This week, TTNexus interviews author Joanna Volavka, author of the young adult novel Threadwalkers. Click here for our review of the book.
Miranda, the heroine of Threadwalkers, likes books, cats, and Amelia Earhart. How similar is she to the sixteen-year-old Joanna Volavka?
Miranda and teenage me share a few things, particularly the love of books and cats, but we are also quite different. I was a total band geek in high school and also in a bunch of clubs and, while not a “popular” kid, was very outgoing, whereas Miranda pretty much just hangs with her closest friends and is a little more on the introverted side. Of course there will always be a little of me in each of my characters, though! Adult Joanna, for instance, is fascinated by Amelia Earhart and various other unexplained bits of history.
What made you want to write a time travel novel?
This story didn’t begin its life as a time travel tale—it actually began as a ghost story and grew into time travel as I asked myself what kind of scientific explanation could be given to ghost sightings. Seeing different points in time clicked for me, so naturally the next question was if you can see another point in time, is it possible to visit that other point? Hello, time travel!
You currently live in Chicago, but most of Threadwalkers takes place in North Carolina. Is there any particular reason you set the novel in the southeast?
Looks like I need to update my bio in a few places—I relocated to southern California in December, and am basking in the mild winter weather! But I set the story in North Carolina because that is where I went to high school and it’s still home in a way. I wanted to delve into a setting I knew, and while the town of Henley is thoroughly fictional, it has elements from many places I’ve lived or visited, including in North Carolina, Illinois, and Michigan.
Time travel in Threadwalkers, using snagged threads in the fabric of time, makes me think of the old phrase “a stitch in time saves nine.” But how did you actually dream up this unique metaphor?
Using literal fabric to explain spacetime was an image that settled in my brain many years ago when I started reading about string theory while bored at work. (I guess other people play Candy Crush but I was interested in particle physics and other things that I never took as classes. Wow, I’m a nerd.) I think it partly grew out of other stories I read as well, like A Wrinkle in Time, and wormholes and so forth, as connecting disparate points in spacetime. Granted, I took a lot of liberties for the sake of the fictional story so I’m sure a real physicist would not be impressed, but that was the source.
The conclusion of Threadwalkers leaves a few loose ends (pardon the pun). Do you plan to write more novels featuring Miranda and the other Walkers?
I am fully in favor of puns, and I did intentionally leave a few hanging threads! (See what I did there?) My thought was to write a fully self-contained story, but to leave myself enough space to revisit it someday if another story ever developed. Right now there is no sequel but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. Miranda has only just started to master her skills, after all!
And finally—because I always ask time travel authors this—do you think that time travel to the past will ever be possible in the real world?
Real life time travel is one of those tricky things where I’d so like to say yes, but where current physics says no… but who is to say what might happen with the way our science and technology is advancing? I do know that once you realize time is essentially a construct of how we particularly experience the universe, then it only stands to reason that there might be other ways to experience things as well, and from there, the possibilities open up. Though if I could hop in a TARDIS, I would in a heartbeat!
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