Cover2CoverBlog: Guest Post: Re-Imagining Einstein -- When the World was Flat Blog Tour!

Sep 4, 2013

Guest Post: Re-Imagining Einstein -- When the World was Flat Blog Tour!

When the World was Flat (and we were in love)

Release Date: 3 September 2013 in the US and Canada, and 5 September 2013 in the UK, as well as worldwide as ebook and audio.

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15767908-when-the-world-was-flat

About the Book

Looking back, I wonder if I had an inkling that my life was about to go from ordinary to extraordinary.

When sixteen-year-old Lillie Hart meets the gorgeous and mysterious Tom Windsor-Smith for the first time, it’s like fireworks — for her, anyway. Tom looks as if he would be more interested in watching paint dry; as if he is bored by her and by her small Nebraskan town in general.

But as Lillie begins to break down the walls of his seemingly impenetrable exterior, she starts to suspect that he holds the answers to her reoccurring nightmares and to the impossible memories which keep bubbling to the surface of her mind — memories of the two of them, together and in love.

When she at last learns the truth about their connection, Lillie discovers that Tom has been hiding an earth-shattering secret; a secret that is bigger — and much more terrifying and beautiful — than the both of them. She also discovers that once you finally understand that the world is round, there is no way to make it flat again.

An epic and deeply original sci-fi romance, taking inspiration from Albert Einstein’s theories and the world-bending wonder of true love itself.

Re-imagining Einstein

I conducted a lot of research into Albert Einstein for When the World was Flat (and we were in love), initially into his theories and then into his life.

I researched his Theory of Special Relativity and Theory of General Relativity, which explained the connection between space, time and gravity.

Einstein was quite a character and reportedly explained these theories as:

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

It would also seem that he was a bit of a romantic too from the above quote, which means he might have approved of my use of his theories in When the World was Flat (and we were in love).

It was mainly his Unified Theory (commonly called the Theory of Everything) that played into my novel though, after it captured my imagination as his self-confessed attempt to “read the mind of God.”

But Einstein passed away in 1955 before he could finish the Theory of Everything.

And, as an aside, I found these amazing images of his office in the hours after his death (via Time Magazine).

He died of an abdominal aortic aneurism, which had previously been operated on. He declined a second operation, saying that if he was going to pass away he wanted it to be elegantly. “I have done my share, it is time to go,” he said.

It led me to wonder what would have happened if he had managed to finish the Theory of Everything. This reimagined history is what I have explored in When the World was Flat (and we were in love).

You will have to read the book to find out the result, but I can tell you that if he had accepted the operation we would probably have a single theoretical framework that explains the fundamental forces of nature.

But we would probably not have When the World was Flat (and we were in love).

Author Bio

Ingrid Jonach writes books for children and young adults, including the chapter books The Frank Frankie and Frankie goes to France published by Pan Macmillan, and When the World was Flat (and we were in love) published by Strange Chemistry.

Since graduating from university with a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing (Hons) in 2005, Ingrid has worked as a journalist and in public relations, as well as for the Australian Government.

Ingrid loves to promote reading and writing, and has been a guest speaker at a number of schools and literary festivals across Australia, where she lives with her husband Craig and their pug dog Mooshi.

Despite her best efforts, neither Craig nor Mooshi read fiction.

Find out more at www.ingridjonach.com

Enter below for your chance to win one of two awesome prize packages as part of the Around the World in 80 Days Blog Tour for When the World was Flat (and we were in love) by Ingrid Jonach.

There will be two winners worldwide. Each prize package includes:

a signed copy of When the World was Flat (and we were in love)
a pair of silver plated key-shaped earrings in a When the World was Flat (and we were in love) gift box
a When the World was Flat (and we were in love) bookmark