Chelsea: Her past self, Catherine, ended up lonely and depressed when Drew married her after Lizzie died. Drew never loved her, and she was never able to find her soul mate because she was married to him and miserable. Since Drew gave her no attention, she had many affairs, which destroyed her reputation.
Jeremy: His past self, James, blamed himself for Lizzie’s death since he was driving the carriage. He never forgave himself. He became an alcoholic, obese, and wasted away his fortune to gambling. His destructive ways never allowed him to be with his soul mate, Kate.
Keelie: Keelie’s soul mate is Jeremy, although they are not meant to be together until the end of college, once he has time to mature and become a better person. Her past self, Kate, never ended up with her soul mate James because of his self-destructive behavior.
See how their stories connect in the past and the present? Luckily, once Lizzie, Drew, and Chelsea succeeded in their mission of changing the past, those destinies never occurred.
HOW TAYLOR SWIFT’S “LOVE STORY” MUSIC VIDEO INSPIRED REMEMBRANCE
The “Love Story” music video premiered in the fall of 2008. The first time I watched it, I was entranced. Taylor sees a guy while walking through campus, and the moment their eyes connect, the scene flashes to the two of them dancing at a beautiful ball dressed in clothes that appear to be from around the year 1815. It’s magical to watch, and the video is so amazing that it gave me chills. I watched it over and over again, and a story started to piece together in my mind. A story about a girl reincarnated from Regency Era, England, who doesn’t realize it until her soul mate transfers into her school and triggers her memories to gradually return to her.
In that semester at school, I was taking a class called Intro to Creative Writing. One of our first big assignments in class was to write anything we wanted and bring it in to share with everyone. Since the characters and scenes that came to me while watching “Love Story” refused to leave my mind, I decided that for the project, I would write the first chapter of what I then called “The Story Inspired by ‘Love Story.’”
After completing the chapter, I stared at it for about an hour, worrying about what my classmates would think after reading it. I assumed everyone else would write about “normal” topics—not reincarnation and seeing your soulmate from the past for the first time! What if they thought what I wrote was weird? I nearly erased it in favor of turning something else in, but then I remembered something Taylor had said:
"If you’re lucky enough to be different from everyone else, don't change."
I listened to her advice. Yes, what I wrote was going to be way different from what everyone else in class wrote, but I was okay with that. And after I read the chapter aloud to the class, I was amazed to find out that everyone in my class, including my teacher, loved it. Actually, they more than loved it—they wanted to read more!
But I had never written a novel before, and the idea of making the plunge and going for it intimidated me. What if I failed and couldn’t finish it? That worried me, but again, I remembered something Taylor had said:
"To me, fearless isn't not having fears; it's not that you're not afraid of anything. I think that being fearless is having a lot of fears, but you jump anyway."
So I jumped.
And now, three years after I saw the “Love Story” music video for the first time, my debut novel Remembrance is finally available for everyone to read. I’m so happy to be able to share it with you. I can only hope that if you choose to read it, you end up enjoying it as much as I loved writing it!
Thank you for taking the time to read my story about how “Love Story” and Taylor Swift helped me get to where I am today!
REINCARNATION IN THE TRANSCEND TIME SAGA
An explanation of how reincarnation works in the series
To write the Transcend Time Saga, I had to create my own version of reincarnation. The first thing I did was research reincarnation on the Internet. Even though I don’t personally believe in reincarnation, I had fun learning about it. There are tons of websites on the topic—from ancient Buddhist beliefs to people who claim there are scientific ways to prove reincarnation. It was interesting doing the research, but I came across a problem: Nothing was fitting into the story I had started to create about Lizzie and Drew.
Then I realized something: Remembrance was going to be a work of FICTION, so I was free to create my own version of reincarnation!
The main thing I knew about Lizzie’s story was that she had a dramatic early death in her first life that made it so she couldn’t be with her soul mate, Drew. She and the people close to her who were negatively impacted by her death had been reincarnated to set things right. I decided to create my own version of reincarnation that revolved around that idea.
I created a Word document with bullet points describing the important aspects of reincarnation in the Transcend Time Saga. This document is called “Reincarnation Rules,” and this is the first time I am sharing it with readers.
Here are some of the basic Reincarnation Rules in the Transcend Time Saga:
1) The only reason a person will be reincarnated is if they have to change something dramatic that left them unfulfilled in their past life. They continue being reincarnated until they do this.
2) Most people are not reincarnated. Once they live one life, they go to Nirvana. Most people living on Earth are “New Souls.”
3) Major events in present day lives parallel past lives, so people will be thrown into situations with other reincarnated souls from their past.
4) Their physical features are similar to those they had in their past lives, although not so similar that they look the exact same.
5) A big part of initially remembering a past life is a recognition of the soul of a person they had a positive deep connection to, usually a soul mate. (In Lizzie’s case, this person was Drew.) If you were friends with someone in a past life (like Lizzie/Chelsea and Elizabeth/Catherine), you will feel very close to that person, but they will not trigger memories of the past to return.
6) Objects from the past will also serve as triggers. (Lizzie loved Pride and Prejudice in her past life, so reading the book for her English class triggered her memories. Drew built the music box for Lizzie in his past life, so seeing the music box again triggered his memories.) However, people usually believe their memories to be figments of their imaginations until they meet the person who is their “big trigger.”
7) A soul can only reincarnate into the same species it started in. (You cannot be a human in one life and a dog in the next.)
8) People remember images and scenes—they very rarely remember full conversations. They can, however, remember their feelings from those conversations.
9) People don't reincarnate immediately. They reincarnate during a good time for them to complete whatever it is they need to do to sort out the issues they had in their past life. Plus, if a spirit went through something traumatic in their life (usually resulting in death), they need time to recover.
10) Reincarnees have Memory Guides that help them remember their past life so they can make changes in their current life. These Memory Guides have been reincarnated, and successfully fixed what they needed to. They go through training, and then come into the Reincarnee’s life when they are ready to remember their past life.
After I had those basic ideas, Lizzie and Drew’s story pieced together as I wrote. I outlined the book before writing the draft, but it was still fun to see their story unfold.
TIME TRAVEL IN TIMELESS
An explanation of how time travel works in Timeless
I always knew the final book in the Transcend Time Saga would involve the main characters time traveling back to Regency Era, England, and I couldn’t wait to write about their adventures in the past.
Of course, this involved creating my own version of time travel. I read and watch a lot of time travel stories, so I know that characters can usually travel through time by use of a machine, an object, a hole in the space/ti
me continuum, a genetic superpower, etc. There are so many possible methods for characters to travel back in time! However, the Transcend Time Saga is a modern fairy tale, so I knew the best form of time travel for the story would be magic.
Time travel in the world of the Transcend Time Saga is not easy. Three main conditions must be met for people to travel back in time:
1) All of the individuals must have been reincarnated
When a person travels back in time in the Transcend Time Saga, their physical body does not make the journey. Instead, their soul leaves their body and enters the body of their past self. Naturally, a person must have a past self for this journey to be possible. If you’re traveling in a group, everyone in the group must travel back to the same time period, therefore their past selves need to have all been alive in the time they are traveling to.
2) One of the time travelers in the group must have magic in their blood
Magic sparks the connection from the present to the past, so one of the people making the journey must have magical abilities. They can either be a natural witch, meaning they are born with magic, or borrow magical abilities from a natural witch, which involves drinking a drop of the witch’s blood. This is a gift rarely given, because each drop of blood gifted from a witch decreases the witch’s power by a small percentage. Also, borrowed magic will only stay in the human’s bloodstream for one month.
3) One of the time travelers must be in possession of an object owned by his or her past self
The more important this object was to the time traveler’s past self, the stronger the connection will be to the past. The best kind of object for time travel is a piece of jewelry worn by the time traveler’s past self. The constant contact with the past self combined with metal being a strong conductive element makes jewelry extremely powerful as a connection to the past.
Read Timeless to find out how Lizzie, Drew, and Chelsea meet these three conditions to travel back in time to Regency Era, England!
COVER DESIGN INTERVIEW
Bonnie from A Backwards Story interviews Michelle Madow on how she designed the covers of the Transcend Time Saga
http://abackwardsstory.blogspot.com
Bonnie: I love the covers for the Transcend Time Saga. They're what made me first sit up and take notice of this title. Since you designed the covers yourself, did you always know what you wanted to do? Did you go through multiple designs before deciding on your final covers?
Michelle: Thank you! The big thing I knew when I started looking through images on stock photography websites was that I wanted Lizzie’s face to be on the cover. I spent hours searching through images on iStockPhoto of “girls with curly blonde hair.” I discovered a model who was PERFECT for Lizzie, but none of her photos jumped out at me as “the one.” Then I went to Dreamstine, saw “Girl in a Mask,” and knew I’d found my cover.
Bonnie: What are the easiest and hardest things about designing your own covers?
Michelle: The easiest (and the most fun) is searching for the perfect image for the first book in the series. The hardest is making sure the covers of the other books of the series match the theme of the first, while still being unique to their own story.
Bonnie: Which of the three covers is your favorite?
Michelle: The cover of Remembrance will always be my favorite. I can’t believe I found an image that perfectly embodied the story. The girl looks exactly like Lizzie, and she’s wearing a gold mask similar to the one described in the book. I love how she’s looking straight at the viewer, and the contrast of the light on her face against the jet black background. The mask symbolizes the mystery of the past life that Lizzie discovers throughout the story.
Bonnie: Have you always been interested in graphic design? Would you design covers for other authors in the future?
Michelle: My interest in graphic design started when I taught myself how to use Photoshop during my senior year of high school to create icons for LiveJournal. I made hundreds of 100x100 pixel icons for my favorite television shows and books. Then when Twilight came out I joined the Twilight Lexicon discussion forum, and started making Twilight icons for members of the forum.
As for designing covers for other authors, that’s probably not something I would do. It takes time to design covers, and my number one priority is writing and getting my books out to readers. There are many graphics designers who have graphic design as their number one priority, and who are more experienced than me, anyway. (My capabilities are limited. When I realized the ribbon under Lizzie’s nose in the original image for Timeless had to be removed, I had to outsource that task to a more experienced graphic designer to make sure it was done well.)
Bonnie: What, to you, are the components that make up the best, most eye-catching cover?
Michelle: I am partial to the “pretty girl in a dress” covers, even though I know it’s a bit over done! I think the best covers are simple. If too much is going on in the cover, the viewer doesn’t know what to focus on. Also, the text must stand out and be easy to read, so the person looking for a new book doesn’t have to struggle to see the title and author for the book.
Bonnie: What book covers do you love so much that you wish you'd designed them?
Michelle: Some of my favorite covers are:
Matched by Allie Condie
Firelight by Sophie Jordan
Halo by Alexandra Adornetto
The Selection by Kiera Cass
Tempest by Julie Cross
Tris & Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison
City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
MICHELLE’S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING
Hi, everyone! I’ve talked a lot about my books, the writing process, and the characters in the Transcend Time Saga. But this is the first time I’ve shared my personal experience with independent publishing, and why I ultimately chose this route for the Transcend Time Saga. I hope you enjoy the story of how this all happened and maybe even learn from it too!
In the summer of 2009, between my junior and senior years of college, I finished the first version of Remembrance. My original intention was to pursue traditional publishing. That summer I queried over fifty agents, receiving mostly rejections. A few prospects requested the full or part of the manuscript, and most of those manuscript requests were turned down. By the start of my senior year I felt like every agent was going to reject my book. It was hard for me to keep getting rejected, especially because I was a student who earned mostly A’s, received awards for my writing, and had most of my work praised by my teachers and fellow students. I wasn’t used to failing, and it was getting me down.
Then, two weeks into the first semester of my senior year I got a phone call from Christine Witthohn of Book Cents Literary Agency, who I had met earlier that summer at the Writer’s Digest Pitch Slam. She loved Remembrance and wanted to take it on, but first there were some edits she wanted me to make.
I was SO EXCITED. An agent wanted my book! She didn’t specialize in YA (young adult) fiction—her focus was mysteries and women’s fiction—but I didn’t care. Because this had to be it—my big break into the world of publishing!
Figuring the edits were a “test” to see how efficiently I could work and how well I took instruction, I did everything she asked. In October 2009—not even a year after I wrote the first chapter of Remembrance—I signed the contract with Christine. Now I would definitely break into traditional publishing! I had an agent, which meant at least one publishing house would be interested in my book. Right?
Yeah … not so much.
The first rejections informed me that the editors thought Remembrance was too similar to Fallen by Lauren Kate and Evermore by Alyson Noel. I hadn’t read either of those books, but after receiving that feedback, I purchased them and read them to understand my competition.
The big similarity was impossible to miss—all three books dealt with reincarnation. But beyond that, they were extremely different. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my place to point th
at out to the publishers, so I had to accept their rejections and move on.
Months passed, and the rejections kept coming. It soon became apparent that it was going to be difficult to get traditional publishing houses interested in Remembrance because of one glaring problem:
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