Time Travel

My Blog is mostly empty, and most of the posts I make on the internet are usually at the Den of Shadows message board. This one started off being posted there too, but I thought, "Hey, I haven't updated my Blog in a while . . ." So here it is.

This about a novel I'm working on for the SHOMI Fiction Creative Writing Contest. (Entries due April 30.) Yes, it's a romance line, but when I read the first book, Wired by Liz Maverick, it didn't read like romance. It read like a good sci fi action story with a strong romance plot. Anyway, I think the SHOMI line is an exciting new line of romance novels, and I'd like to see myself published there.

Paradox is a sci fi time travel romance about biology major Midori Greene and time traveler Levi McNilleous. His first two attempts to prove to her that time travel is possible aren't enough for her skeptical mind. The third attempt brings him back dead. Without a moment's hesitation, Midori takes his time traveling device (a watch) and heads back in time to undo his death. Along the way, she encounters multiple versions of Levi, from those who know nothing about her to those who are hunting her down as a rogue time traveler to those who seek domination of all the timestrains (timelines).

Lately, I've been trying to figure out, out of all the various methods of time travel and paradox acquisition there are, which one matches my story the best.

* While my main character might meet another version of herself, she mostly meets other versions of the love interest (from one who has no clue who she is to one who's trying to hunt her down for being a "rogue"), which (I think) falls into the category of the multiverse and parallel dimensions, but this isn't exactly time travel.

* My main character first sets off on her time traveling adventure to change something that happened in the past that was caused by someone who came from the future (the love interest). And I have no idea what category that would fit into, except that most people say you can't actually change the past because what has happened has happened and therefore it can't be changed, etc..

* I end up dealing with the Free Lunch paradox because my main character is supposed to have written the thesis "A Practical Guide to Time Travel" which allows the love interest's organization in the future to actually be able to time travel. However, at the beginning of the story, my main character knows nothing of time travel and doesn't even get interested in time travel until she meets the love interest and starts traveling through time with a device she supposedly made.

* I know that the ending has to do with streamlining or converging the timelines so that there is only one timeline (the one that my main character wants and not the one that the villain wants, who, yes, is another version of the love interest).

I'm trying to work on plotting out my story because how complex it is once you add in everybody's timelines, and trying to figure out how many versions of essentially the same character I can get away with. Also, I need to figure out what the minimum number of alternate versions I need.