Today we'd like to welcome JL Merrow to the site. She's been a great friend to
Lasha's Paranormal M/M Reviews, so we are really excited about her new book,
Trick of Time, an amazing time travel love story.
To celebrate her new release, she is offering up any book from her back list as a gift to one lucky winner! Please comment, ANSWER THE QUESTION BELOW and leave your name and email address to be entered.
***
Don’t Ever Change...
...time, that is.
Ever since authors first started writing about time travel,
people have been intrigued by the idea of possibly changing history—and with
it, our present. There are various theories of time, of course. I’ve always
been fond of Terry Pratchett’s Trousers
of Time idea, where a single change can send you scurrying off down a
different leg of history and into an alternate (and possibly sock-shaped)
universe.
This,
of course, is something best avoided by the average chrononaut, for obvious
reasons:
“The tiniest little actions can have
huge consequences. You might… tread on an ant now and it might entirely prevent
someone from being born in the future!”
“Really?” said Ridcully.
“Yes, sir!”
Ridcully brightened up. “That’s not a
bad wheeze. There’s one or two people history could do without. Any idea how we
can find the right ants?”
Extract from The
Last Continent
By Terry Pratchett
Which leads
to something of a problem for romance authors. Because to get your heroes from
different times to have their happy ever after, either our modern-day man has
to relocate to the past, or his old-fashioned lover boy must move to the
present. This can’t be done without consequences to the past, either way. It’s
not for nothing the Terminator was
sent back in time to wipe out John Connor’s mum-to-be. You might argue that a
gay man would be less likely to have descendants—but what if he was destined to
save a life?
And adding
a modern-day man to the historical mix could have just as serious consequences.
There would have to be a strong temptation to meddle—could you have stood by
and let Franz Ferdinand be assassinated, even though it would cause World War
One and untold death and misery, without at least trying to warn him? Even if
our man out of time was a model of restraint, his very presence would affect
things. Might he take the last seat on the bus, and prevent another man meeting
the woman he would have married, leading to children never having been born?
The possibilities are endless.
So how did
I solve the problem for Trick of Time?
Ah, well, you’ll have to read the book to find out! ;)
And when
you’ve done that, have a good long think about the nature of causality when
applied to time travel. Because it’s not quite as simple as it at first appears
to my narrator, Ted....
***
Giveaway question: If you could travel back in time,
when would you choose? And would you try and change history while you were
there? ;)
I’m offering a free ebook of
winner’s choice from my backlist to one lucky commenter on this post. The draw
will be open until noonish on Thursday 31st January (GMT).
***
A
lover from another time
When Ted Ennis steps out the doors of the
Criterion Theatre for a cigarette and finds himself in Victorian London, he begins
to doubt his sanity. At first he thinks it's all a film set, and is sure that
the strikingly handsome young man leaning against a lamppost must be the
leading man…
What starts as a sordid transaction with a
beautiful rent boy quickly turns into something much deeper, drawing him back
again and again as he gets to know Jem and craves meaningful encounters with
him.
But Ted doesn't understand the exact conditions
necessary for his trips through time—and for Jem, time may actually be running
out. Now Ted has one last shot to get back to Jem and save their relationship,
before it's too late…
Biography
JL Merrow is that
rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where
she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see
the inside of a lab ever again. Her one
regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst
holding a glass of champagne.
She writes across genres, with a
preference for contemporary gay romance and the paranormal, and is frequently
accused of humour. Her novella Muscling Through is a 2013 EPIC ebook
Award finalist.
Not to mention the many tropes that exist in paranormal books: alpha shifters, omegas, bonding, claiming, instant love, cursed vampires, mpreg, and knotting. (In fact when Googling knotting, I came up with this pic of Derek from Teen Wolf, one truly messed-up shifter...which led me to some Sterek knotting fanfiction...which led me to reading some Sterek mpreg.) The tropes are everywhere!
