Surprise guest, meet Tom!

I had a chance to talk to Tom before he....well, you'll have to read the story ;)

What did it feel like when Abbie looked in your eyes and realized what you really were?

I don’t mind saying I was powerful lonely right up to that moment but then it was as if the front door had opened and Abbie invited me in. Crikey! That Abbie’s a grand girl. Just grand.

While living with the Adams you read many books, which book was your favorite?

By Jings, it’s a bully high school textbook Doctor Adams secured for me, called Physics: Principles with Applications. I stayed up all night with that one and learned a powerful amount. I tried and tried to tell Abbie all about it but she kept pretending she was snoring.

Being transported from the 19th century, what was the strangest thing you saw?

It gave me a terrible turn but when I first arrived in the 21st century, I got lost in a parking lot. It scared the dickens out of me because I had a hard time figuring what all those big metal things with wheels were. But I quickly deduced that they were rolling conveyances of some sort. I was just desperate to study on what made them move but since I happened to be fleeing for my life just then, I didn’t get much of a chance. And I love a microwave. Just love it. To see those cheesy, bready things Abbie calls pizza turn round and round like that. The way they start bubbling up and steaming. I’m so glad the fella who invented the microwave thought to put a window in it. That was a great notion. Wish I’d had it.

Of all your inventions, what is your favorite?

Well of course I’m only thirteen, so I haven’t invented too much of anything just yet, and blame it all, when I get back to the past, I’ll forget everything that happened to me in the 21st century so I’ll have no idea what I’m going to invent. But I’ve been doing some Google-searches on myself and it seems my assistants in my lab and I will tackle inventing a Kinetograph and a Kinetoscope. That’s the first motion picture camera and a box to view the moving pictures in! I love the movies. Did you know you can see them in all three dimensions now?! That’s some bully inventing right there.

What do you wish you invented?

Since everybody’s always clapping me on the back about inventing the light bulb, I sure enough wish I truly had! The truth is, in 1840, a British fella named Warren de la Rue invented the first electric light bulb but he used platinum coil in it so it was too costly to manufacture. In 1879, I came along and got the notion of using a long-burning carbon filament. Well, after getting the notion for about a thousand things that didn’t work so well first. I sorry to say I didn’t invent the light bulb, I only perfected it.

Who knew, I learned something new today! Thanks for popping in Tom.

(Just a reminder that the draw for a signed copy of The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams ends tomorrow morning at 8 AM EST!)

Cross-posted at: He Followed Me Home on 15 April 2010.