BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR JANIE EMAUS

Janie Emaus writes time travel romance, young adult novels, and humorous essays. She's also a staff writer for In The Powder Room and blogs frequently for The Huffington Post, Better After 50, and Generation Fabulous and was named a 2013 BlogHer Voice of the Year. Janie believes that when the world is falling apart, we're just one laugh away from putting it together again. Learn more about Janie at her website. – AP

Time Traveling Possibilities

Lately, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the future. And not the near one where my granddaughter will become a teenager (Ohmygod, already?) or where I’ll celebrate my thirty-fifth wedding anniversary (Ohmygod – even louder).  No, a future several centuries from today. One in which time traveling could possibly be a reality.

Imagine if there existed an organization called the Time Traveling Matchmakers Inc., whose mission statement would be “to bring soul mates together, to live as one, in harmony, peace, and love.” 

This is the premise of my latest novel, Before the After. Of course, even in the future, nothing will be perfect. And a matchmaker sent after his own soul mate could turn  the entire future upside down.

Writing about what may be possible ahs caused me to reflect on how much has changed in the past one hundred years.

I’m sure my grandparents could never imagine a world in which almost everyone walked around with a handheld electronic device. Where people were constantly scrolling up and down a screen, communicating with people they’ve never seen in person.

Sometimes it’s even hard for me to fathom how much has changed since my high school days.

Take this scene for instance. I walk into my daughter’s house and in a boisterous voice, I yell, “Hi everyone.”

Silence.

My granddaughter is texting on her  iPhone. My grandson is playing on his Kindle. My son-in-law is on his computer. My daughter is on her iPad. Even the toddler thinks he’s on a “real” phone, sliding his thumb across his toy.

Why, the only one who acknowledges my presence is their crazy, sixty pound boxer. He could knock me down for all they care.

And this has me worried about the future.  Have we become so plugged into our cyber worlds that we are ignoring the “real” one around us?

What about that “heart pounding, groin pulsating, got-to-have-it now” feeling?  The one where we actually touch each other.

If this ceases to exist, if people become satisfied by “virtual” love-making, then I do hope time traveling becomes a reality.

I’d employ the services of the Time Traveling Matchmakers, Inc. and travel back in time, perhaps to the 1950s, to once again experience life before technology took over the world.

How about you? Where would you go?  

Before the After

Love takes on a new meaning when soul mates are brought together through time and space.

Like every goal-oriented twenty-something, Jessica Singleton, an aspiring filmmaker, is obsessed with finding her future as quickly as possible. Tick Tock. What she doesn't know is that the future is obsessed with finding her, too. Renn Porter, an agent with Time Traveling Matchmaker's Inc, blasts back in time—and into her life—in order to transport Jessica to the soul mate who has paid for this service...in the future. But things turn dangerous when it's revealed that Renn has been sent after his own soul mate.

Jessica wants nothing to do with this strange guy and his crazy romantic notions. Who has time for a soul mate anyway? But tell that to her heart.

Caught between two times, Jessica and Renn must struggle to stay alive. Falling in love is the biggest risk either of them has ever taken—because, as they are destined to learn, the very existence of Time Traveling Matchmakers, Inc. rests in Jessica's hands.

Buy Link