The Trouble with Time Travel

The Trouble with Time Travel

Edited by Catherine Valenti & Laurie Gienapp

Cover design by Elle J. Rossi

Published by Smoking Pen Press, LLC

Available in various ebook formats, and in paperback from Amazon.co.uk & Amazon.com.

Twenty stories in which time travel doesn’t go exactly to plan. Sometimes the error is comic, sometimes disastrous, but it always leads to complications.

In my story, Chronead, Alex is seduced by a chronead (a nymph of time) into taking a trip to see his idol, Cleopatra. But nymphs never do favours without a trick up their sleeves, as Alex learns to his cost.

Excerpt from Chronead:

“I’m a nymph,” she commented out of the blue.

Alex twisted as far as possible with her wrapped around him, hearing the mattress creak. His head was buzzing pleasantly from the past couple of hours.

“Well, I suppose so. You’re certainly insatiable.”

Corinna gave his shoulder a slap that was mostly in fun. “I said a nymph. You know, a minor goddess.”

“Huh?” Alex stared, trying to work out whether she was kidding him, or whether he had a loony on his hands. Then again, if all loonies were like her, he might just think about signing into the nearest nut-house.

“Not that there’s much difference,” Corinna added, with a throaty giggle that made him want to forget about talking.

Still, he wanted to know if she was serious or not. “I thought nymphs hung around pools in the forest, not in crappy pubs.”

She sighed, but the sigh sounded good humoured. “There are different kinds of nymph: dryads of the forest, naiads of the springs, oreads of the mountains, nereids of the sea. I’m a chronead.”

“A nymph of the pub?”

“A nymph of time,” she told him. “I can go everywhere and everywhen, but my home is inside time.”