1.  Where did the idea for Finding Time come from?  Have you always been interested in science fiction?
I was a kid watching TV when they were launching rockets for the Gemini and Apollo projects. That was so cool I started reading any book I could find that had a rocket on the cover. I devoured everything in the school and small-town libraries I had access to. It didn’t hurt that I was good at science and math.
I read Brenda Clough’s story /May Be Some Time/–that she expanded it into a novel here. (You should read it.) Her premise is that polar explorer Titus Oates of the doomed Scott Expedition to the South Pole is rescued by time travelers. He is brought to the near future and adventure ensues.
I loved her story so much that it captured my imagination when I latched onto a historical tidbit: The Nazis set up clandestine radio broadcasting stations in Greenland to spoof the radio navigation systems of aircraft being ferried across the Atlantic. This resulted in at least one lost squadron. I told her about this, but she didn’t want to write the story.
So I did. “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” turned out pretty good. I liked the time travelers, Sid & Nell–and how they bickered. This got me thinking about the knowledge lost when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed, so I wrote “Book of Life and Book of Glory. ” After that I was hooked. Anything I found in history that I wanted to rescue had me writing a Sid & Nell story. I loved creating the love-hate relationship between them. Continue reading →