TEN THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX

THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX is out into the world! I was thrilled to be able to work with World Weaver Press on this novella. A lot goes into writing a book, and today, I'd like to give you a glimpse "behind the curtain," so to speak and share with you ten things you (probably) didn't know about this third installment of the Place in Time series!
 
#10 – I wrote the first draft of this novella in January 2017, which was the month before I submitted THE CONTINUUM to World Weaver Press.
 
#9 – There's a character in this novella who shares a surname with one of my critique partners. This wasn't intentional, but after I realized it, I decided to stick with it.
 
#8 – Cass, the protagonist in this book, was born on April 14, 2115 – exactly 203 years after the Titanic disaster and 3 years after the Continuum disaster.
 
#7 – Cass owns a "Save the Pigeons" t-shirt, which I imagine includes a picture of one of Mo Willem's drawings.
 
#6 – Cass's parents named her after her maternal grandmother; but I named her after a Trojan princess from Greek mythology. (Check out John Scalzi's blog on May 10 for more on that!). During the early draft stages, I'd originally called her Poppy.

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#5 – In order to come up with names for the other girls that Cass meets in this book, I looked up the most popular names of babies born in the 1890s.  Other popular girls' names that didn't make the cut: Ethel, Edna, Mabel, and Myrtle.
 
#4 – In this story, Cass uses her mother's surname, Argent, which is the French word for "silver" – a reference to Juliet Silver, another character of mine whom I've written about in a series of steampunk stories.
 
#3 – The working title for this story as I was drafting it was THE COMPOSSIBILITY THEORY, but as I was working on it, the story took such a different turn that the title didn't fit anymore.

#2 – One incident that did not make its way into this story is the June 12, 1914 Bagdad Train Wreck, in which the eastbound Santa Fe California Limited train struck a freight train on a siding outside of Los Angeles, killing 4 passengers and injuring 20. It wasn't until after I'd completed my story that I discovered this little bit of history and realized that Cass could have been on that train that day.

​And the #1 thing you (probably) didn't know about THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX:

​This is not the final book in the series! I've been busy working on book four, entitled THE CAUSALITY LOOP, which takes place a year after the events of book three. I'm looking forward to sharing more about it with you all soon!
 
Follow me online @wendynikel or subscribe to my newsletter at www.wendynikel.com for updates!

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Wendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she's left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and is forthcoming from Analog and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. For more info, visit wendynikel.com

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