This change of pace chapter switches up the time travel dynamic—or does it?
More overtly Quantum Leap inspired than what we’ve read so far, Local Boy occupies the body of his future self while the redhead takes over a future version of his wife. He lives the original history described in Timely Persuasion from a different point of view. Actually a slightly altered history, since his time traveling son is also present as a ghostly, hoverin’ (thank you, Kim Deal!) presence that adds some Back to the Future II vibes on top of QL. Talk about putting right what once went wrong!
How can a magical mystery machine of a van driving through sparkly fog and taking control of another body in another time be part of the same time travel dynamic? I’m not going to answer that here aside from saying there’s a method to my madness and it’s not all that different than how TP introduced a related differentiation between “in head” vs. “full ghostly body” time travel. Techniques evolve, and the redhead is from far enough forward she’s ahead of the curve—especially when she’s going rogue…1
Aside from the time travel tale tributes and teases of the redhead’s skills, this chapter also serves as a “show, don’t tell” way of letting Local Boy know his kids turn out ok while giving him something different to worry about when he returns back to the past of his present. I also tried to2 give the reader some reminders of what to keep front of mind as the story progresses. (“The old man said I married the wrong girl…” “Are you my wife or not?” “How can I participate in a memory of something I have no memory of?”)
Tidbits:
- Before landing on the apostrophe theme for this section of the book, the working chapter title was “Memories Like Fingerprints” after a Pearl Jam lyric.
- Though I freely admitted above I took a little bit of inspiration from Quantum Leap here, for the record the “two leaper” scenario was coincidental. The revival series finale cliffhanger reveal aired 9 days before Local Boy Done Gone was released, with my scenes written many months prior.

- The Timely Persuasion narrator would’ve found a way to put rhinoceros-shaped earrings in her ears, but “Shuggie” doesn’t feel like a Local Boy song to me.
- Rehearsed at worst, cursed to thirst, less is more and last things first. <– A lyric so bad it was cut for a reason.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa!
- “Nanny. I’ll have to remember that” is something you should remember too.
- An earlier draft had the time trip taking them to the narrator’s first date with the redhead from Timely Persuasion, but I thought it was too jarring to have Local Boy mind merge with his son. For a while I planned to move that variant to a later chapter after he eased into the new blink/leap dynamic, but ended up reworking a different riff on it into another sequel story.
- “What is it.” My wife asked the question in the form of a statement. <– These bits are me playfully making fun of my past self’s sixteen year old ebook punctuation mistake3 while also cooly retconning it into the plot. –> “A robber?” Daphne used the correct punctuation.
- A recent review (the first!) said “Profanity is tolerable.” Good thing I cut off Local Boy’s f-bomb here after letting it fly in the original TP scene. AWAB, etc indeed!
- Local Boy tries to have this “aw, shucks” demeanor and downplays his intelligence at times, but a line like “Gravity teamed with elasticity to flop the dog back on the dirt” hints he’s a brighter bulb than he lets on.
- Kinda wish these new verses of “If Only” went wun-wundrin’ why for another hidden “Won One” namedrop.
FOOTNOTES
- Since I’ve developed a new obsession with WordPress footnotes, I’ll throw one more clue down here. Who’s to say back at Kurt Cobain’s house Local Boy & Nelson didn’t essentially possess the bodies of Tom Grant & Dylan Carlson? ↩︎
- Speaking of keeping things front of mind & of body possession in the previous footnote, last chapter I promised the final clue to how Nelson was giving the stolen songs to his parents would be coming soon. How soon is now? Sometimes you need to keep fishin’ in the past. ↩︎
- Technically a formatting problem. Somewhere along the line my ebook conversion software replaced every ? and ! with a plain old period, so what I thought was a years old typo wasn’t really. Mocking it here was still fun though. ↩︎