THE CHRISTMAS EVE PROMISE—Interview with Elyse Douglas

I received a copy of the the book The Christmas Eve Promise and had a chance to interview the authors, who use the pen name Elyse Douglas. My questions are in bold; the writers’ responses are in roman.

You’ve constructed a story that is fascinating and fast-paced and recreated a world that is long gone. And whether the times are different or not, people still have the same desires for love, for revenge, and for home. What led you to place the characters in 1925?

First, thank you, Stephen, for joining the book tour, and thanks for the questions.  I had to grab a second cup of coffee and another big peanut butter cookie while I pondered them. 

There were many reasons for selecting the 1920s as a landing spot for time travel in The Christmas Eve Promise.  The Roaring Twenties was a period of dramatic social and political change.  For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and the economic growth made many Americans wealthy, until the crash of 1929.  In the 1920s, the United States became a “consumer society.”

In addition:

1. The19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote, was passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920. 

2. World War One ended in 1918 and, in the 1920s, the American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector, Gertrude Stein, had coined the phrase “The Lost Generation,” referring to the “disoriented, wandering, directionless” spirit of many war survivors in the early postwar period.

3. The Eighteenth Amendment—which illegalized the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol—was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1917.  In 1919 the amendment was ratified by the three-quarters of the nation’s states required to make it constitutional.  Throughout the 1920s, booze was illegal:  bathtub gin, the bootlegger and the speakeasy were born.

4. The Model T Ford was an automobile produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927.  It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans.

It allowed people, who had hardly ventured twenty miles from their homes in their lifetimes, to travel to nearby towns and cities, or to distant states.  It gave women the independence to break free from the restrictions of Victorian standards, allowing them to hang out in speakeasys, drink cocktails, smoke, and flirt with narcotics.  Others could putter off in their boyfriend’s car, away from the watchful eyes of their parents, and do what young women do: have fun. 

As to the novel, all the above added spice for endless dramatic plot possibilities for action and romance, in conjunction with offering a delicious menu of potential characters.

What new aspects of Eve and Patrick did you discover as you developed their characters in this novel?

Patrick reveals to the reader a truth about his father that he had never revealed to Eve: his father had lost his way in life.  He had taken to drink, and many a night, Patrick had had to haul him from a saloon, drunk and feisty, or drag him off the street where he’d stumbled and was begging for money so he could buy more whiskey.  Patrick had painted a shiny image of his father to Eve, portraying him as a fine Irish gentleman with wit and charm, with a bit of the kindly philosopher about him. 

Eve is a pragmatist, priding herself on being a rational scientist.  At the beginning of the Christmas Eve series, she struggles with belief in the occult and in time travel.  In The Christmas Eve Promise (Book 4), her and Patrick’s time travel experiences have given her a much bigger picture of reality, and one that she continues to wrestle with.  

Patrick goes into the past and attempts to change the future that he wants to return to. What other aspects of the future do you think Patrick changed when he stepped into Central Park in 1925?

This question was touched upon both in Book 1 and Book 3, not so much in this book.  But as to your question, I’ll let Eve answer it as she did in The Christmas Eve Secret (Book 3) when she was speaking to her time travel friend, Joni.

“Do you know your neighbor next door in 2016, and their history, or the person across the hall or down the block? Do those people change history all that much as they live their little lives?  We come and go like passing clouds.  I don’t think that by saving Patrick’s daughter, history will change all that much.  The First and Second World Wars will still happen.  I’m sure all the presidents will still get elected, and some probably assassinated.  But the world?  I don’t think one or two, or even three people are going to change the world all that much.  In small ways, yes, but overall, big picture?   Not much.  No matter what happens, no matter how we might have changed the world, this whirling blue planet will still just keep right on spinning around, evolving.  Evolution is constant and relentless, no matter what happens.”

What are some things from the 1920s that you wish we still had, but that have vanished from our society?

The fashion, the arts, the music, and the good manners.  For the most part, it was a polite society.

I’m interested in how Lavinia was transformed by meeting Patrick. What do you imagine was changed in her life after she met Patrick and then watched him leave?

One can imagine how Lavinia’s consciousness was changed.  Patrick was from a hundred years into the future.  Ever since Lavinia was a little girl, her mother, Joni, had told stories about Patrick and Eve and about her own time travel experience.  So, perhaps Patrick had seemed like a storybook character from a fairy-tale.  Suddenly, there he was in the flesh.  Incarnate.  Perhaps he appeared to her as the Prince in Cinderella.

Lavinia’s world, once a three-layer cake, is now a multi-tiered wedding cake, surrounded by a lavish banquet.  The infinite possibilities of her personal life, the world, and the universe are forever expanded and transformed.

Even with her vast wealth, Lavinia surely hungers for the romance and the promise of the future, something money can’t buy.  Her mother, Joni, willed her the time lantern.  Will Lavinia use it?  In all honesty, would we risk time travel by lighting a time lantern?  Would we have the courage to be hurled off into the unknown, to a time and place we know nothing about?  A strange world without family or friends?

I haven’t read your previous novels in the series, so I wonder: what do you think would happen if someone like Joe McGuire got a hold of the lantern? What kind of “mischief” would he get himself into?

This idea was explored in Book 3, where an unsavory type did use the lantern in the past to time travel to the future.  His goal: to gather past stock market data and return to his time to make a fortune.

I suspect that many people, given the opportunity, would use the lantern for similar purposes.  I also suspect that Joe McGuire, being a smart, corrupt, practical man, would not risk time travel himself.  After all, he already enjoys wealth and power and all that they provide.  Since the lantern does not travel with the time traveler, I suspect he’d test the validity of the lantern first.  He’d use some “volunteer” for an experiment.  After being convinced of the lantern’s power, he’d sell it to the highest bidder.

Nikola Tesla is obviously the instigator of time travel in your works. What other aspects of his invention do you think you might use in your creative works?

This is an interesting question, and I’m not sure how to answer it.  However, below is an excerpt from an unedited letter Tesla wrote to his mother that I find utterly fascinating.

“I have decided to provide the mankind with the gift it deserves and to return to Europe, to You, Mother. Governments here are the same as the ones back home. I have realized now, at the very end, that the mankind depends on governments and the individual cannot change the world on himself. But that strange voice still bothers me. I know it is connected to You, my experiment, with something transcendental…”

Regarding your question, I will let the writer Rainbow Rowell have the last word.  “I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?”

Thanks for the questions, Stephen.  They were fun.

Elyse Douglas

About Elyse Douglas

Elyse Douglas is the pen name for the married writing team Elyse Parmentier and Douglas Pennington. Elyse grew up near the sea, roaming the beaches, reading and writing stories and poetry, receiving a master’s degree in English Literature.  She has enjoyed careers as an English teacher, an actress and a speech-language pathologist. Douglas has worked as a graphic designer, a corporate manager and an equities trader.  He attended the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and played the piano professionally for many years. Website: www.elysedouglas.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/douglaselyse Facebook: www.facebook.com/elyse.authorsdouglas

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