In the course of being an author and constantly coming up with new ideas for books, there tends to be a misconception that what I’m writing is original and no one has ever thought of it before. And though that could be true, sometimes it just so happens that someone else thought of the same thing before you and already wrote their story. Now it’s not wrong to have similar stories out there, and there are bound to be similarities between almost any book and any other. But this past week I was surprised to find a youth trilogy that lined up so well with an idea me and my sister had come up with.
Alicia and I were inspired one day while driving to create a story involving time travel. There are plenty of books out there that use this concept, so it’s not surprising that I stumbled across one of them in a Thrift Store this past Saturday. But what did surprise me was all of the ways its story lined up with our plan.
We hadn’t written anything down yet, but we were thinking of having two kids traveling to the past, maybe even to different countries and then one of them getting stuck in the past. My sister would write from the perspective of one of the characters and I’d do the other. One would be living in the past and having to adapt and the other would be searching for a way to reunite with their lost friend. We thought that there could be an age difference that is significantly changed by the time they meet each other again.
So when I found a book called The Time Travelers The Gideon Trilogy and read the description of two kids getting transported to the past, I looked at my sister and said “It’s our book!” We promptly bought it and I spent the next couple of days reading. It was so cool to see the basic idea we’d come up with fleshed out in a complete book, and not only a book but a series. I ended up getting the next two books in the trilogy from the library and I’m deeply engrossed in book 2 at the present.
I was particularly excited when I discovered that our two heroes do get separated in the series and one has to travel back to the past to find the other. There also happens to be a mistake so that they have very different ages from each other. I can’t wait to see how this series ends.
Even though it seems like the book we wanted to write has already been written, I think my sister and I might still write our own version one day. And perhaps this book will inspire some of our creations.
So if you like youth fiction and are looking for a new series, check out The Time Travelers, or check out my Finding Home series if you want to. And if you’re an author, just know that even though your work may not be completely original or unique, it can still be your own and a lot of fun for someone out there to read.
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