I’m thrilled to be included in the Amazon bestseller When To Now: A Time Travel Anthology. My contribution is the steampunk LGBT romance “Ten Minutes After Teatime.”

A Victorian spinster-scientist and a Viking shield-maiden find passion and danger in Dark-Age Ireland.

Now, doesn’t that sound fun? Can a buttoned-up suffragette and a battle-worn commander beat the odds to find their happy ever after? And what inspired me to write such a tale?

Dear reader, it was my hometown of Sheffield, in Yorkshire, England. Way back in the mists of time, during the last ice age, the area known today as Sheffield was first settled by humans.

In the ninth century, Vikings arrived via the River Sheaf and intermarried with the local Anglo-Saxons. Viking blood flows through the veins of many of today’s Sheffielders, myself included. This might explain why I’ve long been fascinated by Norse sagas, heroes, monsters, and shield maidens.

You can learn more about the historical maidens in this video:

Interestingly, women held more legal rights in Norse society than they did in Victorian England. We can debate why females lost their rights to own property, to vote, to divorce, but the point is that by the nineteenth century, women were legally worse off than their ancient ancestors.

This must surely have rankled the suffragettes as they began their hard-won battle to reclaim their rights. My heroine, Miss Minerva Minett is such a woman. In my tale, she meets the sea-faring Alfhild Hrafnkelsdóttir, and the two inadvertently forge a new tomorrow that marries Norse philosophy with Victorian invention.

I hope you enjoy their adventure and the many other terrific tales in our anthology. Seventeen stories, sixteen writers. You’ll certainly find our pages worth your time!

Tomorrow, Barbara Russell will continue our book release blog hop about When to Now on her website HERE.  Don’t forget to check it out!