Seven Hours: Teardrop – Travis Thrasher

Teardrop Travis Thrasher
Teardrop by Travis Thrasher
Series: 7 Hours #3
Published by Tyndale on April 2012
Genres: Fiction, Christian, Suspense, Speculative
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four-stars

QUICK HIT – Seven Hours is a omnibus of seven novellas that center around seven individuals given seven more hours of life, either in the past or the present. Teardrop by Travis Thrasher is a story about one man's chance to go back to the most important day of his life and save that which is most dear to him.

Thomas Constant, Time personified, has made a deal with Death. Seven people get a chance to relive the last seven hours of life, live for seven more hours in the future, or simply refuse and die. The choice is theirs, but whatever the results at the end of seven hours they will be taken to their final moments of life. The 7 Hours omnibus is truly a unique and inventive approach to storytelling. Seven novellas, seven authors, seven explorations of what men and women would do if they knew their death was imminent. Read one or read all seven, but if you allow yourself just one I think you’ll find yourself hooked.

Rearview by Mike Dellosso

Escapement by Rene Gutteridge

TEARDROP BY TRAVIS THRASHER

Recollection by Tom Pawlik

Whole Pieces by Ronie Kendig

All of Our Dreams by James Andrew Wilson

The Last Night of Alton Webber by Robin Parrish

Michael Harden was going to die. It’s why Constant was there, after all. And like the others he would be granted seven hours. Seven crucial hours. With his life flashing before him, Mike makes a decision. He would take the seven hours. Relive the seven hours just after his wedding. And murder the man who would kill his bride.

Mike almost doesn’t believe it will happen but in a flash, there he is at the altar, reliving one of the most important moments of his life. Going back in time is disorienting. He’s now a fortysomething trapped in the body of a twentysomething, looking at his new wife knowing that in a few years she’d be brutally murdered by someone here at the wedding. Seven hours for revenge, seven hours to change his history, seven hours to save his wife.

As any regular reader of this website will tell you, Travis Thrasher is one of my favorite authors for his writing style and insistence on staying out of the box. Taking on a project like 7 Hours even further cements Travis in that out of the box category. Thrasher plays his theme well, drawing the reader in and placing him in Mike’s shoes. Humorously, Travis also includes a couple signature Thrasherisms that his fans are sure to notice (bonus points if you notice them).

Altogether, Teardrop is one of my favorite of the seven novellas. The theme is poignant and Thrasher’s writing is solid. Thrasher handles the short form well and his characterization is great. This is one to pick up.

Q&A with Travis Thrasher

Josh: How did you get involved with the Seven Hours project?

Travis: James Andrew Wilson emailed me and asked if I’d be interested in doing a project that involved numerous authors. I told him if time allowed me to do it, I’d love to. We bounced ideas back and forth. Since I’ve worked at a publisher, I kept making suggestions that would make doing a project like this easier for the publisher. I’m pleased to see some of those initial ideas stick, and so glad that James worked hard to allow this project to come to life.
Josh: How do you approach a story of this size and nature in comparison with a full-length novel?
Travis: I whittle it down to the premise and the character. In novels, there are sub-plots and minor characters and all that. In a novella, you have to be concise yet still have a beginning, middle, and end. I’ve done novellas before so I knew a little of how to go about writing it. I think it’s easier when the story involves seven hours and not seven days or months.
Josh: Where did the idea for this story come from? 
Travis: Early on when James and I were bouncing ideas back and forth via email, an idea came to mind. A character who wants to go back to his wedding day. If I could, I’d choose to relive that day since it was such a wonderful experience. But simply going back to relive a wedding day has no drama. I thought of how I could combine a sweet love story with a darker story, so the thought came up to have a man going back to his wedding day to kill the man who ended up murdering his wife. I thought that was a cool twist on the idea of going back to your wedding day. I also thought it was a good way to represent my “brand”, which you know is a hybrid of everything.
four-stars

About Travis Thrasher

Travis Thrasher

Bestselling author Travis Thrasher has written over 50 books, spanning genres in fiction, nonfiction and children’s literature. His inspirational stories have included collaborations with filmmakers, musicians, athletes, celebrities and pastors.

With the childhood goal of pursuing a writing career starting in third grade, Thrasher worked for 13 years at Tyndale House Publishers after graduating college. His experience working with as Author Relations Manager allowed him to understand the writing life as well as training him to work with a variety of personalities. This experience has proven to be invaluable with varied writing projects in the decade he’s been a full-time writer.

His novels are as diverse as the people he’s worked with, ranging from love stories to supernatural thrillers. Publishers Weekly said “Sara and Ethan are two of the most real and sensitive lovers to grace the genre” when reviewing his first novel, The Promise Remains. They also stated “Thrasher demonstrates a considerable talent for the horror genre” in a review for Isolation years later. His readers have enjoyed the unpredictability of his novels, whether it’s due to a unique style such as second person or a twist they never saw coming.

Thrasher’s storytelling ability has also allowed him to work with others on their books, from musicians like country musician Scotty McCreery and Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain to the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty. He has also penned novels based on songs such as Paper Angels with Jimmy Wayne and novelizations for films including Do You Believe? and God’s Not Dead 2. Upcoming projects continue to expand his talents, with projects including The Black Auxiliary about the lives of the 17 American black athletes who competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, and Baby Don’t Hurt Me about comedian Chris Kattan’s life and time on Saturday Night Live.

Travis lives with his wife and three young daughters in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.

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