Making the past new again: time travel fun with C.M. Keller

Today special guest C.M. Keller is here to share insights into writing series and to tell us more about her latest release, Screwing up Alexandria. If you like learning about history, and also love an adventure story with a touch of humor and fantasy elements, you're sure to enjoy C.M. Keller's Screwing up Time series.

Could you tell us a little about Screwing up Alexandria?

Screwing Up Alexandria is the third book in the Screwing Up Time series. Here’s the blurb:

Time traveling has never brought Mark Montgomery anything but grief. And then, things get worse.
When Mark comes home from Babylon with a coded tablet, he never dreams someone would be willing to kill to get it. But they are.  So Mark and Miranda kidnap an ancient cryptographer named Nin and take her to the Library of Alexandria to decipher it.

The search for the truth of the tablet takes all of them to the most dangerous time on earth. And when Nin ends up on an altar surrounded by blood-thirsty crowds, only Mark can save her. But he’s blind.

What inspired you to set this book in Alexandria? 

I’ve always dreamed about the amazing library at Alexandria, where they tried to collect all knowledge of the ancient world. Can you imagine walking the halls? Reading the scrolls? Talking to the researchers?

What discoveries surprised you most when researching this book? 

While much of this novel takes place in Alexandria, Mark and Miranda also travel to the future and to ancient Uruk. I didn’t know much about Uruk when I started the book, but it’s a fascinating place and is known as “the Venice of the ancient world.”

Who were your favorite characters to write in this book?

I love Mark and Miranda, of course. But this book had a new character, Nin. And she was wonderful to write—she’s witty, clever, and always sure of herself, even when she’s wrong.

What was the hardest part of writing this book? 

So many difficult things were going on in my “real life” when I wrote this, and often I felt weary and worn-out. But writing the book was a wonderful opportunity to escape and relax.

What was the most fun? 

I loved writing Mark and Miranda’s interactions with Nin. Their repartee was a delight.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? 

I don’t really think about a message as I write a story because I let the characters tell their stories. But I know that the things I value are part of the characters’ stories. So issues like truth, perseverance, forgiveness, and doing hard things all figure into the plot.

What specific challenges come with writing a series?

One of the biggest challenges is keeping the stories fresh. But writing time travel it great because it gives me opportunities to explore new cultures and new people. In book one, Mark explored the Middle Ages and got to meet Miranda. In book two, he and Miranda went to Babylon and met Niri. In book three, Mark explores Alexandria, Uruk, and the future while meeting Nin and a whole host of secondary characters including a zoo keeper (until I started researching, I didn’t know that the library at Alexandria had a zoo) and a Jack Sparrow lookalike.

What piece of advice has helped you most as a writer?

I have two favorite writing quotes. One is from Jack London: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” And the other one (I don’t know who originally said it) is “A first draft is a celebration of everything that can go wrong on a page.”

These quotes really inspire me to sit down and do the work. Stories don’t write themselves. And they aren’t easy—they involve blood, sweat, and tears. And to alter a quote from The Princess Bride, “…anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something.” And yet, using your gift even though it’s difficult and messy, is a celebration and so much fun.

What is your background? 

I grew up all over the United States. I’ve lived in California, Illinois, Georgia, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Tennessee. I have a degree in English literature and worked at Harcourt. My husband and I have four kids, a black Lab, and a hamster.

How can readers connect with you?

I have two blogs. (Where you can be added to the Screwing Up Time mailing list, if you’d like.) http://screwinguptime.blogspot.com/ and http://connies-pen.blogspot.com/
My Twitter handle is @CMKellerWrites.
And I have a Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/C-M-Keller/145636898869893

Get it now

Screwing up Alexandria is available at Amazon

Any other questions for Connie?

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Characterization and the Gift of Face Blindness

by  C.M. Keller

When Laurel first talked to me about doing a guest post, one of the things she mentioned as a topic was characterization. What interested her is how often reviewers had mentioned it when they reviewed my books.

Honestly, when the first few reviewers mentioned it, I thought they were just being nice. And when it continued to come up, I was mystified. I had no idea why people seemed to be interested in my characterizations. I don’t do anything special.

But I’ve been thinking about it. I suspect that my characterizations are one of those occasions when a weakness becomes a strength. You see, I’m faceblind, which means I can’t recognize faces. (It’s called prosopagnosia.) In fact, it’s bad enough that one night when my son woke me up because he wasn’t feeling well, I didn’t know who he was. I knew there was something familiar about him (he wasn’t a robber), but it wasn’t until he spoke that I knew who he was. Of course, you can’t get by in the world without being able to recognize people. So you develop coping skills. I learned to recognize people by the tone of their voice, their gait, and their body type.

 Prosopagnosia also means that I have a hard time inferring people’s emotions by the looks on their faces (though not all people with prosopagnosia do). I’ve taught myself that a furrowed brow could mean anger or confusion. But the subtleties that normal people use to distinguish whether someone is confused or angry by their faces are beyond me. So I’ve learned to hear things in their voice—catches, emphases, pauses, etc., for clues to emotion. I’ve learned that posture means things, i.e., when shoulders hunch, someone is feeling shame, embarrassment, or depression. Even subtle things like the tilt of a chin or a muscle twitch (depending on which muscle twitches) can convey layers of emotion and character.

So now you know a lot about me, but how does this apply to writing? Because faceblindness governs the way that I experience people, the only way I know how to characterize people is by the ways I’ve learned to cope. I suspect that’s what strikes people about my characterizations. They’re different. I try to convey emotion through action and speech—it’s the way I understand and communicate it. Honestly, I sometimes think I’m ham-handed in it, that I’m too obvious. That a combination of a blink and a twitch is over-the-top. But other people don’t see what I see…

And maybe this is the gift that I can give other writers. Put yourself in my shoes. When you introduce a character, make them distinct by something other than their facial characteristics. (I can’t remember who a character is just because you’ve told me they have blond hair or are Asian.) As you develop the plot and character, think about how you would describe someone/some emotion if you couldn’t rely on a face to tell you. What else would give away a person’s character or their feelings?

And me…I’m trying to remember that most readers care about people’s faces. In fact, my first beta reader (my daughter) will often tell me, “Mom, you never tell people what Character A looks like.” In my thinking, I’ve told the reader everything about the character and what he or she “looks like.” Except I’ve forgotten the face. So I have to pull out my “cheat sheet”—a list that describes the facial characteristics of my characters—otherwise, I can’t remember what color hair or eyes they have.

If we do those things, we can all write better books.

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C. M. Keller is an award winning novelist and the author of SCREWING UP TIME and SCREWING UP BABYLON. She loves old movies and poison rings. In her spare time, she searches for that elusive unicorn horn. Currently, she's hard at work on her next young adult novel, the third book in Mark and Miranda's story. She blogs about her time-travel series at Screwing Up Time Blog.

Check out Connie's time-travel awesomeness here:
Book 1
Screwing Up Time

Book 2 Just released!
Screwing Up Babylon 


Thanks, Connie, for sharing your experiences with prosopagnosia and making character descriptions more multi-faceted. I certainly learned a lot. How about you, readers?

Do your character descriptions tend to focus on facial appearance? How might you expand your understanding of character description with a reader like Connie in mind?

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