Time Travel Triggers: What Sends Love Through Time?

 

Every time travel romance needs a catalyst:
a magical, mystical, or completely unexplained force that rips the characters out of their timeline and drops them into another.

Why did I decide to write time travel?

Because Time for Love by Constance O’Day Flannery kept me up all night reading. A woman gets dental work done inside what used to be a train depot. A mysterious force ignites, and suddenly she’s in 1876 and mistaken for a mail-order bride.

I was hooked.

Years later, after plenty of research, I wrote Time to Save a Cowboy. My heroine travels back to 1890, triggered by two things: an antique garnet ring and an old locomotive.

Time Travel Catalysts in Romance

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
While wearing an antique jeweled watch, the humming stones of a Scotland ruins pull Claire back to 1743.

A Highlander for Hannah by Mary Warren
A love spell meant to find “the one” accidentally summons an 18th-century Scottish Highlander.

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
A hidden compartment in inherited furniture transports the heroine to seven years in the past.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
A magical Harlem garden and a haunted piano bring a handsome Renaissance man across time.

Why I Love Writing Time Travel

My favorite part—the history.

For Time to Save a Cowboy, I chose 1890 Hesperia, California and went deep. I discovered that the hotel had running water, rare for the time, and learned about the Los Flores Ranch. I even visited the land while it was still a working ranch.

In the past few years, that property had been replaced with houses.

Time may move on … but in stories, love always finds a way back. 💕