Not Your Sister's Unicorn

When I first started writing Screwing Up Time, I spend a lot of time planning and thinking about the time travel elixir. I wanted it to be a very natural, plausible, even scientific recipe. But, it needed a special ingredient. Something rare, something that bordered on fantastic, but not quite impossible.

Unicorn horn seemed like the perfect ingredient. Except, at the back of my mind, I saw all the silly unicorns—the stuffed animals with rainbow hued spirals, a kind of My Little Pony of the mythic world. And that gave me pause.

Historically, unicorns were powerful wild animals. Everyone from the ancients Greeks to Marco Polo spoke about them with respect. And ancient alchemists believed their horns (made up of alicorn) could be used to cure poisoned water and heal the sick.

Since Screwing Up Time was set in the Middle Ages, it only made sense that alchemists (and other ancient peoples) would use unicorn horn as an ingredient in a time travel elixir. And so, I decided to ignore the rainbow stuffed animals, trusting that my readers knew that unicorns were dangerous, unpredictable animals. Just check out the image below—it’s picture of a tapestry from the Cloisters museum in NYC. (I actually got to see the unicorn tapestries up close during a visit to the museum.) This ferocious beast is not your sister’s unicorn.



When I visit Paris later this spring, I plan to visit the Musee de Cluny where they have more unicorn tapestries. If they let me take photos, I'll be sure to post them here.

One more bit of excitement. This week, Smashwords is celebrating "Read An E-book Week," and Screwing Up Time is FREE when you use the coupon code, RW100, at the checkout. Enjoy!

The Unicorn Tapestry

The first draft of my short story is going very well. For more on the why of doing a short story between two novels, check this blog post on my “other” blog.

Besides the characters, the short story and Screwing Up Time share a plot feature, the tapestry that hangs in Miranda’s chamber. While Miranda’s tapestry exists only in my imagination, it was influenced by real tapestries that I saw at The Cloisters, which is a museum in Northern Manhattan dedicated to the art and architecture of Medieval Europe.  And it’s actually built like a medieval cloister. (If you’re ever in NYC, visit! It’s amazing to find a place of quiet and serenity deep in Manhattan.)

Of the three thousand pieces of artwork, some of the most prized exhibits are the Unicorn Tapestries. Click the link here to see the six tapestries. They might even be familiar to you—the tapestries are so popular that they show up on notecards, etc. These tapestries inspired the tapestry on the wall of Miranda’s bedroom, which hid something of great significance to the novel. And the tapestry will play a small role in the short story. Though not because of what tapestry hides, but because of the story it tells.

If you’re not familiar with tapestries, they’re usually more that just pretty weavings. For example, the Bayeaux Tapestry (which is more of an embroidery than a weaving) tells the story of the Norman conquest of England. The Unicorn tapestries tell the story of the hunt of a unicorn. As for Miranda’s tapestry and the story it tells, you’ll have to wait. But I’m working hard, and I’ll keep you updated. 


Click here to read a new review of Screwing Up Time.


You might also like this post, Book Marketing Tribulations, on my other blog.