Three kids from Georgia's most boring town (now there's a contest I'd like to see...) suddenly find themselves reluctant time-travelers to World War II England. To get home, they have to find an elusive man called George Braithwaite (whoever he is.) Meanwhile, can they survive bad food, scary old ladies, non-absorbing toilet paper, and Hitler's bombs?

Today and tomorrow, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, the first of The Snipesville Chronicles, is free for Kindle (or for a Kindle app on phone or PC.)

Go on, satisfy your curiosity. Have a flip-through. [maniacal laugh, to borrow a line from The Muppets.]

Book 3 will be out in March.

One question I am often asked (as an academic historian who writes a YA/MG time-travel series) is "Are your books historically accurate?"  It always makes me clench my teeth.

Let me put it this way: The Snipesville Chronicles are more historically accurate than Mel Gibson's movie The Patriot. Or, in fact, any Mel Gibson movie you care to name. But let's pick on The Patriot, shall we?

The studio publicists made a great to-do when The Patriot was released because of the much-vaunted historical research on which it had been based. When they listed the Smithsonian as their principal consultant, however, a little bell went off in my head. The sort of "accuracy" they had in mind, I suspected, was the kind that insists on getting the shirt buttons right, but rather misses the point otherwise.

Alas, I was right. My favorite moment in the movie is a toss-up between the scene in which the Brits murder an entire town's folk by locking them in a burning church (er, thanks for associating eighteenth-century Britain with Nazi atrocities, Mel) and the scene in which free black tenants (!) in South Carolina (!!!) (sorry, snorting here) beg the meanie Brit officer to let them stay with kind Master Mel. There's historical fiction, and then there's outrageous misrepresentation of truth.

I like to think that my books, unlike The Patriot, fall into the former category. But because they are fiction, after all, I do make things up. My characters aren't real, and neither, of course, is the time travel. I'm determined to write about obscure settings and everyday life,  so I invent fictional towns like Snipesville and Balesworth.

But I like all my historical material to at least be plausible: My rule of thumb is that It may not have happened, but it could have. I am particularly concerned that my historical characters don't speak in anachronisms or express attitudes and ideas that actually come from more recent times. This means not only checking idiomatic expressions in the Oxford English Dictionary, but also developing the best possible feel for the period, by reading the experts (social and cultural historians), and by immersing myself in the primary sources, the documents that make up the raw stuff of history.

You will forgive me, I hope, for assuming that Book 3 (which is set in 1752) is the book of the series I am most qualified to write. After all, my PhD specialization is early American history, and I'm a recognized expert on eighteenth-century popular religious culture.

Yes...Well. Pride before a fall.

The book is almost done, so it was with great dismay that I learned from Georgia historian Dr. Jon Bryant (a friend and former colleague) that in fact, no, there is no evidence that any convicts were ever sent to Georgia. That's a myth that first appeared in the 19th century, and it has been repeated as gospel truth ever since, including by professional historians who rely on other sources. I had bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

This is a problem, to say the least, since my plot depends on that very assumption. My first inclination was simply to forge on with my plot regardless of the consequences (I know you don't want spoilers, so I shan't give details), and simply explain in the back of the book. Jon was as relaxed about this as I was, because we know that the best that historians can ever hope for is to piece together evidence in the right direction. And, after all, I am writing fiction. 

But, being a good historian, I was still bothered. That's when I realized that ships can get lost: And, Jon assured me, there is precedent for at least one transatlantic eighteenth-century ship unexpectedly detouring to Georgia after a storm. (Go back a century, and we meet the most famous lost ship in colonial history, the Mayflower. But I digress.)

The lovely thing about history and the plausibility test is that there is always another story to tell. And as I am fond of saying, nothing I can make up is as interesting as what actually happened. Assuming, of course, we can figure out what happened.

Most of us have some idea of what a British courtroom looks like, thanks to PBS: Bewigged lawyers pleading their cases before a judge dressed in the mother-of-all-wigs and a red bathrobe; the anxious defendant wringing his hands in the dock; the jury with its obligatory knitting granny.

When I came to set a scene in an eighteenth-century courtroom, I wrote the story first. Only now, on the fourth draft, am I checking my facts. And despite a PhD in early American and British history, I realize that I know very little indeed.

The wigs and robes, the all-male jury: They panned out. But the barrister for the defense? Not in 1752. Only later did the poor accused get an attorney, and even then, only if he or she had lots of money to pay for one, which was unlikely.

I knew eighteenth-century trials were short, so I envisioned mine as lasting an hour. In reality, I learned, the average trial took eight and a half minutes. You read that right.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the law was firmly stacked against the defendant, who had no counsel, and no opportunity to prepare a case. Pretty much, my accused thief would have to make up her defense on the fly. Her best bet was to bring along a character witness, but, unfortunately for her and fortunately for me, the story had already dispensed with the one qualified person who could speak to her good character.

My name's Annette Laing. I was born in Scotland, raised in England, and came of age in California. So, to ask the question that everyone asks me, what am I doing in South Georgia? 

The truth (I was hired as a history professor at Georgia Southern University many years ago) is waaaay less interesting than anything I could make up, which makes a change. So maybe I should dress it up a bit: I was sentenced to live here by the Karmic forces that dictate such things. 

What I DO here in South Georgia is a lot more fun than, well, living here. Starting in 2003, I began running tons-o'-fun history workshops for kids, earning myself a bit of national recognition in the form of an Associated Press feature. Inspired by my work with the kids, but with no great ambition for literary success, I self-published my first novel (DON'T STOP READING) as a what-the-hell midlife crisis thingy. Four years, one more book and lots of interesting developments later, I am a full-time writer and presenter. I actually get fan mail. Fan mail!

My series, The Snipesville Chronicles, follows the adventures of three kids from America's most boring town, which just happens to be in South Georgia, who are unwilling travelers in time. In Book 1, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, they find themselves in England in 1940, right in time for the Blitz, and dealing with the many horrors of wartime Britain (bad food, hideous underwear, Hitler's bombs, etc.) To get home, all they have to do is track down some guy called George Braithwaite, which is harder than it sounds five decades before Google. Meanwhile, one of our time-travelers vanishes. He's in the same town, just 25 years earlier, during World War I. Book 2, A Different Day, A Different Destiny, is set in 1851, and Book 3, Look Ahead, Look Back (coming soon!) in 1752. 

I also write stunningly boring academic history on early American religion, but I bet nobody wants to know about that.