When I was asked to write a time travel romance story for a Mammoth Books' collection, I knew two things. One, I wanted my heroine to travel to the future and my Jarved Nine world. And two, I didn't want to use the "magic necklace" method of time travel. Back when I read a lot of time travel romance, the heroine always traveled to the past via some object, hence the reference to the "magic necklace."
I'd done some research in the past into M Theory in physics and had picked up some really cool information and some of it came back to me. Particle accelerators theoretically can create small black holes and small wormholes, although these outcomes are unlikely, or if they do occur, not dangerous. At least according to what I read.
The idea of using real physics for the time travel element appealed to me. Maybe other writers have used wormholes--I don't read much time travel any longer--but I take great pride on using the particle accelerator and a real issue that physicists have discussed to get my heroine to another time and place. :-)
As I wrote The Troll Bridge, I realized I had a full-length book. I had to cut out all the other stuff that was going on to fit it to the short word count requirement and condense the h/h's relationship down to the bare essence. My writing buddies can tell you how many times I emailed them saying, "I wish I could write the whole book." In the version I wanted to write, there really are coalitions spies on J9. They learn Lia came from the past and want to use her in some plot (details are fuzzy now) and Troll has to protect her. There was so much cool stuff happening.
The story also unfolded over several weeks rather than a day or two, allowing time for the romance and the feelings to deepen enough for a complete happy ending rather than the optimistic ending I had to go with on the shorter length story. As much as I wanted to do a forever after wrap up, I didn't think it was believable that two people who'd spent one day together would commit heart and soul to each other.
Plus, Lia is cautious by nature, she's not going to fling herself into everything all at once. And Troll wouldn't have survived in the army if he was a leap without looking kind of guy. There was just no way they'd let me wrap up the ending in a neat bow even if I could have managed it.
Some day, in my spare time, I'd like to rewrite this story and lengthen it to the way I saw it originally. I'd like to add all the coalition stuff and the teammates with their wives. Of course, I'd like to write the other team members, too, whose stories come before Troll and Lia. I need a lot more spare time than I have.
