Q&A with Cristin Terrill, Author of All Our Yesterdays!

Right now, Cristin Terrill is making an appearance on my favorite Goodreads group, David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite!  She has been just awesome, and answering some amazing questions!

Here are a few of my faves:

 Karen--How did you decide on this story and how the heck do you keep up with all the times and interweaving that a time travel story needs?

Cristin--The idea for the story came from a hundred different places, but I can trace the bulk of it back to three different elements coming together. 

a) One night when I couldn't sleep I ended up watching THE TERMINATOR on cable and started wondering what the story would be like if the killer robot from the future was actually the good guy instead of the villain. Then, because I write YA, I wondered what it would be like if he was a teenage girl. 

b) I have this theory about teen television (of which I watch waaaaay too much) that the best friend/brother of the Obvious Love Interest always ends up being the more interesting and usually more suitable love interest, but I always wanted to try to make that dynamic work in a book.

c) I was looking at old pictures of myself from high school and thinking about how I wasn't nearly the hideous loser I was convinced I was at sixteen. 

Those three things eventually came together in my head and formed the main backbone of ALL OUR YESTERDAYS. 

As for keeping track of the various timelines and plot elements, I tried to create about a hundred different systems for keeping that stuff straight (spreadsheets, notecards, mind maps, you name it), but in the end nothing really worked for me except sitting down and THINKING THROUGH every step. So I spent a LOT of my time writing this book with my head down on my desk trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. It was a real mental challenge to write sometimes, and my brain usually felt like oatmeal by the end of the day. 

Carl--All Our Yesterdays ended with most of the plot threads apparently tied up. In general terms, where can the sequel go? 

Cristin--I get this question a lot, because, yes, the book does end with very few loose ends so everyone wants to know what can possibly happen to the characters after AOY ends. Buuuuut since this is a universe where time travel can exist, the story doesn't have to be about what happens to them after AOY. 

Mimi--Do you think time travel is actually possible?

Cristin--Time travel IS possible. It happens every day, although so minutely that we don't notice. Time and space are inversely linked, so if you're traveling very quickly, time actually slows down for you. So if you took a plane to China, you would have aged very slightly less than someone who wasn't on that plane. If you extrapolate that, space travelers could travel for a year in space and come home to find that fifty years have passed on Earth. But I seriously doubt the kind of time travel that exists in ALL OUR YESTERDAYS will ever exist. Most physicists agree that time travel to the past is probably impossible given how we think the universe works. 



Theses are just a few of my faves!!

If you want to read some more, or ask your own questions of Cristin, head on over to THIS THREAD to join on in!  AND there is a GIVEAWAY for participants!  Cristin is giving away a signed copy of All Our Yesterdays as well as some signed bookmarks!  The Q&A ends on Sunday, Jan. 12th.