I came across the following gem yesterday:

Whenever I'm asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say ransom notes

/Literary Agent H.N. Swanson

Is the story funny? Scary? Dramatic? Is it an obvious fakery? Are they doing it to conceal a crime?
Is there romance?

And also take into account cultural idioms.
If someone, say fell asleep in 1809, and woke up today. 

Would they have any idea what "OMG, I like, totally googlestalked him."  would mean?

Also.  What is the rate of technical/magical advancement in your world.
Has the lives of the average person changed, and how drastically in the last 200 years.
Do they still use horse drawn plows? Or Do they have little magical sprites that prepare the fields.
Were there any big battles, any big wars?  Cultural events.

For example.
If you went to sleep in 1350 and work up in 1550. 
The english spoken would likely not have changed too much, although you might be weirded out by the level of french/english merging.  But an amusing thing.  A now common physical expression (giving someone the middle finger) would be completely incomprehensible to you.  That's because you've never heard of the Battle of Agincourt.  From which that particular expression came from.  There's just alot of things to consider, and that's during a relatively slow period like the dark ages. 

Temporal shift stories are hard to pull off well.

You’ve also missed Luther, a significant shift from aristocratic feudalism to monarchy, most of the Black Death and subsequent liberation of english serfs, the discovery of America & the sea route to India, throwing the muslims and jews out of Iberia, the abandonment of Greenland, I also think the prevalence of windmills and waterwheels, reasonably certain Turkey conquered lots of the Balkans…

I tend to refer to stuff by season, last spring, last winter etc. and let the years sort themselves.

Does peppermint help against seasickness? And if Tavi knows about this, what possible reason could he have for not packing some himself during Princep's Fury?

On a loosely related note.

What strikes me as odd is the fact that Kordholt (later Aricholt) is so far from Garados. They used it as base to hunt the Vord on Garados... makes no sense for it to be so far away.
But like I said before, the whole of Calderon deviates from how I pictured it myself.
I bet Jim did this on purpose... he wants to confuse us. :-)

They went to Aricholt because Aric came and said "I haz problems, helps plzthnks" and then they found it abandoned and vord-infested. After which they decided to press on, not because that was the best base but because it would take too long to go elsewhere. Necessity, rather than convenience.

I'm not so sure, that's the British edition, and with the last release, European readers got their copies at least a couple of weeks before it hit the shelves here in the USA.

Stockholm got copies 3 weeks in advance this year... Mine was purchased yesterday so now I haz a happy   

In writing, 'tis the knowledge of the teacher, not where they teach that makes a great class to take.

I'm taking a class with some incredible writers, who aren't sci fi readers.  Initially, their comments were "how does that work?" type variety. And i would, "huh?" Assume nothing and describe all.  See other posting here to do it in an entertaining way.

I'm using a time travel device.  I created it and I described it, but from the wonderful sci fi writer was the Star Trek concern---"aren't you afraid they will change the time line?"  UHm, yeah,great question.  I've been using without thought the Crichton Time Line and more realistic in my opinion to assume.  About ten inventers invent the same device at the same time usually--but only one gets the Kudos.  Killing one off isn't going to change a thing.  Another is already there and ready to go.   

So, I need to go back and explain that--dang it!  :-)  Thank goodness for readers who will actually ask you questions and call you on something you missed doing!

Actually, the ”Timeline” version makes precious little sense. If you can only bring yourself, that’s one thing (though I still suspect if you manage to kill both Newton & Liebnitz that’s going to screw over history), but they can bring stuff.
As in, a small library of all the mathematical and scientific advances of the last 300 years. Print a bunch of copies and start publishing them during the enlightenment and see if things progress as they did for real…