I met Dana Fredsti in February 1990, which boggles my mind. Back then, I was living in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and a friend brought her by. She wrote for Death’s Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries and many issues of Morbid Curiosity magazine, then invited me to contribute a Lorelei story to her succubus anthology Demon Lovers.
I met Dave Fitzgerald after Dana moved to San Francisco. They let me come over to their house sometimes, so I can write with them.
I am really excited about their new book Time Shards, which came out on Tuesday. To celebrate, they’re bringing the Dana and Dave Show to Borderlands Cafe in San Francisco this Saturday (2/3/18) at 3 pm. It will be really funny. I cannot wait to get my hands on this book.
Did something in the real world inspire Time Shards?
David: On our way driving home from Comic-Con a few years ago, I was telling Dana about an idea I had back in college for an RPG that was part Time Travel, part Post-Apocalypse. The more I told her, the bigger her eyes got. Finally she said, “Dave, we HAVE to make a book series out of this!” We pitched it to her editor at Titan Books and they snapped it up!
What is your favorite scene in the book — and why?
Dave: I love the all the opening vignettes, and the action scenes, and the spookier, surreal incidents that occur to our 20th-century heroine Amber — but I think my favorite scene is the first meeting between Amber and our other main character, a first-century Celt named Cam.
What was your writing process like as you wrote Time Shards?
Dana: Before we started on the actual writing, we spent some time talking about various time periods and elements we both wanted to include in the series — and whether or not particular periods/elements would work or whether we were getting a bit carried away with personal preference. We wanted the historical elements to be as accurate as possible, considering we broke the timeline up willy-nilly into pieces. My main concern was getting a scene with a megalodon in there
Dave: For Book One, we mostly divided the work into Amber chapters and Cam chapters, then passed each other’s work back and forth until we both loved it.
What was the best thing that has happened during the promotion of your book?
Dave: I was really knocked out by the response from our fellow writers! My favorite came from Scottish author Mark Wilson (author of dEaDINBURGH), who said: “Time Shards is technically accomplished, smart, visceral and is by far the most creative novel I’ve had the pleasure to read this year. This book had me tearing through the pages in the daytime and dreaming about being in Fitzgerald and Fredsti’s kaleidoscopic world during my sleeping hours.”
What do you have planned next?
Dana: We’re hard at work on Time Shards Book Two (with Book Three waiting in the wings)!
Their official bios:
David Fitzgerald is an award-winning author, historical researcher, fiction writer & editor, activist, and a popular public speaker. He is the author of Nailed and The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion series. A linguistics enthusiast, he can say almost nothing in almost every language. He’s also an ancient/world/medieval history nut, avid swordfighter, kickboxer, animal lover and rescuer, and aficionado of books, comics, and movies. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, actress/writer Dana Fredsti, and their small menagerie of cats and their dog. He is often accused of being the Ferris Bueller of San Francisco.
Dana Fredsti is the author of the Spawn of Lilith series, about a monster-fighting stuntwoman in Hollywood. She also the author of the Ashley Parker trilogy Plague Town, Plague Nation, and Plague World, which was described at Buffy meets Dawn of the Dead. Dana is an actress with a background in theatrical sword-fighting, whose credits include the cult classic Army of Darkness. She has been a producer, director, and screenplay writer for stage and film, and was the co-writer/associate producer on Urban Rescuers, a documentary on feral cats which won Best Documentary at the 2003 Valley Film Festival in Los Angeles.
To summarize Time Shards:
Imagine time itself….as a continuum…an infinite line containing everything that always was and always will be. Now imagine an Event shattering 600 million years of Earth’s timeline into fragments of space-time: time shards of everywhere & everywhen.
The world is now made of shattered remnants of the past, present, and future, all existing alongside one another in a patchwork of different time “shards.” Cities, countries, kingdoms, and nations are torn apart. Dinosaurs roam post-apocalyptic landscapes, alongside thundering buffalo herds and the automobiles of scattered refugees on disjointed stretches of modern highways. Armies from long-ago battles are on the march. Forgotten empires have returned. The new world is up for grabs.
The first book is set in Britain where Cam, a young warrior from a native tribe in Roman Britannia, and Amber, a 23-year-old from 2015 San Diego, are brought together when the Event hits. They discover a terrifying secret and find themselves in a race across their strange and dangerous new world to save it before the timeline splinters again and nothing remains.
Jonathan Maberry says: “Time Shards is a brain-bending and mind-blowing science fiction adventure. Anyone would love it. Everyone should read it. Highly recommended!”
You can pick Time Shards up at Borderlands, Mysterious Galaxy, or wherever books are sold — or order it from Amazon here.
