Interview with Andrew Varga

Three books into Andrew Varga’s Jump in Time series, Daniel Renfrew has gone through some changes. After years of homeschooling, he has to find acceptance among his peers at a local secondary school. Fortunately, his martial arts skills, learned from his father and honed on the battlefields of Hastings and Celtic Anglesey, intimidate the local bullies. He even makes a tentative connection with a “normal” (i.e., not time jumping) girlfriend, although dating someone who may disappear into the past at any moment is a challenge, to say the least.

As we discover from this author interview, in The Mongol Ascension Daniel jumps back in time to the Eurasian steppe and meets a fellow adolescent named Temujin. For more information on how that happens, read on. You can also get some insights into the series as a whole by listening to my 2023 New Books in Historical Fiction conversation with Andrew Varga.

Since this is book 3 of your Jump in Time series, please reintroduce us briefly to Daniel Renfrew, his friend Sam, and their mission in life.

Dan Renfrew is a typical modern-day seventeen-year old who in book 1, The Last Saxon King, accidentally sends himself to Anglo-Saxon England. There he finds out that he is descended from a long line of time jumpers—secret heroes who travel into the past to fix glitches in history. During the adventures of book 1, Dan meets Sam, a teenage female who is also a time jumper but is much more experienced than him in the ways of time jumping. Together they are trying to stop a plot among rogue members of the time-traveler community who want to take over the world.

Some of Dan’s circumstances have changed since we first met him. For example, he is no longer homeschooled. Fill us in on where he is at the beginning of this book—without giving away spoilers, of course.

Book 2 ended with Dan moving into a condominium and living on his own. He has a legal guardian who takes care of any large financial decisions or legal matters for him, but otherwise Dan is living independently. With his father no longer homeschooling him, Dan is forced to continue his education in the public system, where he finds that moving from home school to high school requires quite a bit of an adjustment.

Dan is quite drawn to one of his classmates, a girl named Jenna. What draws him to her, beyond her obvious interest in him and their age?

Jenna has a brilliant smile, is intelligent, and is one of the more popular people in the school, so she would be hard for Dan not to notice. But what really draws Dan to Jenna is that she provides a burst of brightness and fun into his life that he didn’t realize he was lacking. Jenna has an exuberance for everything that allows Dan to momentarily forget about the pressures of being a time traveler and the threat posed to the world. And she has a warm, loving family that readily accepts Dan, giving him that sense of belonging that was missing for him after the death of his father.

Dan is still a time jumper, though, and he soon finds himself in an environment very different from historical Britain, the scene of his last two adventures. What is his first impression of the steppe, and how does he even discover where he is?

Dan is from the suburbs, where houses are jammed side by side and the local mall is packed with people. So when he lands in the vast steppe of Mongolia, where only grass and distant hills are visible as far as the eye can see, he feels small and insignificant. And since there are no identifiable landmarks, Dan and Sam initially have no idea where they have landed. But when they meet one of the locals, who has the distinctive features and clothing of the nomadic people of the east, the pair realize that they are somewhere on the eastern steppe. Further questions to their local guide about the various tribes in the region finally reveals that Dan and Sam are in Mongolia.

Dan and Sam soon run into a fellow teenager named Temujin. Mongol history not being a subject taught in most US high schools, they don’t at first realize who he is. But he nonetheless makes an impression on them. Tell us about that.

What strikes Dan and Sam most about Temujin is his intensity. Even though Temujin is only seventeen like Dan and Sam, he has a focus and a strength of will that is rare to find in adults, never mind a teenager. He sees himself on a mission in life, and he will not let anything to deter him from seeing his mission through. But Temujin isn’t on some fool’s quest, he speaks and acts with a wisdom beyond his years, and he has an aura of command which demands that people pay attention to him.

Anyone who searches online for “Mongol Temujin” will soon figure out who we’re talking about, so I think this doesn’t really qualify as a spoiler. But when Dan finds out by doing just that, it puts him in a bit of a dilemma. Why is that?

When Dan first meets Temujin, he thinks of Temujin as merely some uneducated nomad who should be insignificant in the grand scheme of history. As the story progresses, Dan gets to know Temujin better but still doesn’t think of him as a major mover and shaker in history. So when Dan finds out that later in life Temujin will become ruler of one of the most violent armies in history, it causes a massive perspective shift for Dan. He has a hard time reconciling the fact that this seemingly simple teenager will one day be the ruler of a vast empire and cause of millions of deaths.

Dan does not only find and fix time glitches. He also has more immediate concerns involving a world conspiracy among the time jumpers themselves. I don’t want to say more about that, but I found it interesting that he begins applying advice he has received from Temujin in his approach to the problem. How did you come up with that storytelling technique?

Dan starts off the series as just an average teen who knows nothing about the world of time jumping, so it only makes sense that he grows along the way. After all, he is experiencing some of the greatest battles of history and meeting so many heroes and leaders, he has to learn something. In the first book, I don’t delve too much into what he learned from the past; I focus more on his realization that the simple life he knew previously is gone, and that he can no longer be the same clueless teen he was before. In the second book, I have Atto teaching Dan that one should never give up hope, even against seemingly impossible odds, and giving Dan the inspiration to continue fighting against the seemingly unbeatable rogue time jumper plot. So all my books have some sort of growth for Dan, and from book 2 on the growth is led by the people he meets in the past.

I know many of the future installments of this series are already underway. Are you still working on Jump in Time novels, or have you moved on to something else?

I’m currently working on the seventh and final installment of the series, which will take Dan and Sam to the city of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, when the Latin armies besieged the city. And of course, there will be a final resolution to Dan and Sam’s quest to defeat Victor. I have also had a lot of people asking for a book from Sam’s POV, as she seems to be a fan favorite. Currently the Jump in Time books are all from Dan’s perspective, so I’m mulling over a possible storyline for a prequel to the Jump in Time series, that would just have Sam.

Thank you so much for answering my questions!

Andrew Varga is the author of the seven-part Jump in Time series, aimed at the Young Adult market. The Mongol Ascension is third in the series, following The Last Saxon King and The Celtic Deception. Find out more about him and his books at https://andrewvargaauthor.com.

Image of Mongol camp purchased from Clipart.com.