Rick H. Rogers Interview
Welcome to Ink & Magick. I'm your friendly neighborhood witch. What kind of spell can I get for you (or your character) today?
A spell for truth would be nice! What we are trying to do is to go back in time to find out what really happened with some of history's greatest mysteries. Wouldn't it be great if we could really get to the truth of what happened? The spell would have to sweep away all deception and reveal just the truth of the issue.
Hmm. I see what you mean. Real magick can't force people to tell the truth though, I'm afraid. However, if you can develop a clear mind and an understanding of human nature and psychology, the truth can certainly be discovered. On the other hand, you may not like what you find. Tell me more about your #scifi Shadows in Time.
14 members of the National Time Standards Agency use recently-developed and (well, almost) perfected technology to travel back in time to Dallas in 1963 to videotape the assassination of John F. Kennedy and prove once and for all who shot the President. Only 13 members return to the present time. The team makes a dangerous return visit to 1963 to recover the missing crew member. They discover the issue of who shot the president to be a lot more complicated than they'd imagined, causing them to have to make a dangerous compound trip to the past to collect additional proof of a conspiracy. The team ends up being pursued by operatives from another government agency that does not wish them to succeed and who will stop at nothing to prevent the team from the National Time Standards Agency from making what they learn public.
Excerpt:
Out of the fifteen of us in the room, thirteen of you, the thirteen who returned from Dallas in the zero-niner Echo flashback, don’t remember an event that took place on New Year’s Day, 2003. Trent, you remember what happened that day don’t you?”
“You’re talking about the nuclear bomb blast over Jerusalem, right?” said Trent. “Sure, who could forget about that?”
Trent looked around the room. What he saw was thirteen looks of absolute disbelief. Sam said, “As you can tell, Trent, they don’t know what you are talking about. Fill them in, won’t you?”
“Sure,” said Trent. A little hesitant at first, Trent continued, “It was in between the first and second gulf wars. Sadam Hussein in Iraq somehow secretly got hold of the technology to make a nuclear bomb. It was later discovered that he got the technology from the Chinese by way of the Libyans. At the time he was getting a lot of pressure from then President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to submit to searches for nuclear weapons through UN inspections. They think that at some point he just snapped. He was apparently a little ‘off’ mentally anyway.
“So, on New Year’s Day, 2003 he launched a rocket with a nuclear bomb over Jerusalem and simultaneously re-invaded Kuwait. The bomb killed thirty-five thousand instantly, and another forty-five thousand over the course of the next year or so."
There is a lot going on there. So what does the "present day" of your world look like? How is it different from our own world?
Present day looks just like what you see outside of your window right now. Only a very few people know that the technology exists for time travel. The technology is tightly controlled. It is hidden from the general public.
Yeah, seems like that's the way it would go down. How do you address the time-travel paradox?
The technology can not be used to attempt to change anything in the past. Technicians who flashback to the past are prohibited from interacting with anyone or anything from the the past in any way. When they return to the present all technicians who made the flashback go through an elaborate debriefing to insure that nothing they did during the time flashback had any impact on our present time. If any paradox ever did occur, as it does in the book of course, it is a serious matter that must be fixed if possible.
*nods* Makes sense. Which one of your characters surprised you? There's always one, isn't there? Who would have thought that your organization would have a mole? I can't tell you who it was without giving away the story. I'll just say that you don't see it coming and when you find out who she is (oops), you'll be surprised.
Intriguing... Who is your favorite (or least favorite) character and why?
In this story, my favorite character is Trent Tucker. He is a twenty-something military officer who is bright and honest. He struggles with the ethics born of the decision to discover who killed John Kennedy. Along the way, he has to also try to protect himself and his team from those who do not want the mystery solved. He did not sign up for a life or death job, but when faced with that reality he faces up to the responsibility while at the same time getting to the truth.
It sounds like his honor might get him into some trouble. If you could time-travel, would you travel to the future or the past? Where would you like to go, and why would you choose that time period? I haven't yet figured out a way to do it in my stories yet, but if I could really go back in time, I would really love to visit the time of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. That period is such a huge unknown. There are so many unanswered questions. Plus, there is simply the enormity of what was obviously a completely alien way of life at the time. How did they live every day? What did they really look like? Were they really the terrible monsters we imagine today?
Well if you do make it back, you better go prepared to defend yourself! What can readers who enjoy your book do to help make it successful? I wrote a book that I would want to read myself. If you enjoyed reading it as well, then tell someone. Authors live and die by those reader reviews on Amazon!
Truer words...What can we expect from you next?
The second book in the National Time Standards Agency stories is already being published by Black Rose Writing. It is set to be released in April, 2019. I'm really excited about the story. We do find the truth about some of history's greatest mysteries, such as the truth about the Lindburgh kidnapping and Hitler's death. However, there are a couple of surprises along the way as well as a developing romance to be had.
OOOOOO! We must keep an eye out for that! Well, thank you for stopping in today. Good luck in the future...and the past.
Rick is a US Army veteran and published author in the fields of business management and compliance training. He has jumped out of an airplane on purpose, can describe what it looks like in 140 feet of warm Caribbean water, and what it feels like to fly an airplane solo. He and his wife currently live outside of Boston, where they live with their collie named Cody. Shadows in Time is his debut novel.
You can get your copy of Shadows in Time on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.