About the Book

Book: The Time Door

Author: Shannon McDermott

Genre: Adult Science Fiction

Release date: October 8, 2024

A reckless last mission on Mars, a crusade for justice on Earth …

Reuben Jackson is the only one who still cares about Mars. In the shambles of the Great Collapse, Earth has abandoned the Mars explorers to their fate. But Reuben will make a stand for the Mars team—even against the powerfully united politicians and scientists.

In too deep, he discovers hidden conspiracies and unexpected allies.

As the conflict mounts on Earth, time runs down on Mars. Left to face Mars alone, Commander Donegan Moynihan and his team have no hope of surviving after their supplies are gone. Willing to accept a quicker death than starvation, the explorers strike out on a dangerous mission. They venture deep inside the ancient volcano of Arsia Mons, into perils and secrets long buried. What they discover would move mountains on Earth—but will it be enough to save themselves?

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Author Interview

1. Do you consider yourself a plotter or a pantser (or a hybrid)?
A hybrid. When I begin a book, I have a setting, a small collection of characters, and a few ideas
about what should happen. I figure out the rest as I go. But I never write a scene without notes on
who is in it, what happens, and why it matters. I work with a general idea of the whole story, and
a detailed outline of the next three or so chapters.

2. What is your favorite part about writing?
The endgame of the story is the best and the easiest to write. At the beginning, you are trying to
make something of half-formed characters and half-formed ideas. In the middle, you are trying
to weave the plot threads together and wondering if it all truly works. But in the last act, every
road is meeting and you are going home.

3. What is your least favorite part about writing?
Transitional moments can be tricky, especially those that revolve around movement. For
example, your heroine hears a mysterious noise downstairs. She creeps down the stairs,
through the living room, and into the kitchen, where she finds the thing that went bump and the
party really starts. But those moments between hearing the noise and discovering the
intruder—it usually takes some effort to get the pacing and level of detail right.

4. Do you have a way to keep track of your story ideas?
I have a dedicated notebook for ideas that I may use in a future project. Sometimes I use it, too.
And sometimes I keep the ideas in my head, and if I forget them—well, how good could they
have been?

5. How long does it usually take you to write a book?
I want to say two years. But with my current project almost at a standstill as I work to complete
my degree, I have to adjust that to “too long.”

About the Author

Shannon McDermott is an author of science fiction and has been occupied for years with constructing scenarios of the colonization of Mars. Always a fan of the genre, she reviews Christian speculative fiction with Lorehaven. Her interests include history, classic

literature, and lattes. She lives in the great Midwest, where she does her best to avoid icy weather, sweltering heat, and tornadoes, according to the season.

More from Shannon

There is a story of an abandoned space colony. Still young, still unsteady, and suddenly cut off from the mother planet—the colony will either learn fast to survive alone, or it will die altogether.

The story has been told again and again, a thousand variations on the old theme. When I was getting acquainted with it, through battered paperbacks and anthologies gathered from the old “scientifiction” magazines, I noticed that the colonies were usually abandoned because of a space plague, or aliens, or interplanetary war.

Exotic, exciting problems, the stuff of science fiction. But I had a thought: What if the reason for abandoning a space colony were a bit prosaic? What if there was just no more money?

The national debt is very much a thing (and an ever-growing thing, at an ever-increasing rate). We would be in trouble if that debt were ever called, or even if no more could be contracted. If it suddenly became time to pay the piper, if the money running off the press was no longer good enough—America couldn’t afford to support a colony on Mars. And we would have too many problems of our own to care very much about theirs.

A classic sci-fi story with a modern twist, something fantastic mixed with something prosaic. I liked it.

As I set to work on the idea, I soon made another variation to the theme. The abandoned colony did not take the whole stage. I gave equal space to those who had abandoned it. Good or bad, they had their reasons; they had their story, too. And as I began to write it, I realized that both stories were about survival. The struggle over whether they survived, and how, and what they would become on the other side.

These ideas grew into The Time Door—two parallel stories, separated by the distance between Mars and Earth, and yet united in the end. Whether abandoned on Mars, or caught in the collapse on Earth, they all need a way out; they all need to find a door.