Time travel romance is usually classified under paranormal romance. I'm surprised it isn't more of a science-fiction romance element actually, but that's neither here nor there.
One of the best things about time travel romance is the way the hero or heroine manages to do it. Some authors have gotten really creative as they try to puzzle it out. How exactly do our romance leads get to the past or future? I've compiled a list of ways in which they have below:
- Steering a spaceship through a blackhole and coming out the other side in the past/future depending on direction of travel. – Time and Again by Nora Roberts
- Jumping from a bridge so as to reach the speed of gravity before passing through a wormhole just above the water. – Kate and Leopold
- Stepping through a secret door in your house/apartment to the past/present. - Lost in Austen
- Genetic ability. - The Time Traveler's Wife
- A coma inducing fainting spell. – Prince of Dreams by Lisa Kleypas
- Reading old diaries, letters, or documents that are not your own. - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen by Sally O'Rourke
- The use of a talisman, ancient artifact, or any old object to trigger a space-time continuum jump. - The Highlander’s Touch by Karen Marie Moning
- Magic spells, especially those meant to save you from execution. - Breath of Magic by Teresa Medeiros
- Busybody ghosts who want you to save them from a life of ruin. - What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown
- Falling down a well and being rescued from it in another time and place. – Enchanted
I know there's more! Chime in! What are some other ways of time travel have you come across? What are your favorite time travel romances?
Photo Credits: Hubble Space Telescope and Website. You are looking at an Andromeda radio wave photo of the black hole at it's center. Pretty nifty looking isn't it?
Online Stores - Lightsabers, Weapons Products, Non-Film Specific Star Wars Science Fiction Collectibles
- Space Heater Furnaces & Heating Systems Heating, Cooling & Air Home Improvement
- Love, Romance Figurines Precious Moments Decorative Collectible Brands Decorative Collectibles Collectibles
- Magic Lantern Glass Slides Antique (Pre-1940) Photographic Images Collectibles
- Stargate SG-1 Science Fiction Collectibles
This post was written by...
Keira – who has written 1034 posts on Love Romance Passion.
Keira's favorite type of heroes are blind, scarred, and tortured... yes, she understands those should be separate, but all 3 at once is also nice! She enjoys historical romances best and adores audio books because great narrators turn books into auditory/mental movies (and she loves her romantic dramas like Pride and Prejudice/North and South!) Learn more about Keira in My Instant Turn Ons, Offs, and Ifs.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Earthquake. Time and Again by Beverly Sommers. Heroine is outside a McDonald’s when the “Big One” hits; wakes up in the same geographical location 80 years earlier.
And for your next post, can you enumerate the ways that characters get back to their original time? That seems the better trick, all things considered.
Well, my method in Don’t Wait was so subtle my publisher classified it as “modern” instead of “time-travel” romance. My heroine is a physics student building a prototype that gets hit by lightning, sending the hero seven years forward in time to receive an education in exactly how to please the heroine. I think “experimental physics device” probably has other instances of use too! Anybody think of any?
Don’t Wait is here” http://www.jasminejade.com/pm-7792-377-dont-wait.aspx
Elaine Lowe
I have a series coming out next summer with Resplendence Publishing entitled Daughters of Persephone. This is a four book series. My heroines are a genetically enhanced line of human females who were born of a desperate attempt to save the human race. Over many centuries, the women evolved on their own to the point where they can travel through time. Of course, there are repercussions to time travel…
I guess I like the genetic method the best, after that, it would be jumping as in Battlestar Galactica or using a warp drive as in Star Trek.
Of course, there’s always the fall down and bump your head means of time travel!
@Magdalen: Good idea! I might have to reread several to remember how they all got back. Some have the same method getting back as getting there, though.
@Elaine Lowe: Really? There’s a better use for such a device? Could have fooled me! lol
@Julia Barrett: How come the men aren’t genetically inclined to space jump? Poor men, they miss out on all the fun!
Oh, fun post!!
I’ve read a lot with the diaries or jewelry sending them forward/backward. I think both Heather Graham and Susan Macatee did Civil War stories with a time warp during a particular battle, the same convergences created the shift.
Hmm, I used to read nothing but time travel! But it’s been a while so let me think. Car accident, train wreck, plane crash. I think I read an older story with a time travel machine that sent the heroine back to medieval times and the hero had to come back to rescue her. Oh, who was that author? Really good story, too. She writes furturistic erotica now. Drat, I’ll think about it.
Don’t you hate that? When the title on the tip of your tongue (or anything really) and you can almost remember it, is tough.
You and Susan were a huge help sending me suggestions even if I used other examples for this post!
I believe Susan mentioned Devyn Quinn’s Eternity Series as a time travel too. Something with rocks and mysticism?
I love to use a reincarnation theme in my stories and have read others where they use the same theme to have characters travel back to past lives where they have the chance to correct mistakes.
Can’t remember the titles though. I read so many books. LOL.
I suppose you could classify Prince of Dreams by Lisa Kleypas that way, but he travels because he faints and hits his head.
No time travel in the Eternity books, Keira, though you will meet a very nice immortal assassin who could use an attitude adjustment.
Oops! My bad – I must have misunderstood, Susan! Thanks Devyn for clearing that up!
Hello, in my Romeo vs. Juliet series, sanctioned time agents have access to the hall of the centuries. They open little portals into this great hall with focused concentration. With the help of an implant, their brain wave patterns open up a portal. They step inside a huge hall to access the past and the future. The hall of the centuries is partially paranormal and partially “buttons and knobs, metal and plastic.”
-Laura
Back to the Future is partly a romance. He uses a hedron collider or some such thing in a Delorean.
Hi Alan!!!
I love those movies. Science Fiction devices are another good source for time travel.
Linda Howard’s (Son of the Morning) technique involved ingesting a carefully calculated formula of salts and water.
Just wanted to add to #4 – Genetic ability: This method is also used in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series by both Claire and her daughter. ^_^
I think Jude Deveraux’s A Knight in Shinning Armor might also fall under #7… Not sure how else to explain that one. (Gah, I’ve got to find my copy; I want to reread it now!)
Touching an ancient circle of stones in Scotland – Outlander
by Gabaldon. Excellent series.
but I can’t remember, oh wait, the veil between different times was thin or something, and she discovered a young Edward IV befoer he was king on a horse. The first two books were good, the third was blah.
Another one is Knight Errant
This is a great list.
Lynn Kurland’s medievals are predicated on the existence of naturallly-occuring portals. Anyone who happens to find one can accidentally stumble through one.
I think Gabaldon’s started out more like that, with the “genetic ability” piece coming up later in the series.
Constance O’Day-Flannery wrote the first time-travel romances that I ever read, and while I don’t think she had a comprehensive mythology built, IIRC the transport usually happened in a near-death moment.
In the movie (book also?) Somewhere in Time, the hero falls in love with an historical woman that he “meets” through diaries or whatever, and constructs a period environment– buys clothing etc. that was all true to the period he wanted to go to, and then used hypnosis? I think? to basically WILL himself back in time. Interesting premise.
I have enjoyed time travel romance for years…its a way of leaving the reality we live day in and out and transport ourselves to a different one that somehow you wish if would happen to you… It is a relaxing timeout from what is going on today.