An Idea Strikes....

On New Year's, my brother-in-law gave me an extra HDMI cable he had and a few days later I hooked up my Blu-Ray player. Knowing this little cord was supposed to improve picture quality, I put in the only Blu-Ray I own: National Treasure. As much as I like the movie, I wasn't in the mood to sit down for two hours to watch it. Instead, I went to the extras and started the section that took a closer look at the Declaration of Independence (a key part of the film). It went line by line, with some additional mini-movies on the history behind it. When it came to talking about the revised Quartering Act of 1774 (where British soldiers could room in empty house, barns and inns if the barracks were overcrowded), an idea struck me: this could be a good beginning to a story.

At first my story leaned toward a merchant's daughter having to take care of, per the provisions of the law, the soldiers by feeding them and being thrown into a situation with a solider she'd end up marrying. I was excited and immediately started some research. Now, as a history teacher, I know the basics of the American Revolution but it had been some years since I studied anything about it (not since I took my subject knowledge test in 2008). I'm a stickler for details, and read articles, primary sources, watched PBS's famous Liberty! documentary, etc. The more I researched, the more I realized how difficult it would be to put this man and woman together. But what if the woman was from the present, knew what was going to happen, and was stuck in an unescapable situation with a British solider stationed in Boston? And what if it was 1774, right when the Intolerable Acts were fanning the flames, the year before the first shot was fired?

This idea was appealing, but how to get her there? I needed something semi-believable, with rules of time travel. Then I remembered my niece talking about a lunar eclipse right before Christmas, and I had it! The lunar eclipse fell on the Winter Solstice in 2010, for the first time since the 17th century. Here was something rare I could work with. After all, throughout history, and even today, there are a number of superstitions surrounding lunar eclipses.

Since I had constructed time travel via eclipses, I needed to find one in the beginning of 1774. According to NASA's predictions, the earliest lunar eclipse in 1774 was May, which was too late--General Gage (of the British Army) and his extra troops were already in Boston by this point. I looked up solar eclipses, and voila, there was one for March 12, 1774. Perfect!

So now I have a working time travel universe and I've just about completed my research. I have yet to decide if this will be historical romance or more historical with a twist, a la Gabaldon style. Whatever happens, it just shows that ideas for stories come from just about anywhere.