Time Runs Away with Her
Christine Potter
Time Travel Romantic Suspense, 74k
It’s not easy being Bean. Bean Donohue lives for her guitar, but her mom threw her out of the house during a snowstorm for singing. No way she’s going to get permission to go see The Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East.
Zak, her almost-boyfriend, will get drafted if he doesn’t get into art school, pot makes Bean paranoid, and her best friend can’t stop talking about sex. 1970’s not for wimps—but neither was 1885…or 1945. So why does Bean keep sliding backwards in time?
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Excerpt:
Although it was cooler than it had been upstairs, the night was still close, and the heat had made Bean slow and sleepy. I could wring out my hair like a dishrag, and it would dribble on the floor. The party swirled around her: ladies in rustling dresses of blue and yellow, gentlemen in evening jackets laughing together.
At the other end of the room was a cut crystal bowl, full of what looked like iced tea. Bean felt like she could dive into it. Standing in a circle around the punch bowl were a few more men in evening jackets.
How can you even think of wearing a jacket in this weather? She wandered over to the punch, which smelled wickedly alcoholic, like the bottle of rum Juuulia bought to make eggnog every Christmas. If she picked up one of the tiny glass cups next to the bowl and ladled punch into it, would it seem to those men in their stifling evening wear as if the glass were filling itself? That was kind of amusing, actually, but probably not a great idea. Besides, the stuff smelled like it would make you more thirsty, not less.
Maple leaves outside rustled again in the breeze, and the breeze offered no relief. She thought about Zak, and wondered if she’d be too miserable and sweaty to hug him right then, if he were with her. Which, of course, he was not. She thought about her room at home, her all-year Christmas lights, her guitar. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself back.
Nothing happened.
Outside, in the garden, Edwina laughed again. What a wonderful laugh she had! It sounded like it came straight from her belly, like she wasn’t afraid of being un-ladylike. Was she the one who had been crying on Bean’s last trip to this time and place? It certainly seemed like the same evening: the party, the Japanese lanterns, the night’s humid breeze…
Time Runs Away With Her: The Soundtrack!
I meant Time Runs Away With Her to be a time travel story and a romance…but it’s another kind of love story, too. The year is 1970. Bean Donohue, the book’s sixteen-year-old heroine, wants to be a folk-rock musician. She’s got a crush on music as big as the one she’s got on super-cute aspiring artist Zak Grant. She even slows her Simon and Garfunkel LP’s down from 33 rpm to 16 rpm to try and learn every note Paul Simon plays. That would be one tough guitar lesson! Simon was an amazing player from his earliest recordings, and Bean, a soprano, would have to transpose the songs, too. She manages “April Come She Will” pretty well. She can play “The Boxer,” too.
Bean’s best friend Suzanne plays banjo, and they duet at the local jam sessions in Stormkill, their little Hudson River town. At the beginning of the book, they’re trying to learn Country Joe and The Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die Rag”. It’s a Vietnam war protest song most famously performed at Woodstock. Country Joe and The Fish started the song by leading the crowd in “The Fish Cheer”:
Gimme an ‘F’!
Gimme an…
I don’t think I need to explain that the next letter was not “I”. Or that no firetrucks were harmed in the performance of that tune—although it was one of the reasons the Woodstock live album carried a warning to broadcasters about language.
Bean and Suzanne are gentle souls who have had to practice the convincing use of the word “shit”. They’ve gotten pretty good as saying it by the book’s opening, but they still have to consider the proper inflection of the word. Needless to say, they don’t attempt the Fish Cheer. But they do spend a lot of time in the book trying to get their cover of “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die” to sound gritty enough. It keeps sounding like a merry little polka until peanut-butter-cup-swiping Janis Joplin fan Samantha Thorne joins the band.
Sam likes The Holy Modal Rounders, too, especially their version of “Hesitation Blues”. She loans Bean the Rounders’ first album so that Bean can learn the chords
—and then uses the lyrics to tease her about Zak. Sam also turns Bean on to the Fairport Convention version of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes.” Bean, like most folks in the States in 1970, would have known only Judy Collins’ cover of the song—but the tune’s author, Sandy Denny, sings it straight from her heart on Fairport’s Unhalfbricking album. And hearing that gives Bean courage.
Bean, Sam, and Suzanne also learn and perform “Come Together” by the Youngbloods.
There’s an awful lot of Grateful Dead music in Time Runs Away With Her, too. Bean, Zak, Suzanne, and Sam see The Dead at the Fillmore East on the night before Valentine’s Day, and Bean falls in love with the band. But Zak has prepped her for the show by spending lots of time with her and Aoxomoxoa and Live Dead. Bean loves the harpsichord-like accompaniment of “Mountains of the Moon.” She’s also into “Dark Star.”
Zak likes Frank Zappa, too, especially the Hot Rats album. Bean’s favorite is the instrumental “Peaches En Regalia” from that record. And Bean and Zak both love John Lennon’s “Instant Karma” and Dr. John’s “I Walk on Guilded Splinters”.
Bean’s impossible single mom Julia—pronounced Juuuulia, like Julia Child—is a classical pianist who works as an executive secretary. She has her favorites, too, but they are not rock and roll! Bean has fallen asleep to her playing Felix Mendelssohn’s “Venetian Boat Song” her whole life. Juuulia likes to listen to Bach’s Toccata in Dm (Dorian)—NOT the better-known “Toccata and Fugue in Dm”, which she thinks is overplayed. Juuulia was an organ student in college.
It’s not classical music, and no spoilers here, but there’s also some business with Juuulia and Judy Garland’s “Over The Rainbow.” And in Bean’s time travels, she comes across some 19th century chamber music and a young woman who might sound just a little bit like Felix Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny.
So the soundtrack to this book’s all over the place. But when you’re Bean Donohue, you might find yourself in 1970—or the late 1940’s—or the end of the 19th century. It’s always good to have some traveling music.
A Playlist For Time Runs Away With Her
- April Come She Will—Simon and Garfunkel—Sounds of Silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYD-DIggB2k
- The Boxer—Simon and Garfunkel—Bridge Over Troubled Waters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LFML_pxlY
- I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die Rag—Country Joe and the Fish—Country Joe and the Fish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Y0ekr-3So
- Hesitation Blues—The Holy Modal Rounders—The Holy Modal Rounders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzZ2q0NUEZQ
- Who Knows Where The Time Goes?—Fairport Convention—Unhalfbricking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2xODjbfYw8
- Mountains of the Moon—The Grateful Dead–Aoxomoxoa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MiOKj84cOk
- The Grateful Dead Live at the Fillmore East, Feb. 14th, 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmPhb-tWgBg
- Peaches En Regalia—Frank Zappa—Hot Rats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGQxI0G6mKk
- Instant Karma!—John Lennon—Live in NY City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zekIGdWdOp0
- I Walk On Guilded Splinters—Dr. John—Gris Gris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWvdO3l4_P8
- Get Together—The Youngbloods—single https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53XyCbIJGKY
- Bach Toccata & Fugue in Dorian Dm—Peter Hurford—Great Organ Works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_esEWNcIkJk
- Over The Rainbow—Judy Garland—From The Wizard of Oz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U016JWYUDdQ
- Nocturne in G minor—Fanny Mendelssohn—played by Heather Schmidt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti1eZ2B63Ro
- Venetian Boat Song—Felix Mendelssohn—played by Pablo Cintron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBIOSL9sdR0
Author Bio:
Christine Potter lives in a small town not far from the setting of Time Runs Away With Her, near the mighty Hudson River, in a very old (1740) house with two ghosts. According to a local ghost investigator, the ghosts are harmless, “just very old spirits who don’t want to leave.” She doesn’t want them to.
Christine’s house contains two pipe organs (her husband is a choir director/organist), two spoiled tom cats, and too many books. She’s also a poet, and the author of two collections of verse, Zero Degrees at First Light, and Sheltering in Place. Christine taught English and Creative Writing for years in the Clarkstown Schools. She DJ’s free form rock and roll weekly on Area24radio.com, and plays guitar, dulcimer, and tower chimes.
Website: http://chrispygal.weebly.com/
Facebook book page for Time Runs Away: * https://www.facebook.com/beanstravels?fref=ts
Twitter: @chrispygal
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