Time travelling

Since I'm now looking at Romance markets for some of my stories, I thought I'd do some research into the genre. I was amazed at the variety; practically any genre can have romantic leanings, apparently - including westerns, horror and suspense.

The one that intrigued me the most was time travel, because apart from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger I can't think of another example within fiction, and I'm not sure she deserves a whole genre for one book. I'm sure you'll all be able to correct me and list hundreds (please do!).

The problem with time travel stories is that there are many ways to tie the plot in knots so it doesn't make sense - I'm sure you must have wasted hours of your youth, as I did with my friends, discussing the Back to the Future trilogy - although I don't remember anything glaringly obvious in The Time Traveler's Wife.

One of my mum's favourite films from years ago was Somewhere in Time, with Christopher Reeve. It's a lovely film, a tear-jerker, perfect for wet and windy Sunday afternoons. But - just a slight but this time- the opening scenes put my head in a proper spin. An elderly woman approaches Christopher Reeve and says something along the lines of "My love, please come back to me".

This makes Reeves curious, and he goes off to investigate this woman and discovers a picture of her when she was younger. He falls in love with this picture (as you do!) and decides to travel back in time to meet her.

Now, it's that opening paradox that jars slightly. If he'd just looked at this woman, called her crazy and not given her another thought, he'd never gone back in time to meet her, which means she wouldn't have spoken to him in the present because he would have been a stranger. Which means, there would be no film,... so I can kind of understand why they did it.

Anyway, that was a very long-winded way of saying that you really have to think about your time travel plotline! I'd really love to read your comments on this - I could talk time-travel for hours. Just give me a moment to pour the wine!!