by Diana Paz
Genre: YA Time Travel
Publication Date: April 1, 2013
Sixteen-year-old Julia Corona is a Daughter of Fate, destined to travel through time to battle the creatures of Mythos who seek to change history. Julia would rather use her powers to ditch PE than fulfill her duties as the Daughter of Present, but her best friend Angie, the Daughter of Past, can’t stand the thought of their magic fading away, which is what will happen if they can’t find the third Daughter soon. Then they discover the Daughter of Future is Kaitlyn, the bullying bad girl who tried to steal Angie’s boyfriend. Suddenly a world ruled by demons doesn’t seem so bad compared to being magically bound to Kaitlyn for the rest of their lives.
Julia is ready to kiss the magic goodbye until she meets Ethan, an intense young man who claims to be her protector and seems to know Julia better than she knows herself. He looks at her with a strange mix of longing and resentment that Julia can’t explain. Before she gets a chance to solve the mystery, the creatures of Mythos strike, opening a portal in Revolutionary France. The Daughters of Fate must set aside their differences and band together with Ethan to travel back in time to close the portal, but someone close to them will betray them, making their task nearly impossible. The history books are changing, and it may already be too late.
***
Author Guest Post
Where Do Story Ideas Come From? Timespell’s Origins
One of the first questions people often ask me when they see I’ve written a book is, “Where did you get the idea for the story?” For me the answer is complicated. The first gleam of an idea came in the form of a pair of teenaged time-crossed lovers, and I can honestly say the idea came out of nowhere. I wrote down the scene in my mind as I saw it, and that scene became the epilogue to the book.
Yes. I wrote the epilogue first. Oops!
But Timespell is about more than just what happens between the main love interests in the story. It’s about best friends Angie and Julia, who begin the story excited about unlocking the power of the Fates. They will be able to time travel once they find the final Daughter of Fate and seal themselves to her forever. The bulk of the story took shape in my mind while thinking about how different the girls were from each other. Julia is silly and sarcastic, Angie is responsible and sweet, but what about the third Daughter of Fate?
I toyed with a lot of ideas, but one that kept coming back to me was the one I thought the least likely would work. Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn was certainly fun to write, as well as a challenge. She isn’t a conventional choice for a book’s main character… fearless and power-hungry, she has a mean streak a mile wide. For some reason, the idea of forcing Julia and Angie to work together with someone so unlike anyone they would choose for themselves really appealed to me. I wanted to find out if they could manage to work together for the sake of the world, or at least, for the sake of keeping their powers. Would Kaitlyn change after being connected to the other two girls? Would the experiences they shared traveling through time bring them together somehow, or only highlight their differences and tear them apart?
The origins of Timespell began with the characters and my curiosity about what might change them. As the girls came to life on the page, and as one adventure led to the next, the story took on shape and before I knew it, I had written all the way up to the epilogue that started it all. Finding out what happened between the three girls was as exciting as finding out what happened to the fate of the world.
In TIMESPELL, the brash and impulsive Julia must team up with her sweet and straight-laced best friend, Angie, and the malicious and power-hungry Kaitlyn in order to keep the witch-like powers of her inheritance. But these powers come at a cost. The girls are bound to serve the Fates, and their first mission sends them back in time to Marie Antoinette’s Paris and eventually, into the chaos and war of the French Revolution.
***
About the Author
