Irish transplant Lizzy Shannon has gone from actor to author

The inspiration for her time-travel sci-fi novel was an airport bathroom

By Ray Pitz

The Times, Nov 5, 2009

Sherwood's Lizzy Shannon had already made a name for herself in theater and film acting before writing a time-travel science fiction novel, “Time Twist.” The idea for the book, she says, resulted from a visit to an American airport restroom.

Submitted photo / Times Newspapers

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As strange as it may sound, the impetus for author Lizzy Shannon’s new book came during her inaugural visit to an American airport bathroom.

“It happened when I first immigrated to the U.S.,” the Northern Ireland native recalled. “I was stunned by the absurd when I went into the (Seattle-Tacoma Airport) bathroom.”

What fascinated Shannon, who has lived in the United States since 1991, was the toilet.

“It just kept flushing, and I couldn’t understand why,” she said.

She noted that the strangeness of the toilets extended to the rest of the bathrooms as well as she noticed that the soap dispensers worked by pushing them, tapping them or simply waiting for them to automatically dispense soap.

That gave the Sherwood resident an idea for a time-travel science fiction novel and the absurdness of her early bouts with bathrooms causing her to think – if it was so difficult to navigate a bathroom in today’s world what would it be like in the future?

Not that it was a direct path to Shannon’s soon-to-be-published novel, “Time Twist” (Dragon Moon Press), but it was a way station.

It was drinking or reading

Shannon’s book follows the exploits of Catriona Logan, a Scottish actress who gets involved in a temporal experiment gone awry and ends up in the future where the Earth has been devastated. Or as her book blurb points out: “Humanity now fights for the alien Leontors in a war against the reptoid Komodoans, in return for technology to re-terraform Earth. The war is at a stalemate. Catriona’s unique 21st century brainwave patterns will ensure a victory to whoever can scan her first, and she becomes a pawn between the alien races.”

Essentially, the Komodoans are dark-haired aliens, complete with scales and reptile tails while the Leontors are a fuzzier breed of creature.

Although an avid reader as a youth – “the only entertainment there was, was drinking or reading, so we read,” – said Shannon – it was onscreen science fiction that fascinated her.

“I loved ‘Planet of the Apes’ when I was young,” she recalled. “Then I progressed to ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation.’”

When she began her book in 1996, it was her plan to write only a short story. That quickly changed, however.

“I had read one of the ‘Star Trek’ novels and someone said, ‘I bet you can’t write a Star Trek novel’ . . . and I said I could.”

As the book progressed, Shannon said the Star Trek characters became secondary with her new, stronger characters taking over.

Encouraging rejections

Still, it wasn’t until the last two years that she pushed ahead to finish her book, making a concerted effort to get it published. The initial result was 14 rejection slips but they were personal rejections that came with encouraging comments, she pointed out.

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