On this page: Time Spike Writer’s Guide, On the Naming of Names, Dinosaurs Dinosaurs Dinosaurs!
Time Spike Writer Guide
NOTE: The following is a basic guide for new writers, some of the topics covered in passing here will be filled out further in separate articles. So, let’s get started!
Welcome to the world of Time Spike! The Assiti Shards are the space-time twisting results of a highly advanced and completely insane alien culture’s idea of art. The Grantville event moved a perfect circle of rural West Virginia from the twentieth century to seventeenth century Germany. Now the Assiti’s cosmic mischief has struck the State of Illinois, forming a wild patchwork of regions misplaced in time ranging from the primordial to the modern, thrusting creatures and peoples that should never have been together into the middle of one of the most dangerous periods of Earth’s history ever known: The Cretaceous!
Just as he did with its sister Assiti Shard’s universe, the world of 1632, their creator and our founder Eric Flint opened up the Time Spike world as a shared universe for writers to work in. And, just as the Grantville Gazette did, authors are invited to submit their Time Spike stories to that magazine’s worthy successor, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond.
We would like to ask aspiring new authors to first read the 1632 & Beyond Author page and its helpful articles to orient you to our submission process. Please go to https://author.1632magazine.com to begin your journey. Much of what is said there applies here as well.
We are going to assume that you have read the original novel Time Spike by Eric Flint & Marilyn Kosmatka at minimum- then, what can we say? The more existing Time Spike works you read the better! (it is not a shameless plug! I didn’t even say our names are Garrett W. Vance and Dave Dove!)
It all begins with an idea. It is recommended that you write up a brief synopsis of your story so we can see if it’s something that will work in our shared Time Spike universe. We are pretty open minded, but there are some limits and rules that we all work within, and that we will help you understand if needed- we feel their presence makes the resulting world of stories stronger and more connected.
Now we need to talk about The Grid. Ours is based on the Grantville Character Grid which can be found on the 1632 & Beyond website. Time Spike’s Grid was originally compiled by fellow Time Spike author Dave Dove, and is currently undergoing updates. Please note that the Time Spike Character Grid is quite a bit different from the Grantville Grid in several regards which will become apparent.
Peruse the Time Spike Character Grid before you begin seriously writing your story while considering what kind of characters you need to make. When you are ready to make your Grid choices please confer with our staff on Baen’s Bar 1632 Tech, just PING me, Garrett W. Vance aka GWV17, or message me anytime. I will act as your guide to help you finalize your characters then get them official approval from our editors. With their permission you can lodge a claim for them on the Time Spike Character Grid and they will be marked as yours for your ongoing use.
(Note: The Grid is being updated and will appear here soon. Meanwhile, interested authors can direct any questions about claims to me, Garrett W. Vance)
The reason we do this is that there are a limited number of people who came through ‘The Quiver’ and our stories reflect that. There are several different groups, some with very definite and limited numbers (conquistadors, soldiers, prisoners, Cherokee, prison guards and nurses), and some that are more amorphous with tens of thousands of individuals like the Cahokia and Pre-Mounds cultures. All of the blank characters listed are unnamed and are free for you to give them reasonable names and identities. It’s a much looser situation than 1632, but the rule of no vampires or ninjas still holds.
The named characters from the original book and subsequent published works belong to their authors, or in the case of the late Eric Flint and Marilyn Kosmatka’s characters they belong to the editorial staff, and are thus considered to be ‘claimed’. An author would need special permission to use them beyond a cameo- for example a brief meeting with Cherokee Chief Geoffrey Watkins in his usual surrounds would be unlikely to cause any problems, but him leaving his village for an extended period of time would need some group planning. This is a shared universe so everything that happens has an effect on the world as a whole, we have to work together to keep it cohesive.
Now it’s time to write your story and submit it for workshopping by our group! Time Spike authors are asked to submit their work to the Baen’s Bar website’s 1632 Slush forum and start a comments thread in the accompanying 1632 Comments. Please preface both topic titles with either a Time Spike: or TS: to mark it as being specifically for that universe.
I recall Eric Flint once said when asked about writing for 1632 something to the effect of, and I paraphrase: “The science fiction all happened in the event. From that point on we write fiction grounded in science.”
That is also in effect in Time Spike. We ask that you research your stories. The genre is alternate history and we want it to be as realistic as possible in terms of things like science, culture, dress, food, animal and plant species, etc. If it’s impossible in this word it’s also impossible in our fictional alternate worlds.
If you have technical questions you would like some help with please post them in our 1632 Tech forum, once again with a Time Spike: or TS: in the title. It’s up to the author to do their own research, but there is nothing wrong with asking for a bit of help or advice, nearly everyone does at some point!
As for stories- the ideals that most fiction magazines espouse hold true here, character driven stories with meaningful outcomes that make us think and feel. While it is fine to focus on a specific topic (the breeding habits of pterodactyls, Cahokian astronomy, etc) in your narrative, it must also have people in the picture who are involved and are more than just props for a theory. Excite us, thrill us, make us think! Time Spike is set in a unique and epic world full of danger and discovery, marvels and mystery! Explore it, create it, tell us your story!
PS: Dinosaurs!
– Garrett W. Vance, Time Spiker!
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On the Naming of Names
Regarding the naming of the various North American tribal characters, rather than use the tired old ‘Running Deer’ trope, I decided to try something different. Since we don’t really know the exact language or languages spoken by the Pre-Mounds and Mound folk of the ancient Mississippian culture, I drew from those spoken by the modern peoples who are their descendants— Choctaw, Quapaw, Caddo, Pacaha, Tunican, Sawnee, and Chickasaw. Although by no means accurate, they are meant to be in the spirit of what the ancient Mississippians might have used. In any case, I think they feel right, and ring much truer than any English translation would. For example, T’cumu is Tunican for ‘the bobcat’, and Ni-T’o means ‘Blue Water’, Ni = Water, T’o = Blue from Quapaw Sioux. My hope is this practice gives a more authentic feel to these characters, providing at least an echo of what those ancient peoples might have named themselves. There are some few exceptions, such as the mysterious Raven Priestess, but after all, only a select few know her true name!
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Dinosaurs Dinosaurs Dinosaurs! -And Other Creatures Out of Time
“So, we’re one hundred and twenty million years in the past?” Andy asked.
“That would be my guess.” His grin had very little humor in it. “Give or take maybe fifty million years, you understand.”
If you love dinosaurs (who doesn’t?) then this is your chance to parade them through your prose! Time Spike has dinosaurs from all through the ages wandering about, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous! The dominant population are the greater world’s time, the mid Cretaceous, but a case can be made that smaller populations of dinosaur (and all other) species native to that region of North America from those other times are growing and interacting- lots of stories there!
Also remember that you can pick creatures from before and after dinosaur times that came through during The Quiver, this is in fact encouraged. Please keep in mind that these are these are real animals and they have habitats, can they adapt to new ones? Can they compete with creatures that evolved in other times? Put it in a story!
All of the animals used must be depicted realistically- They can be cunning predators, but no dino species is going to be as smart as a human. They might look fun to ride on, but no dino species can be easily domesticated, so no dino riders any time soon- if you want to try to ride Pleistocene camels, yeah, go for it, that’s within reason- it won’t be easy though. Have you ever met a camel?
