Kenzie Mathews: “Hourglass” from STRANDED (Contest)

Kenzie Mathews: “Hourglass” from STRANDED (Contest)

UPDATE: The winner of the Amazon gift card is…Mary Preston! Congrats!
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I had 1930 screwball comedies in mind when I wrote “Hourglass.” I love those movies. The hero has a great sense of humor, the heroine is a hot mess like me, and craziness ensues. I also wanted to include my other love, Science Fiction/Fantasy. I grew up devouring Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Tolkien, and numerous other fantastical authors. Blending these two loves was fun.

Kenzie Mathews

Excerpt from “Hourglass”

With danger all around them, time-hopping graduate students find it hard
to keep their clothes on while their time machine glitches

I’m in Pompeii when I lose my hourglass. That’s not good. They’re tiny things really, meant to look like charms. Mine’s on a necklace. I lost it running. Because what else do you do when there’s lava involved? Or about to be involved. It’s a disaster, and I’m without an hourglass to help me escape.

Tears spring to my eyes. So now, I can’t see while I’m running, and then a solid bar suddenly stops my forward momentum—a big hairy arm. I fight blindly, my arms spinning like windmills. I strike flesh.

“Stop it, Shawnie! I’m trying to save us both!”

I recognize the voice, it’s growling texture. The man holding me is Finn, my archnemesis. Okay, not really. He’s just competing against me because we both want to finish our theses on time travel and our approaches are polar opposites. His thesis will tackle the mechanics, completely missing the richness of history at our fingertips, which my more anthropological thesis addresses.

But now I’m lost in time without my hourglass. Hence, Pompeii and lava. I stop struggling. It was useless anyway. His body is rock-hard solid. It’s like pounding my fists against a fleshy, sexy wall.

No. Wait. Not sexy—archnemesis.

“What do you want, Finnegan?” I grit out.

He laughs. All around us, chaos, the ground shaking, peopling jostling past us as they flee toward the shore. We should be running, too, but I can see the hourglass Finn’s holding up in his large fist. The sands are running out. I close my eyes because there’s always a flash of bright blinding light, and I’ll be damned if Finn doesn’t kiss me just as we enter time…

Get your copy of Stranded: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology here!

Contest

Have you ever dreamed of traveling through time? Which era would you want to visit?
Comment for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

8 thoughts on “Kenzie Mathews: “Hourglass” from STRANDED (Contest)”

  2. I think time travel would be fun. If I were to go the past, it’d be Regency England. or Edwardian England

  3. I’d only want to travel if I could ensure it’d be a time-limited visit, Kenzie! I’ve been curious about ancient China during various periods, but again, it’d be great to visit if you were rich 😉 Life was super hard when you were poor :/ And really enjoyed Hourglass!

  4. Ancient Egypt holds a lot of appeal. More curiosity than anything else.

  5. I have thought about it but never in terms of somewhere specific. I just think about going back in time with all of the knowledge that we have about medicine, for instance, and the ability to impact lives…unless you couldn’t change anything.

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