Time Travel in the 18th Century …
Time Turned Upside Down …
March 1775
Benjamin Franklin is leaving his London home at 36 Craven Street for the last time. Short of being ridden out of town on a rail, the current political climate down the street at Whitehall Palace has become less than cordial for Mr. Franklin. He’s been yelled at, booed, and called some pretty nasty names that even your mother didn’t know! A good thing too! Soap didn’t taste that great in the 18th century!
But that’s the least of his reasons for leaving his address of over 15 years. Franklin has a secret, and he needs to get back to the colonies before some terrible things happen. Mainly, the founding fathers of a soon to be revolutionary concept … we don’t need no stinkin’ king! … were marked to be exterminated before the whole thing could even get into second gear.
Thus begins his quest by sea to Williamsburg, Virginia, to consult with his Freemason brothers on how to warn each of the men on the list that Franklin carries with him from London.
But before a plan can be prepared, Franklin disappears!
A simple kidnapping would be understandable to those present that evening, but this was far from a normal kidnapping.
When Franklin regains his senses, he realizes that even though he was just down the road from where he was moments before, this was not his time, nor his reality. In this year 2024, things didn’t work out as he, or the patriots of 1775, had hoped. The British had won the American Revolution, and he was about to meet someone who did not want that to change.
Facts vs. Fiction … And How to Write It
Although Benjamin Franklin did leave London in March 1775, he landed in Philadelphia, not Williamsburg, where he helped to draft the Declaration of Independence. Although there was no secret British plot to kill the founding fathers, at least not yet! One person, a rather tall fellow by the name of General George Washington, found out that checking references on his own staff would have been a good idea!
As to whether Benjamin Franklin ever travelled in time, the odds are pretty good that he didn’t. But, for a guy who invented a lot of strange, but useful items, it wouldn’t be unheard of. No record exists that he had a time machine in his basement at 36 Craven Street, London. Bones in his basement, on the other hand, were a fact! (Saving Liberty – London fall 2025)
My writing partner and I originally crafted Saving Liberty as a screenplay. When I took on the task of writing the novel, and then conceptualizing a series of novels, I didn’t realize the massive undertaking of adapting from screen to a book. A 100-page screenplay would need to evolve into a 350-page-plus novel. Everything my screenwriting coaches had taught me … lots of dialogue and brief descriptions of scenes were totally reversed! Those concise descriptions needed to be massively expanded. Nearly every line of dialogue needed to be followed by, he said, she said, etc. (In a screenplay, we only put the character name above their speech and then they babble on.)
Based On A True Story?
Williamsburg, Philadelphia, London and Paris were all frequented by Ben in the 18th century. And over the course of the four-book series, he will return to those locations, but not necessarily by the method of transportation he originally took, or when he was supposed to be there. We will meet historical characters, but not necessarily those Ben actually met, or even could have met. This is an alternate reality, time travel adventure.
As one of my first screenwriting instructors laid out to the class … “if you want real history, don’t go to the movies … read a history book!”
Have fun!
