The Write Way Café welcomes Elizabeth Crowens to tell us more about her Time Traveler Professor series.Tell us a little about your Time Traveler Professor series.
The first book, Silent Meridian, is like a 19th century X Files meets Doctor Who featuring Arthur Conan Doyle and his paranormal enthusiast partner. Its sequel, A Pocketful of Lodestones, can be described as Slaughterhouse Five meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on the Western Front. If you know anything about Arthur Conan Doyle’s background, he was essentially a Victorian ghostbuster. He wanted to kill off Sherlock Holmes and concentrate on paranormal studies and writing. Historically, he befriended Houdini and eventually fell out of favor with him over these issues.
If The Time Traveler Professor series was made into a movie, who would play your main characters, and why?
I used to be a professional photographer, and for most of that time I specialized in doing stills for motion pictures and television. Therefore, I have a good eye at spotting actors and how they can be transformed with hair and makeup effects. For Conan Doyle—Hugh Jackman. He’s got the height and build and easily transformable facial features. For John Patrick Scott, Robert Sheehan, an Irish actor who was recently in The Umbrella Academy. For H.G. Wells, Edward Norton. For Francois Poincaré, Sasha Baron Cohen. Other roles would be up for grabs.
What was your path to getting these books written and published? What type of research did you do?
The path was long and circuitous. The first draft of book one, Silent Meridian, was completed in 1983. It was resurrected in 2010 and finally published by MX Publishing (London) in 2016. Its second edition was published by Atomic Alchemist Productions in 2019 along with the first edition its sequel, A Pocketful of Lodestones. Research? At least five trips overseas to countries including England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany, Belgium and Russia and purchasing many antiquarian books.
Where did the idea for your series come from?
Coming across some bizarre antiquarian books and a series of strange incidents that happened afterward.
What have been surprises you've encountered while writing the books and after?
Having the right book or piece of information I needed pop up out of the clear blue. However, I’m still seeking material on WWI espionage from the German point of view—written in English. That’s been a challenge.
Tell us about your writing space and how or why it works for you.
I wouldn’t exactly say my space is working, because I live in a space that should only be my office. I’ve pretty much outgrown my tiny Manhattan apartment but can’t afford anything larger at the moment.
What or who has been instrumental in or to your writing journey?
Steven James. I took a writers intensive workshop with him and Robert Dugoni, but Steven’s book, Story Trumps Structure, is one of the best I’ve read on the craft of writing. Paula Munier’s books are good, too.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve been given? What’s your best writing advice for others?
A quote from Galaxy Quest, “Never give up! Never surrender!”
What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What has been the best compliment?
Some of the toughest criticism was on Silent Meridian. I had a lot of ideas, but I had never written a novel before. I hired three freelance editors before submitting it to publication. Definitely a learning experience and a good chunk out of my wallet.
One of the best compliments I received was in my blurb from Jim Freund who is the host of the long-running SF/F radio show Hour of the Wolf. He compared my style of writing in Silent Meridian to Tim Powers (The Annubis Gates) and Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time and The Seven Per-Cent Solution).
What are you working on now?
Trying to decide where to go next, because I have three works-in-progress at the moment. I had to fire a bad literary agent and am looking for a new one to send out two, completed novels in a Hollywood mystery series I’m writing. So, I wonder whether I should complete book three of that unsold series, book three of the Time Traveler Professor series, A War in Too Many Worlds, or another project I’m working on which is a chick-lit mystery.
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The Time Traveler Professor, Book Two: A POCKETFUL OF LODESTONES, sequel to SILENT MERIDIAN, combines the surrealism of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five with the supernatural allure of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell set during WWI on the Western Front.
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Elizabeth Crowens writes in both the Hollywood suspense and speculative fiction genres. Her first novel, Silent Meridian, an alternate history novel was published by MX Publishing in London. As of September 2018 it is out of print and will be re-issued along with its award-winning sequel, A Pocketful of Lodestones, in the summer of 2019. Silent Meridian won First Prize in Chanticleer Review’s Goethe Award for Turn-of-the-Century Historical Fiction and First Prize in the 2017 Independent Book Awards for Steampunk. It was a finalist in the 2017 Eric Hoffer Book Awards and on the short list of finalists for four other competitions.
Crowens has two suspense novels completed in the Alice’s Adventures in Hollywoodland series and is currently seeking new literary representation. She received First Prize in Chanticleer Review’s 2017 Chatelaine Awards for Domestic Suspense and an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s fiction short story contest for Emerging Writers for an excerpt from Dear Mr. Hitchcock, the first book in that series.
She has also published a variety of non-fiction articles and is currently writing a column called The Poison Apple in the World Fantasy and Alfie Award-winning publication, BlackGate.com.
