He learned to dive into his own past and erase every regret. Hell is what came next.
About the Time Diving Series
The Time Diving series is a four-book metaphysical time-travel saga about a man who discovers he can dive into his own past and rewrite every regret he ever had — and then has to live, lifetime after lifetime, with the cost of it.
Narrated in a wisecracking first-person voice that owes as much to Mark Twain as it does to modern science fiction, the Mattverse is a sandbox of consciousness time travel, hidden time-bending societies, doomed historical voyages, and the long arithmetic of choice.
The Mattverse Explained
Matt Dunsratty is not your typical time-travel protagonist. He’s an older protagonist — a tired, semi-retired high-school science teacher who stumbles onto a form of meditation that lets him project his consciousness into the head of his own teenage self. There are no machines. No flux capacitors. No tachyons. Just a man, a memory, and a whispered new choice. And every choice has a price.
As the Time Diving series unfolds, Matt discovers he isn’t the only one diving. A hidden order of “Lords of Time” has been at this for centuries — Biblico Hoxha, who started World War I on a whim; Collie Red, who vacations on the Titanic; Morfran Gethin, who shops for nuclear material the way other men shop for groceries; Katherine Bayer, who carries her own psychological wreckage from castle to castle. And underneath them all, the Nexus of Time: a sealed dimension a diver can enter but never leave.
Reading Order
Book 1 — Letters From Hell
Matt learns to whisper new choices into his teenage self’s head. The universe charges him interest. The Time Diving series begins.
Book 2 — Purgatory’s Best Shot
Twenty years in a psych ward for a murder he half-remembers committing. One escape. One ancient Lord of Time who wants Matt dead.
Book 3 — Heaven Says Wait
The Titanic, Apollo 11, a stolen nuclear submarine, and the woman Matt refuses to ruin. The original trilogy’s endgame.
Book 4 — Into The Nexus
The trilogy is over. The Mattverse is not. A new diver is hunting nuclear material across the centuries, and Matt is the only Lord of Time left who cares.
Tropes & Themes
Consciousness time travel, not machines. The hidden order of time travelers — Lords of Time. The Nexus of Time as inescapable prison. Damned narrator framing device. Older protagonist with a younger-self problem. Recurring love interest across timelines. Historical-figure cameos handled with care. The protagonist as his own worst enemy. Wisecracking first-person narrator. Redemption arc with no clean ending. Sin reframed as ontology — regret as the eighth deadly sin. Multiverse of self.
Comparable Reads
If you loved Replay by Ken Grimwood, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, the Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor, or Heinlein’s “All You Zombies,” the Time Diving series will feel like home — but with a theology and a human heart that are entirely Craig Robertson’s own.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Time Diving series about?
The Time Diving series is a four-book metaphysical science-fiction saga. Matt Dunsratty, a tired high-school science teacher, discovers he can project his consciousness into his younger selves and rewrite his greatest regrets — with escalating costs to his sanity, his loved ones, and the timeline itself.
What order should I read the Time Diving books in?
Read in publication order: Letters From Hell (Book 1), Purgatory’s Best Shot (Book 2), and Heaven Says Wait (Book 3) form a complete trilogy. Into The Nexus (Book 4) continues the story in the same universe — the Mattverse — and is best read after the trilogy.
Is Time Diving related to the Ryanverse books?
No. The Time Diving series is a stand-alone continuity, separate from the Ryanverse (The Forever, Galaxy on Fire, and related titles). New readers can start here without prior knowledge of any other Craig Robertson series.
Start Reading
Begin the Time Diving series with Book 1, Letters From Hell. By the time you reach the Nexus, you’ll understand why some doors are better left closed.
The Books Of Time Diving
When a burnt-out high school science teacher discovers he can meditate his consciousness back into his younger selves and rewrite every regret, he gets every life he ever wanted — and damns himself in the process. Time Diving is a wry, four-book journey through Matthew Dunsratty’s own personal Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, and the timeless Nexus.
Tropes and Genres in Time Diving
- Time travel via consciousness, not machines — Matt projects his mind into past selves. No DeLorean, no tachyons, just meditation and consequence.
- Be careful what you wish for — Every regret Matt erases costs him something he didn’t know he loved.
- The hidden order of time travelers — “Lords of Time” (Biblico, Collie Red, Maurice, Katherine, Morfran) secretly steer history.
- Damned narrator / framing device — Book 1 opens with Matt speaking through the Gates of Hell. The whole series is his confession.
- Older protagonist with a younger self problem — A retirement-aged man piloting teenage bodies; midlife regret meets coming-of-age.
- The recurring love interest across timelines — Shannon, the wife he keeps marrying and keeps losing; Maria, the love he refuses to ruin.
- Locked-in / sealed prison dimension — The Nexus of Time. Hotel California by way of Dante. You can check in, but you cannot leave.
- Historical-figure cameos — The Beatles, Apollo 11, the Titanic, John Lennon. All hit, all consequential.
- The protagonist as his own worst enemy — Matt’s antagonists are scary; the most dangerous time diver in the book is still Matt.
- The wisecracking first-person narrator — Same lineage as Spider Robinson, Christopher Moore, and the snarky-AI school of modern SF.
- Redemption arc with no clean ending — Heaven won’t let him in; Hell won’t let him out; he keeps trying anyway.
- Reluctant kidnapping / interrogation of a villain — Book 3 turns a sci-fi premise into a tight crime thriller for a hundred pages.
- Sin reframed as ontology — Regret as “the eighth deadly sin.” The theology is part of the worldbuilding.
- Multiverse of self — Thousands of Matts in thousands of timelines, all of them still him.
- Slow-burn metaphysical thriller — Every book widens the stakes from personal to historical to cosmic.
A Complete Overview of The Time Diving Series
Matt Dunsratty is a tired high-school science teacher counting down to retirement, a man who can barely walk past a memory without flinching at the choices he made there. The girl he froze in front of at fourteen. The friend he failed. The career he never chased. Then, on a slow summer afternoon, he tries an experiment so simple it’s almost a joke — and his meditation lands him inside the head of his own teenage self. One whispered suggestion later, the past starts to bend. So does Matt. Because regret, it turns out, isn’t a feeling you correct; it’s a hunger you feed.
What begins as a few harmless do-overs becomes a thousand stolen lives. Matt rewrites first kisses, undoes marriages, saves John Lennon, kidnaps a teenage murderer who happens to be himself, and slowly tears the world he loves apart. Worse, he isn’t the only one diving. A hidden order of time-bending “Lords of Time” has been at this for centuries — and most of them are far more ruthless than he is. There’s Biblico Hoxha, who started World War I on a whim. Collie Red, who books vacations on the Titanic. Morfran Gethin, who shops for nuclear material the way other men shop for groceries. And waiting underneath all of them, the Nexus of Time: a place a diver can enter and never leave.
Told in a wisecracking first-person voice that owes as much to Mark Twain as to modern time-travel SF, Time Diving is a four-book series about regret, identity, and the long arithmetic of choices. Readers who loved the Bobiverse, Replay by Ken Grimwood, The Midnight Library, 11/22/63, and Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” will recognize the territory — but the voice, the theology, and the slow-burn human heart of the Mattverse are entirely Craig Robertson’s own. Start with Letters From Hell. By the time you reach the Nexus, you’ll understand why some doors are better left closed.
Regret, Matt Dunsratty learns, is the eighth deadly sin. And it can damn you.
The Time Diving series is a four-book metaphysical time-travel saga. Matt discovers he can dive into his own past and rewrite every regret he ever had. Then he has to live with the cost — lifetime after lifetime. Narrated in a wisecracking first-person voice that owes as much to Mark Twain as to modern science fiction, the Mattverse is a sandbox of consciousness time travel, hidden time-bending societies, doomed historical voyages, and the long arithmetic of choice.
Matt is not your typical time-travel protagonist. He’s older — a tired, slightly overweight, semi-retired high-school science teacher. One slow summer afternoon, he stumbles onto a form of meditation that lets him project his consciousness into the head of his own teenage self. There are no machines. No flux capacitors. No tachyons. Just a man, a memory, and a whispered new choice. And every choice has a price.
Time Diving belongs on the shelf with the great consciousness-time-travel novels — Replay, The Midnight Library, 11/22/63. But Craig Robertson’s Mattverse adds something most of those don’t: a theology. Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, and the timeless Nexus aren’t backdrops. They’re load-bearing walls. Matt isn’t just traveling through time. He’s being judged by it.
As the series unfolds, Matt learns he isn’t the only one diving. A hidden order called the Lords of Time has been at this for centuries. Biblico Hoxha started World War I on a whim. Collie Red vacations on the Titanic. Morfran Gethin shops for nuclear material the way other men shop for groceries. Katherine Bayer carries her own psychological wreckage from castle to castle across the centuries. And underneath them all waits the Nexus of Time — a sealed dimension a diver can enter but never leave.
If you love humorous time-travel for adults that still takes its ideas seriously — redemption arcs without easy endings, multiverse-of-self storytelling, historical cameos handled with care — start at the beginning of Time Diving. Don’t stop until you reach the Nexus.
Letters From Hell
Letters From Hell by Craig Robertson — A Novel of Regret, Damnation, and the Deadly Cost of Vanity
A Haunting Afterlife Thriller from the Time Diving Series
What If Erasing Your Regrets Only Deepened Your Damnation?
From beyond the Gates of Hell, a damned soul reaches out to warn the living in Craig Robertson’s darkly philosophical supernatural novel Letters From Hell — Book 1 of the Time Diving series. Narrated by a man who discovered he could rewrite his own past, this haunting afterlife fiction explores how the pursuit of a perfect life, driven by obsessive regret and consuming vanity, can unravel the very soul that sought perfection. Part cautionary morality tale, part time-travel thriller, and part meditation on free will and damnation, Letters From Hell delivers a chilling first-person account of how one man’s arrogant folly earned him an eternity of suffering — and why the choices we make, even the flawed ones, are what make us human. Perfect for readers of philosophical dark fiction, supernatural thrillers, and speculative afterlife stories, this Ecclesiastes-inspired novel asks a devastating question: what if erasing your regrets only deepened your damnation?
More info →
Purgatory’s Best Shot
Matthew Dunsratty knows how to time dive. Through meditation, he can reach back into a younger version of himself and rewrite the past. He’s done it hundreds of times across countless lives. He’s had Shannon, lost her. Had kids, lost them. Made the right call, made the wrong one. And now, in this particular life, he’s spending year twenty in a state hospital for the criminally insane, medicated into a near-coma, being tortured by a guard named Tucker, and eating chocolate green bean surprise every weekday.
His plan to escape — through time, if not through the front door — depends on one thing: getting off his medications long enough to focus. And his means of achieving that depends on Billy Shovellbottom, the new night med tech who keeps offering him warm blankets and wanting something in return.
Matthew knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s not sure it’s going to work. He’s also not sure it matters.
Purgatory’s Best Shot is the second book of Craig Robertson’s Time Diving series — a brilliantly dark, savagely funny, and unexpectedly moving story about a man who has spent so many lives trying to fix his mistakes that he’s lost count of which mistakes were actually his.
More info →
Into The Nexus
The trilogy is over. The Mattverse is not.
Matt Dunsratty has walked away. From Maria. From the dive. From every regret he might be tempted to rewrite. He’s sitting on a Portuguese beach with a Sagres in one hand and a TV remote in the other, working very hard at having nothing left to do.
It would be a great plan if Morfran Gethin weren’t somewhere in 1975, buying weapons-grade plutonium from a sweating man in a Waco warehouse.
Of the Lords of Time, Biblico is dead. Collie Red is sealed in the Nexus. Katherine Bayer hides in her castle. Maurice was never going to help anyone. Matt is the last one left who cares — and the last one Morfran has to fear.
The Time Diving series continues.
More info →