- What is the working title of your next book?
Loyalty. That's just a working title, and it was developing into a theme. It's a sequel to the my nowel Sterling, which had the original title "Heroines."
- Where did the idea come from for the book?
A challenge given to me by a playwright. He told me that the purpose of a play is to illustrate a character's vices or virtues, undiscovered by both the character and the audience at the beginning of the play. I've written several serials where the hero's or heroine's virtues are visited time and again. I wanted to strech out and say, "Given what we saw at the end Sterling, do my characters have any more to give?" I believe the answer is yes.
- What genre does your book fall under?
Science fiction erotica. It's set in my grand SF space opera.
- What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Oh, good grief! I don't watch much in the way of movies so I wouldn't have the first clue. The main character's mothers I imagine would be Glenn Close and Judi Densch. Dove's boyfriends could played by a short, younger Leo DiCaprio. I think Sigourney Weaver would have once made a great Zia. I don't have a good visual on the main character; I try not to, too hard; I don't want to taint the reader's ability to place herself there.
- What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Having secured herself on a new world of unimaginable technologies, a young woman is forced to choose between joining her primitive homeworld's fight for survival and her own loyalties, intimate and otherwise, to the civilization that has embraced her.
- Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Self-published, like the last one, which did pretty well.
- How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
About four months.
- What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
A lot of people basically compare my work to either Terry Goodkind or Iain Banks in terms of setting-- which puzzles the heck out of me. There's a lot of sex, which is kinda my forte'.
- Who or what inspired you to write this book?
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and work." - Chuck Close.
"If inspiration arrives, it had better find me working." - Ruyard Kipling
Snide comments out of the way, I just believe that there are several threads left in my grand space opera that deserve more closure than they've received. The "happily ever afters" aren't convincing enough. Every good book must convince the reader that there's more to the character's lives than what you were left with. I don't know that that's true at the end of Sterling.
- What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
Although there's much less of it than in the previous volume, Loyalty continues with themes of gender confusion and transhuman considerations of sex, gender, and capability.