldier who may live under the rule of Amenhotep, Alexander the Great, Henry V, or Genghis Khan—but their concerns are still the same. They want to take care of the people they love. They may be heroes, and sometimes even villains, but they have the same motives and desires that we do. Perhaps that’s why when we read, we can become them for a little while. After all, we’re really not that different. They may eat goat, drink date wine, and wear tunics, but they still want to get the girl and live happily ever after.