Dan Uselton's Blog - Posts Tagged "character-development"
Time Travel, Trauma, and the Terrifying What-Ifs: Behind the Scenes of My Twelve-Year-Old Wife By Dan Uselton
What would you do if the person you loved most vanished—only to return as a child who remembers everything?
That’s the question that launched My Twelve-Year-Old Wife, a genre-bending thriller that messes with your head as much as your heart. It’s not a time travel story in the traditional sense—there’s no DeLorean, no wormhole, no quantum physicist explaining paradoxes with a whiteboard. This is time travel at its most disturbing: intimate, emotional, and deeply personal.
When I sat down to write this book, I didn’t set out to break genre rules. I wanted to explore the psychological fallout of love colliding with time, identity, and power. The premise came from a nightmare I couldn’t shake: a man’s missing wife shows up on his doorstep years later—only now, she’s twelve years old, barefoot in winter, and she remembers everything. Including him.
Dan Fox, the protagonist, isn’t a hero. He’s just a man scrambling to do the right thing in a situation that doesn’t come with a rulebook. The love of his life is back… but he can’t love her the same way. He can’t even explain what’s happening without sounding like a lunatic. And when a masked predator starts circling the edges of the timeline, things spiral fast.
Writing My Twelve-Year-Old Wife meant juggling timelines, tracking cause and effect across fractured realities, and—honestly—rewriting certain chapters more times than I care to admit. The emotional beats were the hardest. I had to ask myself constantly: If this were real, how would it feel? What would it cost? Time travel isn’t just science fiction—it’s psychological fiction. Every jump leaves a scar.
Some behind-the-scenes details readers might not know:
The original ending was much darker. Test readers (and my editor) practically begged me to give Dan some sliver of hope.
Celia, the wife, had three different names across drafts. I finally landed on Celia because it felt timeless—fitting for a woman unstuck in time.
The antagonist, known only as the man in the mask, wasn’t in the first draft. He showed up in chapter five without warning… and stayed. I’m still not sure if I created him or if he was always waiting in the dark.
Ultimately, My Twelve-Year-Old Wife is about more than time travel. It’s about memory, grief, and the way trauma doesn’t just echo—it mutates. And sometimes, even when the past returns, it doesn’t bring comfort. It brings consequences.
If you’re into psychological thrillers with a sci-fi twist and a touch of heartbreak, I hope you’ll give it a read. Just don’t expect easy answers. Time doesn’t play fair—and neither does this book.
Available now on Amazon.
https://amazon.com/dp/B0FD87Y85R
Trigger warning: Contains emotionally intense content, including themes of loss, identity, and psychological manipulation.
That’s the question that launched My Twelve-Year-Old Wife, a genre-bending thriller that messes with your head as much as your heart. It’s not a time travel story in the traditional sense—there’s no DeLorean, no wormhole, no quantum physicist explaining paradoxes with a whiteboard. This is time travel at its most disturbing: intimate, emotional, and deeply personal.
When I sat down to write this book, I didn’t set out to break genre rules. I wanted to explore the psychological fallout of love colliding with time, identity, and power. The premise came from a nightmare I couldn’t shake: a man’s missing wife shows up on his doorstep years later—only now, she’s twelve years old, barefoot in winter, and she remembers everything. Including him.
Dan Fox, the protagonist, isn’t a hero. He’s just a man scrambling to do the right thing in a situation that doesn’t come with a rulebook. The love of his life is back… but he can’t love her the same way. He can’t even explain what’s happening without sounding like a lunatic. And when a masked predator starts circling the edges of the timeline, things spiral fast.
Writing My Twelve-Year-Old Wife meant juggling timelines, tracking cause and effect across fractured realities, and—honestly—rewriting certain chapters more times than I care to admit. The emotional beats were the hardest. I had to ask myself constantly: If this were real, how would it feel? What would it cost? Time travel isn’t just science fiction—it’s psychological fiction. Every jump leaves a scar.
Some behind-the-scenes details readers might not know:
The original ending was much darker. Test readers (and my editor) practically begged me to give Dan some sliver of hope.
Celia, the wife, had three different names across drafts. I finally landed on Celia because it felt timeless—fitting for a woman unstuck in time.
The antagonist, known only as the man in the mask, wasn’t in the first draft. He showed up in chapter five without warning… and stayed. I’m still not sure if I created him or if he was always waiting in the dark.
Ultimately, My Twelve-Year-Old Wife is about more than time travel. It’s about memory, grief, and the way trauma doesn’t just echo—it mutates. And sometimes, even when the past returns, it doesn’t bring comfort. It brings consequences.
If you’re into psychological thrillers with a sci-fi twist and a touch of heartbreak, I hope you’ll give it a read. Just don’t expect easy answers. Time doesn’t play fair—and neither does this book.
Available now on Amazon.
https://amazon.com/dp/B0FD87Y85R
Trigger warning: Contains emotionally intense content, including themes of loss, identity, and psychological manipulation.
