#TimeTravelAuthors 02/19. How honest are your characters?
Which ones? I imagine #Bijou and Emily are honest. The rabbits, not at all.
#Airisu, the crow: Honesty is not something I would expect from a crow. I watch them steal from each other all the time. As for the witch, I haven’t decided.
#TimeTravelAuthors 02/17. Does your world have the butterfly effect?
Bijou: The concept of “Time-pressure” prevents the butterfly effect. It is a very important plot point, which, for spoiler reasons, I will not go into.
Crow: #Meta See tomorrow’s #Wss366 post: While it isn’t obvious right now, this is a butterfly that has historical consequences. In fact, it will be quite a while until you even understand why it is in the story.
#TimeTravelAuthors 02/15. Comp titles?
Jack Vance: The Dying Earth and any of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ space stories.
None that I am aware of in the genre. I am not well-read in this area, except @juliebihn and @QuasiTemporal work. And a few light novels like “Qualia the Purple” or “Cogs of Time.” I’m sure I read “A Wrinkle in Time” as a child.
What I am saying is I’m a nob in this genre and have no comp titles.
Outside the genre: Too light-hearted for Lovecraft. Too much quality for Michael Moorcock or Kenneth Robeson.
#TimeTravelAuthors Jan. 5th: Languages in your story
Bijou speaks English and French.
Emily speaks English, German, and Mandarin Chinese.
We have also seen Latin writings and will soon see Vedic Sanskrit, medieval Latin, and Hellenic Greek. Undoubtedly, we will at some point run into eye dialect and probably the use of waka and katatsu poetry for communication.
#TimeTravelAuthors 3/1. Is your work a standalone or a series?
None were or are standalone if you consider the original releases were serialized.
#NMTTA #NMPrompts
#TimeTravelAuthors 1/2 Introduce your story (optional: use the word "love")
If you enjoy conscious pulp and #love the surreal, “Bijou the Time Traveling Ghost” is for you. Bijou, a ghost with no memory of her past, has the power to time-travel. When she teams g up with a woman who died in the crash of the Hindenburg, they set off to discover the secrets of the time-traveling and sinister Nazi rabbits that keep popping up? Is it the #Illuminati? Or the #ElderGods? Or something else?
Serialized irregularly through the #TimeTravelAuthors hashtag.
#TimeTravelAuthors 29/2. What trigger warnings would you give?
To date, the only CW any of my time-travel fiction has warranted is "Death of a Main Character."
Other stories have had tags such as:
I don’t see Bijou requiring any of these. Unless you want to include tagging it as "Pulp" as a CW.
#TimeTravelingGhost EP 5 Part 63: Jurassic Era
1/21/26 #TimeTravelAuthors #count #Wss366 #Roger #Mastoprompt
“Chosen ones?” Emily repeated. “Could you explain?”
"It's a literary trope where someone, usually unsuitable, is 'chosen' to save the world while fighting against impossible odds."
“Trope? Pray tell, what does that mean?”
“A literary cliché.”
“So, you think we’ve been chosen to stop the Illuminati?”
“Not really. It’s more likely that we're Lovecraftian characters who will be polished off or driven insane by implacable dark forces.”
“We could just travel to a pleasant time and place and live out our ghostly lives.”
“When you were alive, you could have just written a nice ‘women’s column,’ and ignored the threat in Europe. But you didn’t.”
Emily smiled, kicked a piece of coral, and then said, “No more than you can turn your back on this. There are things more significant than our puny lives and happiness.”
“#Roger that! Bogart couldn’t have said it better.”
“You know I can’t #count the number of times you make references I don’t understand.”
“Actor, 1940s. He starred in big films, including ‘Casablanca,’ where he says, ‘It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.’”
“It’s a good line even if your imitation smells like yesterday’s fish.”
Casablanca (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, & Paul Henreid:
#TimeTravelingGhost EP 5 Part 62: Jurassic Era
1/19/26 #TimeTravelAuthors A character's goal #Wss366 #coke (implied)
The two of us spent the next couple of days playing cards and observing the pyramids. We learned more about the former than the latter. I taught Emily pinochle, and she taught me bezique. She liked that pinochle was more intense; I liked that bezique took its time. We had plenty of it to kill. Now and then we mixed up the terminology, which led to some friendly squabbling.
More importantly, we learned creatures avoided the pyramids. This wasn't immediately apparent, as flying creatures took flight from the pyramid closest to us. That was until one flew near us.
“An ornithopter,” I exclaimed as a pterodactyl-like machine flew by.
“A what?”
“An airplane that flies by flapping its wings.”
Emily shook her head. “At least it’s not trying to kill us. Still, no sane pilot would trust that.”
“Sane or not, we had better try our experiment before one of those spots us.”
“Agreed. We’d be in a jam if they knew we were here.”
We joined hands and repeated together: “We want to be on the central island five minutes after the big ornithopter took off.”
The cave faded, and we stood with the central pyramid in front of us, a towering mass of coral.
Emily touched it and asked, “Do you think it grew here?”
“I don’t know. I’d believe anything at this point.”
“Holy moley! Wait, I think there’s writing over there.”
We walked down a beach of pink sand, prehistoric shells, and fine, black ash until we faced the words carved into the pyramid:
OCULUS APERTUS ERAT
ANTEQUAM REGES ESSENT
We guided the fire.
We guided the crown.
We shall guide the end.
“Masons/Illuminati,” we said at the same time.
What followed was a laugh, a strained echo of our squabbling over cards.
The laughter trailed off as we looked at each other.
“Nazis, Illuminati, eldritch horrors—why do we have to be the chosen ones?” I said, collapsing against the monolith.
#TimeTravelingGhost EP 5 Part 60: Jurassic Era
1/15/26 #TimeTravelAuthors The cost of time travel #Wss366 pyramid #MastoPrompt aromatic
I kicked the detritus near the edge of the cave, then sat down with my legs dangling over the edge. An #aromatic breeze, reminiscent of ferns and conifers, rose from below, masking the odor of guano.
"If we want to learn what the rabbits are up to, we're going to have to go out there," I said, pointing to the surreal #pyramids.
“Can you fly that far? You'd be easy pickings out there on the water.”
“Yeah, I can’t see myself building a raft and paddling across open water. I don’t suppose we could just time-travel over there? We don’t seem limited spacially when doing it. And it doesn’t seem as taxing as dematerialisation.”
“All we can do is try.”
NaraMoore ⛩️👻八尺様👻⛩️ at Fedi
