Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of, then again, a podcast by the Northeast Georgia History Center. I'm Libba Beecham, director of operations, and today I have with me author Kim McGeehey to share his series the Time Patriot. It's history, it's time travel, it's science fiction, and it's packed with so many answers to what if. Kim, thanks so much for joining me today.

Thanks for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

So before we dive into the series itself, I'd like to give our listeners a little background about you. You pursued writing professionally a bit later in life, before you were a high school math teacher and later a computer programmer. And I'm curious, what led you to pursuing writing?

That's a good question. I've always been interested in it. My mother was a writer, and she wrote quite a bit of stuff. She was shy about submitting her stuff to any place, so she never thought it was good enough. I went back and read through it, and one of the things I did that got me started was when create Space came out with Amazon where you could set up your books and sell them. I submitted her first two books that she did. I actually had them done for her, had a nice cover put on them, and she loved, you know, I don't know if they've sold well. I haven't checked in a long time. That kind of got me started.

Yeah.

And your experience as a teacher and going into computer programming, did that have any kind of influence into you pursuing science fiction in any way, or were you ever interested in those concepts of time travel and science fiction, even as your career as a teacher and computer programmer?

Even before that, yeah. When I was a kid, I liked science fiction books. I read Sound of Thunder, which is a great science fiction story about time travel and the Time machine. And those really got me interested. And I was a member of all the geeks, the techno geeks in high school. I just loved that stuff. It was a lot of fun. It was my crew, my following, my entourage, whatever you want to call. Yeah, a bunch of people together just loving science fiction. Another part of where I got started was when I was a high school teacher. Sometimes we would have days. I taught some advanced classes. And when we got done last time, we got done early, the students were all really smart, and so I would tell them a story or tell them about something I had done. And years later, when Facebook came out, some old students found me and sent me invitations to connect. And one of them suggested, why don't you write down some of those stories that you used to tell us, and I bet they would be good. And so I wrote a story called the Time Parachute, which is about me and my brother. We were like, 1213, something like that. We were camping out in the backyard for the first time, and it was a pretty funny story. So I sent that to her, and she said, do you mind if I show this to my editor? And I'm like, editor? And so she worked for the Southern Reader, which is electronic magazine, and it's still out today. It's got some great stuff. It's all things Southern.

Well, that's really special. To have someone that you clearly inspired and taught and was a mentor to, to then later inspire you. It sounds like that might have been sort of the seed of, you know, you have this gift of storytelling. It sounds like your mother did as well. But to share that with a wider audience, sometimes it just takes that little push or it takes that little bit of motivation.

That's what it was. I had also had an idea. I'm a big movie person. I love to watch movies, action thrillers or science fiction movies. And so I thought of an idea for a movie, and it ended up being my first book, Time limits. I tried to talk my mom into reading it, into writing it, and she said, you can do it. I don't need to do that. You can do it. So finally I did, and it was great fun to write. And I put it, as you and I discussed a little earlier, I put it in what used to be the Bell South Tower downtown. I worked there in the security department, so I knew pretty much where everything was.

Yeah.

And so I got some more ideas about it from there, and so I based it there. And I think it's a pretty interesting story. It's time travel, science fiction, but it's also a love story.

Yeah.

Actually, one of my friends beat me up about this. Stop telling people it's science fiction. It's a love story.

Well, you know what? It can be both.

That's right.

And in a lot of ways with the concept of time travel and in your series A Time Patriot, I mean, there's also a lot of genre mixing there with science fiction and historical fiction, but you're looking to the future, but you're definitely incorporating the past, too. And so it's great to know that you've always been inspired by this idea of time travel, but to take that concept and then apply it to a story of your own making, when did you become inspired to write the time Patriot specifically?

Oh, that's a really fun question, really? Maybe a lot of your listeners feel this way. Maybe you feel this way, too. My wife and I spend a whole lot of time watching the news on television, and we get really frustrated because politicians and commentators both say such ridiculous things, and we yell back to them like they can hear it. And I had already written four time travel stories. They're basically mysteries and a little politics, but not taken a particular side about politics. And I'd already written four. And I just happened to say, I wonder what our Founding Fathers would feel about what we've done with this great experiment in Republican government. Right. And Martha, my wife, she goes, well, you got a time machine. Why don't you go ask them?

Yeah, right.

I was. Hmm. Okay. That sounds like a good idea.

Yeah.

And that was the birth of the idea of the concept. And so we started thinking about what would we want to have?

And so, you know, to go back and wonder the big what ifs that. Of course, many history nerds and historians alike like to ask, what would someone like one of your central characters, George Washington, what would he think of the United States at this point in time? But in your story, this is in the future. And so could you set the stage for us about when and what the stakes are, what the risks are and challenges are of the world that you've created in your story in the year 2037?

Sure. It's no secret that our country is very divided now. There's a lot of factions, and it just seems to be getting worse. So the setting for the time Patriot is about 14 years in the future, in the year 2037. And we have a new president, and he has a history with our time travel guide from another book. But the United States is right on the verge of a shooting civil war, and there's nobody that can speak to everybody and talk. Nobody, because everybody gets attributed. We know how the media does stuff. And when they used to be just the facts, ma'am. Now they tend to commentate. And this is, whether you're on this side or that side, it's the same. So I guess he thought, know, who would people listen to? And so that in the president's mind, let's go back and see if we can bring George Washington forward to talk to the American people, because maybe he will have credibility with all the people. And the subtitle for the first book is Hail Mary Pass, because when you think about it, it is. It's absolutely a desperate last effort to try to avoid a civil war.

Wow.

And so why not go back to the founders now? Of course, there are multiple founders. What led you to decide that George Washington would be the central historical figure to resolve this issue?

That's a good question. So the first person we thought of was Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the Declaration of Independence or wrote the know. There's. He was a fiery character, and he was really tall, and he had an affair with a slave woman. So, I mean, for an author, you look at that and go, oh, there's a lot you could deal with there. You could build a lot of drama. Except that we did a little research and found out that he wasn't even in the country when the Constitution was. Oh, for the time travel geeks, let me just say this. RemeMber that scene from Back to the Future where Marty McFly goes, what am I thinking? I got a time machine. I could do anything.

Yeah.

I didn't really want to have that kind of freedom. I wanted some emergency, some urgency into the story. So in my world of time travel, time is folded, so you can only go to a period that's a multiple of 25 years of the current time. For example, if I got in the time machine today, then I could only go 25 or 50 or 75 or 100. I see years into the present or the future.

Okay.

And the window around that is about two weeks. So I wanted to put a limit on their ability to fix something up.

Right.

So from that standpoint, we started looking, and it's 2037. So I said, okay, what time period is the best? And so 1787. It was the closest time. And that's 250 years in the past. From 2037.

Yeah.

So we started looking at that. And at that time, of course, Thomas Jefferson was not in the country. He was the ambassador to France. New country, under the Articles of Confederation. So we started saying, okay, who else? And I found this book called the Quartet, and I hope I will remember all these people. The four people in the quartet were George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John J. And James Madison. And those guys together are the ones. When I did the research in this book, they were the guys who brought the people in the United States from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution because they didn't want. Most people in the country did not want a stronger government. Yeah. And one of my good friends says, new boss, same as the old boss.

Right.

They didn't want to trade their heavy hand of England for heavy hand of their own.

Sure. Yeah.

And when I looked at these guys, I thought, well, how can I get all these guys together at the same time? And after a while, I thought, that's not practical. I can do that. So I started trying to figure out who was the one, who was the ringleader. And although he said almost nothing in the constitutional convention, it's pretty clear from several books I read that George Washington really had a lot of impact and a lot of sway in that. Even being there gave the convention credibility. And I learned several things about him. One was, I did not know this till I started doing research, but he had a famous stink eye. He disapproved of what you were saying. You knew it just by looking at.

Oh, if only we had a portrait of that.

I've thought about that and found a couple of articles where they talked about somebody said something that he gave them a withering know, didn't have to say anything, just looked at. The other thing people might find interesting was in that time, he married Martha, and she had two kids, a boy and a girl, stepchildren. And the way it worked in those days is if you married a woman with a fortune, part of it, depending on how many kids there were, there were some for each one of the kids and some for the wife that you would inherit. So she had two kids. So he and Martha had a third of the fortune, and they also had the other two thirds for the kids. But the idea was, Washington had an obligation to preserve that money for those kids. That was his job. He took it extremely seriously. One thing I found very amusing was that a lot of the Virginia gentry, a lot of them bought stuff, ironically, from England. They had a sourcing place in England that they would send them a note, know, I need a carriage. I need the latest fashion from Paris. And then they would send it to. And you would pay, know. And Washington was extremely skeptical of this particular company that he worked with, and he accused him on a number of occasions of trying to cheat. There's no. The articles I read were quick to say, there's no evidence that that's actually the fact. It goes to Washington's personality. If he lived today, he'd be customer service's worst nightmare. You can imagine him on the phone talking to him.

Right.

Anyway, so it seems like he was.

You know, you learned that personality wise, a very discerning person, perhaps a more serious person. Do we know if he had any kind of levity to his personality, or was he generally kind of a pragmatist, a very kind of solemn guy?

I didn't find much. Yeah, I believe that he did.

Yeah.

And in my book, I gave him a little bit of a sense of humor.

Yeah.

And that kind of goes to my next question of, like, once you've done all this research about Washington, in particular, as an author, what was the process like to make this character in your book of George Washington? What kind of challenges did you come across? What kind of creative freedoms did you have? What was that process like for you?

Well, one thing we thought about, and Martha and I talked about all this very when I'm in the idea phase, we talk about a lot of stuff. When I'm writing, I don't talk to.

Her about it at all.

And then when I finally get a version of the book, then I'll let her read it and then she'll tear it apart, start again.

It's a good creative partner.

She is a good creative partner, and she speaks her mind. She tells the truth. So we were trying to figure out, okay, when you go back in time, you want to be real careful about changing things.

Yeah. Right.

You don't want to change anything if you don't have to. So they're dealing with the father of our country, and the story takes place. It starts in February of 2037, and they go back to February of 1787. Okay. During that period, that was after the Revolutionary War, and Washington retired, and it's before, just months before the Continental Congress. So there's a lot of thought about this. What if the Constitution had never been ratified? Then we would have continued to work along the Articles of Confederation and the United States probably would have ended up to be a lot of, to look a lot like Europe, a lot of different countries there who have their own army, their own everything, their states. And a lot of people don't understand about, when we say the word states, we're talking about, like, a country.

Right.

Great Britain is a state. France is a state. Georgia is a state. The difference is that Georgia and the other twelve colonies came in together and agreed to cede some power to a central government.

Yeah.

The Articles of Confederation was not strong enough. If Washington knew, and the other three knew that if they had an attack from Great Britain again, which they did in 1812, or if they had a war with France or Spain or something like that, they would probably not be able to defend themselves.

Right. Yeah.

Because the countries at the time, in 1787, there were a lot of people saying, let's go back to England, let's go back, because they put some order and some protection, stuff like that. Well, they were committed to having a separate country, and they knew they needed a stronger government, so most people didn't want that. And so as of that, I'm running away from your question.

Oh, no, you're fine.

Yeah.

But coming back to that in 1787, I'm looking at this, and I go, how do I catch Washington in a place where there's nobody around?

Yeah.

Right.

How do I catch him so that our time travelers can talk to him and maybe take him to the future and then bring him back to the same place without anybody noticed.

Yeah.

So I was very lucky, because I found out a lot of people don't know this. Well, they know the basic fact, but they don't know the reward part. And that is, Washington served not in the British army, but in a colonial militia that fought with the British crown in the French and Indian War.

Right. Yeah.

And if you were an officer or a person of great achievement during that period, then you were rewarded by the British by land. They would give them land, but they would give them land on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains. It was really uncivilized land, but you owned the land. So during the period between 1783 and 1787, Washington frequently made trips from Mount Vernon across the mountains to the Alleghenies to talk with people. And sometimes you'd have to try to kick squatters off his land or get them to pay rent.

Wow. I had no idea. Yeah.

So he did a lot of that. He had some other things, toO, trying to make the Potomac river navigable for people in that region as well. That's another story. But when he made these trips, he would go with a small group of people, and sometimes it was just him and William Lee, his personal servant. And I thought, okay, what if we intercept him on the trail when he's alone, and convince him to come back with us? And the order was, you can't make him come, but try to convince him to come.

Right.

So that's a whole new set of problems.

Yeah.

How do you convince a man for whom the only thing he knows about electricity is that his friend Ben is messing around with lightning in a jar?

Right.

And how do you. The other part of that is, there's an old adage that anything that's significantly advanced technology will appear to be magic. And Washington was a very pious man, and so he would have nothing to do with anything that's like magic.

Sure.

So now they've got all this technology, and they are trying to explain to him to prove who they are.

Right.

And so I won't talk about what they did, but I thought it was pretty innovative.

Yeah.

Because there's so much fun to have with the concept of time travel. And when you add these other parameters in there and all these questions that are also, you're considering, what would they literally have thought? What would they actually have considered during this time? And putting yourself in that colonial American mindset, or I guess, post colonial American mindset, but still so early, that's where a lot of the fun of science fiction comes into play, is asking all of those what ifs. And there are so many fun and interesting what ifs, especially with George Washington. And you mentioned that you did research on how to answer these what ifs. Where would you intercept Washington? And so you're also allowing readers to learn things that are rooted in historical fact. And I know that there's also a fair amount to learn on just the foundation of the United States and the Continental Congress and the perspectives that the founders, like George Washington, had. So from your perspective, what can you share that readers are also going to learn through this science fiction journey that's actually fact or rooted in history? It's almost like you're sneaking in some history lessons here, but it's in a really fun way.

My first goal was to make a fun adventure fun. My first goal, the second was, and much harder thing to do was to make Washington appear human, but not take away from his eminence and who he really was and what he accomplished. So that was difficult to do. And also thinking about how do people speak back in 1787? And then Washington comes to 2037, and people around him are using a lot of terms that he's never heard, maybe, and actually, in some of the dialogues, show that he learns. Yeah, learns some words and learns what they mean.

I could see that being part of the kind of humanizing part of it, and maybe I would assume that that might even be some of that humor you said that you mentioned. Because I can imagine there being a lot of instances of coming to the future where it's just simply going to be kind of funny to see how someone from 1787 would react to the future. So it sounds like the challenge was not being too free with how you portray Washington, like, really trying to stick to things that are rooted in your research, but you also get to have a little bit of freedom. Know, you can reasonably assume he might react this way or someone from that time might react this way or learn along the way. So that's a big part of the fun.

There was a lot of opportunity. I do have an interview where he talks to the press, talk to the press. And some folks wanted to discredit him by saying, you were a slavehold. And so I thought I handled that in an interesting way in his time. There was no country in the world that didn't have slavery. The thing to remember about this whole thing is that there was slavery. And, yes, some of our founding fathers were slaveholders, but they were the ones who put in place what would allow us to ban slavery later.

So it Gives readers a chance to also contemplate those kind of big topics. In our founding of the nation, we look back to the Declaration of Independence and our own Constitution, and there's the ideals of liberty and justice for all. And like you're saying, these are things that are at the founding of our nation, but it's the complications of taking time to achieve these things. And even in our own time, we're always trying to live up to those ideals. And from my perspective, we're always going to be trying to live up to those ideals, because we are humans and we are imperfect. And I think that's something to always recognize about historical figures and history, that it is so much more complicated than on the surface. And so books like this, it gives folks a chance to not only reflect on those kind of big things, but also to enjoy the asking of what ifs from their own perspective. They'll read this and have their own questions and own curiosities that will hopefully lead them to learning even more.

Let me tell you about something.

Sure.

I ran across a book, and the name of the book, I can't remember the author. I apologize for that. But it's the return of George Washington, and it's all about. It starts when he's at Mount Vernon, when he retires after being in the military. It starts around 1783 and goes forward. And one thing I noticed that was really interesting, when they were trying to hammer out the Constitution, there was every bit of the same amount of contention between people. Some people would ask for a carve out for something. We want this law, but it shouldn't apply to these people because blah, blah, blah, blah. So there was a ton of that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And even during the ratification process, there were some awful political fights, and I thought, this could have been today.

Right? Yeah.

So human nature is kind of the same that it was.

Yeah.

And it really underscored to me how important it is that they created a system of government that was based on laws that applied to everyone.

Right.

So something like in your story, of course, it's going to be from your perspective, but I know that you're fairly even handed with the setting of 2037 and the corruption of politics and the divisiveness in this fictional world, which, of course, obviously, has connections to our own divisions that we have. But it does give folks an opportunity to see almost like a warning in a way, of what could be, and to have someone that goes back to the very founding to sort of almost be like a reminder of those ideals, but also the function of government that was put in place originally. A lot to contemplate about. And I know that we don't want to give too much away or anything, but for folks who are interested in learning more about George Washington in particular or the founding fathers, I was wondering if you could share any particular books or resources from your research, or I know that you got to visit Mount Vernon, for instance. What would you say would be a great introduction for our listeners, or if they wanted to learn more about either George Washington or the Founding Fathers in general?

From your research, I think the Mount Vernon site, the website is a really good place to, you know, they actually have a tour of his house on video.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Which I thought was interactive, where you can slide the camera, look this way, look that way. But it's not the same as going there.

Sure. Yeah.

They had a gentleman who regularly shows up and portrays George Washington. And I'm blanking on his name now. I actually mentioned him in the book.

Oh, wow.

But he was singularly good. He doesn't look exactly like our George Washington does a little, but he has studied Washington backwards and forwards. And I think his last name is Rippy, I think. Anyway, so he would take questions. He'd do a question and answer with know. And it was interesting to me that one of the first people who said something, and I actually think it was a plant, asked him about politics. Asked him about politics of today, and he answered very succinctly. ThiS stuff I don't really know anything about. He pushed it off.

Sure.

Because really, I would hate for them to be talking about. He should be talking about what he knows, exactly what actually happened. Washington was an inventor. He invented get grain off the sheaves, which, using horses, trampling them in a building.

Oh, wow.

He built what he called an invisible fence. An invisible fence. What does that mean? So if you go to Mount Vernon and look at the backyard, the backyard is basically a long, sloping green lawn that goes down to the Potomac River. It's just a beautiful piece of pasture there. And he. Not pasture, but a beautiful piece of. Was very. It was very common for people to come by and visit and come stay a few days. So he and Martha entertained a lot, but he also had a working farm.

Yeah.

And so you have this beautiful lawn and you have cows come out there and pigs come out there and leave little landmines all over the place. And so he wanted to prevent that, but he didn't want to spoil the look of the lawn by building the ugly fence. So what he did was he dug a trough and it was high on the side towards the house and low on the other side. And he put a brick wall there. So when you look at it from the back porch, you can't see it.

Oh, wow.

But the animals can't get up.

That's brilliant.

And that's so interesting to know that he was such an inventive person, very scientific mind, but also very much rooted in agriculture, too, which is going to be a lot of the everyday person's experience in America, too. So he's got the perspective of the higher classes of people and the working classes of people. And he's had the military experience. He's been through battle, literally. He's had to deal with politics of his time, which, of course, as you mentioned, were as chaotic as today. And so I think that that's what the fun part of this kind of book is, is that you get to learn so much about historic figures and the actual history. But asking those what ifs, I think that's the important thing, that here at the history center, we want folks to be curious to leave. Curious. It's fine if you don't know exactly when and where things happen, but if you understand the concepts behind them and especially the human story behind our history, then that's what's important. And so I really look forward to our listeners reading this. And I wanted to ask, where can they purchase the Time Patriot or learn more about it?

Oh, sure. You can get it from our website author Kimmagey.com McGee is M-E-G-A-H-E-E or you can find them on Amazon. If you look up the time Patriot, you'll find it.

And we'll also have those links in the episode description. And Kim, thank you so much for joining us today. Is there anything else that you have coming up that you'd like to share with our listeners? Any events that you have, book signings or maybe a new project that you're working on that you might want to give us a hint about?

Well, I'll tell you, I'm actually moving away from writing my stuff right now. This is my current project. My daughter Megan passed away last year, a year ago yesterday. And so I decided she was a writer, too. So we're three writers in the family.

Wow.

Grandmother, son, granddaughter, and so she wrote Vampire Werewolf stuff, published one of them, but it was really a long time ago. She was sick for, like, ten years, writing anything for ten years. But she had written three stories, only published the first one.

Wow.

So my current project, which has some serendipity to it, is to take those three books and edit them and then put them out there for her. The serendipity is that I really miss her a lot, but she wrote a lot. Like, she talked. So going through her books is like talking to her.

That's really beautiful.

It's a blessing, absolute blessing. The one thing I thought was interesting, what I really wanted to try to do was try to convey to the people of 2037. What were the founding fathers thinking about? What did they have in mind? What was their vision?

Right.

In the hopes that if he presents that to the people in 2037, that they will get a new vision of how government is supposed to work. Now, a lot of people look at that. They're like, we got certain laws, and it's like, for example, libertarian thinks that if you want to take a swing, you will swing your fist wherever you want to. But your right to swing stops at my face.

Right.

Let other people do what they want to do as long as they aren't hurting others.

Right.

And I get that in my opinion. But whatever other people believe, let them believe that as long as they're not hurting anybody.

I appreciate you sharing that and for sharing the process that you went through in writing the time Patriot. I hope it's inspiring to our listeners who might be considering writing themselves as it is something that you clearly had a lot of joy in doing. It was really rewarding for you and that it's never too late. You can always pursue that kind of curiosity.

The first thing is, I'll give you a really little short story. I had wrote a little bit on my first book, and I would write on a weekend, and then I wouldn't do anything for months, and then we'd write some more. And then I was with my sister, and we went to church, and it was a secular message. What are you doing with the time of your life? How do you spend your time? I thought, yeah, I really should finish my book. I should finish that book. We stopped into Starbucks to have a cup of coffee, and we're still talking about it sitting in Starbucks. And the guy next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, I'm an author. If you're not writing every day, you're kidding yourself. Yeah, I was working you and I discussed earlier I was working 60 hours a week.

Yeah.

And so how do I find time to write? So I just determined I'm going to get up half hour earlier every day and write for half an hour. What that does for you is you're working on something and the phone rings and you answer the phone and you hang up and you go, okay, where was I? And you got a little ramp up time there to get back to where you were. Get back in the zone.

Yeah.

And so if you're writing, even if you don't have a lot of time to write, if you did it yesterday, you're pretty close to being in the zone. Still. You could pick up a lot easier than you could if you waited months. That makes sense. So that's the first thing. And the second thing I would say is, and I can say this from experience, because I did it, is the worst thing you can do is start writing. And when you come back, you write a chapter, you can come back to the next one. You say, let's clean up the first one some. And if you start doing that editing process, then that's the biggest productivity killer that I know. The idea, what I would urge you to do is write the whole thing. And I call it the vomit pass. You get all the ideas down on paper, right. In the corporate world, we call it the straw man, where if you want to do a document, somebody writes it and then brings it to everybody else to critique and change. So you write it from the beginning to the end, then start cleaning it up. I actually have several passes of cleanup that I do, but that's a much longer discussion.

No, that's really valuable, because I know here at the history center we do a fair amount of writing when it comes to script writing for our historical characters. And I certainly know what you mean that. Oh, well, I've got that introduction down. Maybe I'll just finish it up a bit more, finesse it. But then you can spend hours and hours, and then you realize, like you're saying, once you get the whole arc, then you can really see what you need to do. Because something that you may edit in the very beginning might not work once you get that ending.

And I almost always rewrite the first chapter. I get the draw to try to edit the first chapter because it's got to be good. Everybody says your first chapter has got to grab people. And, yes, it does, but it doesn't have to grab people until you're done.

Yeah.

Right.

So I almost always go back to the first chapter and make a lot of changes because now I know what's going to happen overall. And you can foreshadow, you can do all kinds of things that you couldn't do otherwise. And I have thrown away first chapters and wrote new ones.

Yeah.

And I have said, wait a minute, and pull like the fourth chapter out and make it the first.

Yeah. Right.

So there's all kinds of things that will happen, but the idea is write the whole thing and get something you can work with out there. It's easier to edit than it is to.

Yes. Point well taken. Well, Kim, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful discussion. And for folks listening again, the series is the time Patriot. We have links in our description where you can check that out and learn more. And Kim, thank you so much for joining us on.

Then again, it's my pleasure. Thank you.

Then again, is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by media producer Juada Rodriguez. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the ADA May Ivester Education Center. Please join us next week for another episode of then again.