At RWA, so many people told me how much they love the HaBOs – or that their spouses and partners love hearing about them. You guys are like oracles of romance: you freaking know every one of these things. So here’s another from Janice, who has one from waaaaaay back in the day.
I read a book about 24 years ago. yeah I know a real long time ago. Anyway
it was probably one of my first time travel romance. Let my sister in law
read it and never got it back.Starts off in modern France with and american girl staying or visiting a
french castle. There are R/R engraved over the doorways/arches. Anyway she
lands back in very early france falls in love with the lord/baron but in the
futre she had been shot and the bullet was lodged near her spine, bullet
moved and hit her spinal cord and she was dying. Could not go back to future
for operation. Baron new of a medical guy called him in and lo and behold he
was also from future so he did operation.I would like to know who was the author and the name of the book if you can
get that info for me it would be great.
Time traveling spinal cord injuries? I hope she wore a seatbelt.
Did you read a lot of time travel romance? I remember when every third one was a time travel, like vampires are now. Anyone recognize this book?
Dang it! I finally recognize one of these, but can’t remember the author/title. What I remember most about it is that when the heroine work up from the operation, the doctor called her Mrs.——instead of Lady——.
I have no idea, but let it be said that I love, love, love time travel romances. I wish there would be a revival of the genre. In the meantime, I’ll have to settle for Outlander and Dr. Who.
I’m also a fan of time travel—having written one and all—in part because I really like the fish-out-of-water and training montage tropes. Also, it’s a nice way to get a modernish perspective into a historical setting.
(Possible double post—sorry!)
I don’t remember this particular book, but I read a lot of time travel romance in the 1980s & 1990s and, you’re right, there was a time when every other romance seemed to be about a woman who got hit on the head and found herself miraculously transported back to the Renaissance.
Lisa Kleypas’s GIVE ME TONIGHT was one of the best time travel romances: the heroine is a nurse during the Great Depression. She time travels back to a Texas ranch of the 1880s and falls in love with the ranch foreman; he’s unjustly accused of committing murder and she must save him. The heroine then becomes stranded in the 1880s when her “sister” miscarries a baby—the baby who should have grown up to be the heroine’s mother.
Ya know, I kinda miss those time travel romances!
I love how there is a handy time-travelling surgeon who I presume helpfully brought his handy time-travelling surgical kit in order to perform the operation. I just can’t help feeling that real time travel would never be quite so convenient.
It sounds like a Susan Sizemore book, but I just checked the descriptions of those, and none of them quite match up.
Also: for everyone who doesn’t have a Kindle but wants to try out some free Meg Benjamin, she has a SamHellion Freebie right here – with the Wonder Dentist and Allison as the central pair (and a parody on Martha Stewart, if I deduced that correctly): Love and Scones
don’t worry about the cover not showing up, the pdf is still there.
gah, that was in the wrong post, so sorry.
@Isabel C. The modern perspective in an historical context is exactly the part that I love. For some reason, it’s easier for me to suspend my disbelief in time travel than it is for me to accept a supposedly “historical” character whose ideas are so modern that they would be shunned in their own time. The world is not kind to visionaries.
LOVE time-travel – Outlander got me started on it, and I’ve devoured all of it since. Prefer the time travel to medieval or renaissance – not so big on anything out west or cowboyish. Actually come to think of it Diana Gabaldon got me started on romance period –
captcha – century98 – as in I guess I’ll travel back 98 centuries….
I’m sure that the book is Forever His, by Shelly Thacker.
Totally blank on this one. Susan Sizemore did write a couple of time travel books that I loved. Autumn Lord and Wings of the Storm. She wrote a couple of others but I didn’t particularly care for them.
Johanna Lindsay and Jude Devereaux wrote time travel novels that I liked. I don’t remember the titles. I have every book Lisa Kleypas wrote, but I don’t rmember the time travel one. I guess it has been long enough that I can start rereading all of her books.
Gah! I spent AN HOUR the other day at a local used book store unsuccessfully looking for a time travel romance that I hadn’t read yet. It’s been years since I’ve read one, but I used to devour the suckers and I’ve had a serious hankerin’ lately. One used bookstore I used to frequent had a “Time Travel Romance” section that I made a beeline for every time I stopped in. They don’t have the section anymore, and now I can’t find any of them!
Definitely “Forever His” by Shelly Thacker. One of my all-time keepers!
We’re talking time travel romance and no one has mentioned Lynn Kurland?
I love Lynn Kurland’s TT ! They are really good.
I don’t know the book we are looking for here, but a spinal surgery in medieval time ? Even with a neurosurgeon lost back in time, it’s not possible to believe. It the kind of “detail” that can have me stop reading a book, rolling my eyes.
I’m no help on IDing this story, but this sub-genre is intriguing me to no end! I have Outlander loaded up on my pad, but I’ve yet to start it. I’ve always known there are time-travel romances, but I never really contemplated them before… The exoticness of a historical but with the cultural whiplash of a contemporary hero or heroine sounds fantastic. Keep the recommendations coming—I’m off for a three-week vacation soon and I want to load up!
I enjoy TT books in general, doesn’t matter which direction. One of my present-to-future faves is Heinlein’s The Door into Summer. Sometimes I think he was a visitor from the future himself. In his books, written in the 1930’s and 40’s, he had cell phones, bullet trains, ereaders (he is very pleased that it is possible to read the newspaper without getting ink on his fingers, but he misses books – sound familiar? ), colonies on the Moon and Mars, self-aware computers, and strong, strong women. I loved how he described an angry starliner passenger from the POV of one of the staff in Podkayne of Mars. Quoting from memory here: His heart sank. This was no young miss, but a matron in full sail. Now that I and my friends are of a certain age, we like to think of ourselves as matrons in full sail who don’t take any crap off anyone. Almost all of his books are hard-core science fiction, with occasional fantasy such as Stranger in a Strange Land, but even these are based on extrapolations of the science of his day.
His male characters are old-fashioned romantics, and there is a lot of he-and-she stuff in his books. His heros are swashbucklers who believe that they will find their one true love, marry her and live happily ever after. The fact that they have a laser pistol instead of a sword doesn’t slow them down a bit.
I enjoy TT books in general, doesn’t matter which direction. One of my present-to-future faves is Heinlein’s The Door into Summer. Sometimes I think he was a visitor from the future himself. In his books, written in the 1930’s and 40’s, he had cell phones, bullet trains, ereaders (he is very pleased that it is possible to read the newspaper without getting ink on his fingers, but he misses books – sound familiar? ), colonies on the Moon and Mars, self-aware computers, and strong, strong women. I loved how he described an angry starliner passenger from the POV of one of the staff in Podkayne of Mars. Quoting from memory here: His heart sank. This was no young miss, but a matron in full sail. Now that I and my friends are of a certain age, we like to think of ourselves as matrons in full sail who don’t take any crap off anyone. Almost all of his books are hard-core science fiction, with occasional fantasy such as Stranger in a Strange Land, but even these are based on extrapolations of the science of his day.
His male characters are old-fashioned romantics, and there is a lot of he-and-she stuff in his books. His heros are swashbucklers who believe that they will find their one true love, marry her and live happily ever after. The fact that they have a laser pistol instead of a sword doesn’t slow them down a bit.
I’ve been saving this joke for years. Scotty manages to leave his space ship, travel back in time and returns. He is obviously drunk and has a woman of obvious low character on each arm. When chastised by his his captain, he replies “Hoot, mon, hae ye ne’er heard of the pair o’ doxies of time travel?”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I’ve been saving this joke for years. Scotty manages to leave his space ship, travel back in time and returns. He is obviously drunk and has a woman of obvious low character on each arm. When chastised by his his captain, he replies “Hoot, mon, hae ye ne’er heard of the pair o’ doxies of time travel?”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
LOL! That’s a great one. Doxy is a great word, anyway.
I have never really seen the point of time-travel stories, myself. Although the thought of being able to experience another time personally, of getting to understand all the nuances that one cannot pick up from reading historical sources, is hugely tempting, I have never yet read a novel with that premise that actually pulls it off. One of the few that I found bearable, because it was very carefully thought out, was Linda Howard’s Son of the Morning.
AgTigress wrote:
I think two factors are at work here. The first is that TT is a variation on the “fish out of water” theme. Some books do it with culture or ethnic groups, some with TT.
The second is pure fantasy and wish fulfillment. Who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to see firsthand some of the events we have read about? TT books try to give us a sense of what that experience would be like.
AgTigress wrote:
I think two factors are at work here. The first is that TT is a variation on the “fish out of water” theme. Some books do it with culture or ethnic groups, some with TT.
The second is pure fantasy and wish fulfillment. Who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to see firsthand some of the events we have read about? TT books try to give us a sense of what that experience would be like.
@ AgTigress, when I read your post, for some reason Connie Willis popped into my head. She’s technically sci-fi, but To Say Nothing of the Dog is not only hilarious, but has a sweet love story (I mean sweet in all senses of the word).
And yes, my favorite TT’s are the ones where the heroine (it’s usually the heroine, isn’t it? I guess men aren’t as flexible) gets back to X time and realizes how disgusting life really was then.
Lynn Kurland rocks, in spite of her characters having a strange predisposition to being fluent in either French or Gaelic.
My favorite TT romances are from Constance O’Day Flannery. I think my favorite is “Time Kissed Destiny”, where the heroine is scuba diving and goes back in time, and the hero thinks she’s a mermaid!
I used to love time travel romances, but these days I really have to be in the mood for it or I just get irritated by the little things. But there was a series, I think by Lynn Kurland (?), about a Scottish family, with ghosts and time travel and a castle. And somebody who ended up living in Maine in modern times? I remember liking those.
However, I read one, way, way back in the day that I remember very fondly (and I don’t remember the author/title, either). But the heroine, who may or may not be an American, is visiting England and is in this castle. Then she manages to meet a guy who had been hurtled into the future from medieval times, except that he has no clue what the hell is going on. I think he had been about to be executed because his evil wife framed him for something, though. She takes him in and takes care of him and they fall in love. But apparently the doing of the deed is the trigger to send him back to the past, and when they have sex in the shower, he fades away. And then, somehow, and I don’t remember how this got pulled off, she ends up back in medieval times at his castle, where he is the brother of the lord. Except she goes back to before he is married to the evil harpy and tries to convince him not to do it, because of the evil harpy and execution part. And he doesn’t remember her at all. But they fall in love again, for some reason she makes him fried chicken and brownies at the castle and that jogs his memory, he gets a miniature made of her, and she explains about the sex being the thing that sends people back to their own time, so they try to refrain and the sexual tension becomes epic. But then they end up having sex (in a fountain?) and before she gets sucked back to modern times, she makes him promise to have a miniature made and hide it in a particular place in the castle. Of course, she is heartbroken to be back in modern times and does research to find out what happened to him—turns out he didn’t marry the harpy and lived a long life, single, and became somewhat famous in his time for architecture or something or other. But then she finds the miniature, gets on a plane, and meets somebody in modern times who is a dead ringer for him and who had bought the miniature of her at an antique shop years before because he was “intrigued” by it. And that’s where it ends.
I remember that the end was vastly unsatisfying, but I was in my early 20s when I read it and was sobbing by the time it was over. I imagine that if I read it now, I’d either be pissed off at the melodrama or highly entertained by the sheer cheesiness of it.
@ks: I READ THAT BOOK! And I can’t remember the name of it either, and yes I was pissed off at the ending too. And love Lynn Kurland as well – I think I recently found another one of hers I haven’t read yet, and put it aside to savor (when I can find it again).
@ks -I believe that’s A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux. Loved it first time I read it (years ago), bought an ebook copy recently and just couldn’t get into it.
I believe my reading habits have matured, lol.
Carolyn, that’s definitely it. I just read the synopsis at Amazon. Now I think maybe I’ll have to get my hands on a copy, just to see if I still like it.
Dear ks
A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Devereaux I wanted a better HEA too. I read it on my way to a funeral; cried coming and going.
I love TTs. At one time it was mandatory for an author to try their hand at TT. The various series put out by Publishing houses were: TIME PASSAGES, TIME SWEPT, HAUNTING HEARTS, LOVE SPELL, and MAGICAL LOVE. I am sure there were more, But I collected all of these I could find. Sandra Hill’s Viking series are TTs too. She made the mistake of killing off the hero in the past, and her readers had a fit! It didn’t matter that when the heroine woke up in the present, she was married to him….still.
I do like the Lynn Kurlands, because they can go back and forth in time as needed.
Cait
Heinlein’s “matron in full sail” surely harkens back to Romeo and Benvolio teasing the nurse in Romeo & Juliet:
ROMEO
Here’s goodly gear!
(Enter NURSE and her man [PETER].)
A sail, a sail!
BENVOLIO
Two, two; a shirt and a smock.
Followed shortly, of course, by my favorite naughty line in Shakespeare, when Mercutio says “‘Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.”
DreadPirateRachel: Precisely. And while, depending on the era, there were a lot of people with unconventional and even close-to-modern ideas, there’s still a fair amount of disconnect just in terms of what people are used to and how they’re used to people reacting, and having someone from another time period is a good outsider introduction to that, too.
ks: Ohh, I remember reading that one when I was a kid. And yeah, not satisfied by the ending: the guy who looks just like the hero is still not the hero, so I thought it was all pretty sad.
I also loved Time Travels back in the day. Janet Chapman had a series based on a Highlander family who come forward in time, complete with their very own Merlin who was a quirky character in modern times. They all lived in Maine, but other than the background that they time traveled and so had a family secret, all the plot was in current times. I was also going to mention Sandra Hill’s original Viking series that had a few time traveling characters woven throughout. I think one of my favorite series that had time traveling and really built on the quirks and conflicts of that, as well as adding in some Fae and magical elements, is Karen Marie Moning’s books. I still have to go back and re-read one or two of the back list because I think there’s a clue as to the identity of a main character in her latest Fever series back in the Druids of the Highlander books! She’s written a great story arc with all her books. I know there were other time travels I enjoyed but I can’t recall them now. Should be a fun hunt through my bookshelves now! 🙂
I still adore TT’s. Amy J Fetzer wrote a fab duology
My Timeswept Heart & Timeswept Rogue, that are
still in my all time top 10 fave romance books. They had it all,
an ex Olympic gymnast heroine in the first book,partnered
with a continental marine, pirates, stolen gems &
a pig of a villain. And the sequel had an actress as
heroine & the hero came forward in time. Cue more
piratey goodness, a bitch of a villainess, & a truly
satisfying resolution to both stories.
Lynn Kurland is an automatic buy for me, & has never
yet disappointed. I adore the way she has her characters
whipping around in space & time. Her writing has a
genuine sweetness, & she produces some of the best
heroes in TT.
I prefer time travels to the future or when historical characters come to modern times. I can get into a time travel to the past as long as the main characters get to return to modern medicine and bathrooms in the end. Flush toilets and air conditioning would be part of the HEA for me 🙂
I think people like TT because we all imagine if we had lived “back then” we would have been the unconventional woman who had everyone eating out of our hands and would have advanced the feminine movement years ahead of its time, lol.
Some TT’s are great, others not so much:~
Kilian Metcalf said:
Yes indeed. But you don’t have to have a time-travel tale to achieve that— just a well-written, accurately researched, straight historical novel should do the trick. 😉
I expect you’re right to see time-travel as a variant of the ‘exotic locale’ trope, because of many readers’ natural interest in cultures different from their normal, everyday lives. What I feel is really important is that the information should be accurate. That can be quite hard to do with historical settings.
I have a hard time with TT romances in general, I overthink the concept too much and it pulls me out of the story. I don’t seek them out, but I won’t avoid them if they come from favorite authors or are greatly recommended. “Son of Morning” is a keeper – that book is smokin’ hot. Read all of KMM’s Highlanders. Teresa Medeiros wrote a couple that were fun.
I haven’t read “Knight in Shining Armor” for years, but I remember liking the ending. It wasn’t a standard HEA, but it seemed more realistic – if you can use that word with time travel!
Just read the latest Betsy the Vampire book, and MJD is messin’ with the space-time continuum. Now, I know that the ending of that one is supposed to leave you panting for the next book, but it just left me pissed and confused, LOL.