Get Real Letters in the Mail from a Time Traveler

A Message From Professor (and Time Traveler) Theodore Mellon

I am Professor Theodore Mellon, a time traveler. Yes, you read that right! I created a technology that lets me travel to any point and location in time.

Since inventing my temporal displacement device (an accident born from a much humbler goal of keeping my coffee at the perfect temperature), I have been deposited, with startling imprecision, into some of history's most significant, most dangerous, and most oddly specific moments.

And here is where you come in, dear reader. I will write you a letter from each time and place I visit, recounting exactly what happened, no textbook polish included.

Over twelve monthly letters, I recount my journeys as they actually happened, not the tidy versions found in textbooks. I have been mistaken for a demon, a spy, a comedian, a guerrilla recording engineer, and, on one particularly damp occasion, a delegate from a colony that does not exist. I have played poker with Mark Twain before he was Mark Twain, been trapped fifty feet up the Eiffel Tower during its own inauguration, and gotten far too much of Mount Vesuvius’ volcanic ash in my underwear.

If you would like the complete accounting, twelve letters arrive monthly and cover the following expeditions, in order:

1. The California Gold Rush of 1849, and an unfortunate poker game
2. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, 79 CE
3. Ptolemaic Egypt and an audience with Cleopatra VII
4. The Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, 1787
5. The inaugural climb of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889
6. The Bingham expedition and the "discovery" of Machu Picchu, 1911
7. The birth of rock and roll, Memphis, with a young Elvis Presley
8. The Salem witch trials, 1692
9. The Woodstock Music Festival, 1969
10. The night the Berlin Wall fell, 1989
11. Disneyland's now-legendary disastrous opening day, 1955
12. The Great Chicago Fire, 1871

I promise every one of these stories is stranger than whatever your history teacher told you!

Now, I understand not everyone has the patience for a full year of my correspondence, and that is perfectly reasonable. Chronological displacement is not for everyone. So my letters also come in shorter arrangements. The 8-letter weekly series carries you through my first eight expeditions, from the gold fields of California through the Salem witch trials, delivered one letter a week rather than one a month. The 4-letter weekly series covers just my first four adventures, the Gold Rush, Pompeii, Cleopatra, and the Constitutional Convention, for those who prefer a briefer temporal detour.

Whichever length you choose, the letters arrive addressed to you specifically. Your name is woven through the narrative itself; I am, in a manner of speaking, saying it directly to you. It is the closest thing to actual correspondence from a man who technically should not exist.

I should also mention, since I am told this is the sort of thing one is meant to mention, that these letters make an excellent gift. Should you wish to send someone else careening through history alongside me, you may schedule the first letter for any date you like. Order it today, have it arrive on their birthday next spring. I’ll even include a gift note with the first letter, and you can have it gift wrapped if that makes you happy.

There are no renewals, no recurring charges, nothing of the sort. You choose your series, you pay once, and the letters follow on their own schedule until my account of that particular timeline is complete.

I have poker debts to collect from a young Missouri riverboat pilot and aspiring writer, so I will leave you here. Come find me in your mailbox.

Yours across the temporal spectrum,

Theodore Mellon, Ph.D.

Ready to join Professor Mellon's expeditions? The Time Traveler series is available as a 4-letter weekly, 8-letter weekly, or 12-letter monthly letter series.