We're celebrating the release of Time for the Lost and the box set of the YA time travel series, The Call to Search Everywhen, with a blog tour and a Facebook party! Join the party for bookish games and giveaways. Keep reading for an except from the latest book in the series, Time for the Lost.
Read Calla and Valcas' full story in this collection of the first three books in The Call to Search Everywhen! More than 600 pages of YA time travel adventure inside the following full-length novels:
In TRAVEL GLASSES, Calla Winston falls into a world of worlds after meeting Valcas, a time traveler who traverses time and space with a pair of altered sunglasses. He offers his further protection in exchange for a promise. After learning that his search for her was no mere coincidence, she tracks down the inventor of the Travel Glasses in hopes of discovering more about Valcas' past and motivations. With Valcas hot on her trail, Calla hopes to find what she's looking for before he catches up.
In INSIGHT KINDLING, Calla faces charges against her for changing the past. Despite the risk of becoming lost, she accepts a dangerous travel mission that may help her find her father. She teams up with a group of talented travelers and discovers that she has a special travel talent of her own. But will that be enough to protect her and her teammates before they complete their mission?
TIME FOR THE LOST completes the story line of the first three books in the series. The travel team reunites for a mission they never saw coming: a journey to a world caught between life and death, and hidden within the deepest recesses of time. Ivory rediscovers a friend and Ray learns the meaning behind his tattoo. But the connections they make between travelers and the lost may twist the core of the Time and Space Travel Agency inside out.
Excerpt from Time for the Lost
Carefully, I climbed the clock, placing my feet on the times of other worlds, in order to see more along the top. Fragile materials supported my weight as if I weighed nothing—were nothing—but a breath of air in time and space. I climbed on, grabbing timepieces with my hands and pulling myself upward along the tower.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled when I reached the topmost third of the tower. An hourglass sat perched on the tower’s tapered tip, like a golden star crowning one of Earth’s Christmas trees. The top half of the glass was mostly full. Both halves rested on a crescent moon-shaped base. The hourglass hung balanced, lightly swinging back and forth, ready to flip over when empty.
I made my way back down the tower, wondering whether time ever ends, whether it could be eternal—how a system of worlds with World Builders could possibly have an end. My brain ached as I tried to make sense of it all, wondering where to begin searching for Calla.
My attention turned to something bright and painful: a miniature White Tower, representing the world my parents created, the timeline of which reset when I was born.
The White Tower replica had no clock hands. There were no digital measures of time, no sand trickling from the top of a glass. But I knew how the time was recorded and what time it was at the tower, based on the brightness of its glow. Like the sky which backlit the clock tower, the White Tower was a dazzling white. From what I’d learned as a child, the more brightly it glowed, the later its time and the closer to its end.
I tightened my grip and groaned. “Why does every search lead back to the White Tower? Have I traveled here to the Clock Tower only to be faced with it again?” I descended a few more steps toward the base of the tower. “Is there no way to escape the past—to leave it behind me?”
“You don’t appear to be biding time, friend.”
I nearly fell from the tower. I glanced beneath me to see who’d spoken.
The man who looked up at me was thin, with a nose as straight and long as his gangly limbs. He regarded me with eyes of purple ice. His hair, white like snow, was bound in a loose tail. Friend indeed.
I exhaled, relieved. Everything about him radiated Aborealiandescent.
I jumped the last few feet from the Clock Tower and signaled to him, the way I would have greeted anyone in my mother’s home country, Aboreal.
His amethyst eyes met mine as he drew his lip into a thin line. He signaled back, and then frowned. “I disclaimed Aboreal long ago, but I respect the gesture.”
“You’re from my mother’s homeland,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure.”
The former Aborealian nodded and held out his hand.
“Valcas Hall,” I said, clasping it.
He grinned. “You can call me Nick.”
I squinted. Aborealians had no last names, so I hadn’t expected one. Aborealian citizens were simply individuals of Aboreal. But the man’s first name didn’t fit the metric. Nick didn’t have the same significance to it as Ivory and Sable, shades of white and black. He should have had a name that reflected his wintry hair. Nick meant nothing in Aborealian.
I opened my mouth to say something.
“I’ve renamed,” he said. “When I denounced Aboreal, I changed my first name and adopted a surname of sorts.”
“Which is?”
“Time,” he said. “I’m now Nick, no longer of Aboreal, but of Time.”
Nick of Time. Was this guy serious? If he noticed my cringe at the horrible pun, he didn’t show it.
“What brings you to this part of the worlds, friend?”
“A search.” I looked around, disturbed. “How did you get here?”
“I’m the keeper of the Clock Tower. Welcome to my home.”
***
Chess Desalls is the author of the YA time travel series, The Call to Search Everywhen. She's a longtime reader of fantasy and sci-fi novels, particularly classics and young adult fiction. Her nonfiction writing has led to academic and industry publications. She’s also a contributing editor for her local writing club’s monthly newsletter. The California Writers Club, South Bay branch, has awarded two of Chess’ stories first place for best short fiction. When she's not reading or writing, she enjoys traveling and trying to stay in tune on her flute.
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