Origins ~ RIFT

Once upon a time, I wondered what would happen if you were caught in a volcanic eruption and the energy of that opened a portal into a parallel timeline in the past, and you were separated—by fifty years—from someone you love. What would you do to find them and how would you travel back to your own time? And why did it happen? What caused this time portal to open?

I started dreaming about a character who was a time traveler. His name was Ben and he owned the Kairos Coffee Shop, a gathering place for time travelers. Many people wandered in and out of the coffee shop, time travelers on their way to somewhere else, characters who would find themselves on the pages of novels.

Being a kindly soul, having been around for probably centuries, or even eons of time, he helps guide the would-be travelers to their destinations. He appears to be a barista, but he's also a physics professor, and there's more to him than meets the eye.

My first time travel novel—RIFT—didn't start out with a plot. It started with Ben, a character who is so much more than he appears to be. You'll run across him again in my future time travel novels.

In the story, Sara and Jason are newlyweds, on their honeymoon in Hawaii. They're separated by a volcanic eruption. Jason is thrown back into the past—to help his parallel self accomplish something he wasn't able to do before.

I wanted my time travelers to have a dog, because if you were lost in time, you'd definitely want a dog by your side.

Meet Mocha and Macchi (parallels of Mauka and Makai), two German Shepherd puppies named after a coffee. One stays in the present; the other travels to the past. 

They're just as determined to find each other again as Sara and Jason are—the newlyweds who were separated during the volcanic eruption.

RIFT is Book One in the Kairos Chronicles.