From Dreams to Reality: How This Time Found Me

I never planned to write a time travel romance. The story found me, quite literally, in my dreams. In 2014, I woke up with a vivid scene in my mind: a woman returning to her college campus, stepping through a mysterious door, and finding herself transported back in time for one perfect hour with her best friend Will. The guy she had loved and never told. The one who’d been killed shortly after they graduated. I told my sister about it that morning, thinking it might make an interesting story someday.

But the dreams weren’t finished with me. In 2015, I had another powerful dream that filled in more of the narrative – Lauren’s desperate race to save Will, her chance to right an old wrong, and the way love might bend the rules of time itself. 

That summer, the words poured out of me – 70,000 of them. The basic framework was there: Lauren’s unexpected journey through time, her deep connection with Will, and her mission to change destiny. But something told me the story wasn’t quite complete.

Nine years later, in 2024, I knew it was time. Working with my editor, I refined and deepened the story, adding scenes like “Kitchen Music” that showed how friendship could bloom into something more profound. Together we shaped This Time into what it was always meant to be – an 80,000-word novel about love, second chances, and the courage to fight for what matters most.

Sometimes the stories that matter most take time to find their way into the world. Like Lauren, I had to trust that the right moment would come.