Character Interview – Dr. Daniel Thorne from the Grace’s Moon series
I’m continuing with my series of interviews with characters from my novels today. Right now I’m going to bring up a character you may not even know exist from a series that I would give my eye teeth to have more time for. I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Daniel Thorne from the Grace’s Moon series. I’ve only had a chance to publish two books from this series, Saving Grace and Fallen From Grace. Let’s talk to Danny about it…
Merry: Hi Danny. Thanks for being interviewed today, and I’m sorry that I don’t talk about you more.
Danny: That’s perfectly all right. I understand completely. And honestly, I’d rather stick to the shadows anyhow.
Merry: Ooh! Mysterious! Why do you suppose I don’t talk about you all that much?
Danny: Most likely because my books are not romance novels, and that’s what you’ve become most known for. My stories, Grace’s stories, are Science Fiction. They involve the sabotage of a ship carrying some of Earth’s first colonists to another planet.
Merry: You didn’t have anything to do with that explosion, did you?
Danny: … No.
Merry: Okay, then! What makes the Grace’s Moon books different from most Science Fiction?
Danny: For starters, they’re not really about futuristic technology and spaceships. There are no aliens, no magic powers, nothing too weird. Just a group of people who crash on another, virgin world and have to figure out how to build a society there. It’s actually more like a Historical novel than a Science Fiction novel.
Merry: How do you mean?
Danny: Well, when a couple hundred people find themselves stranded on a new world with no way to communicate with Earth, the advanced technology they have will eventually wear out and stop working. That means that they’ll eventually end up reverting back to some kind of earlier society. Without refineries to make the metal for computer parts and without anything close to plastic, they’ll likely end up at a more medieval level of technology.
Merry: Is that what happens?
Danny: … Your readers will have to pick up the books to see. But there are other, more pressing concerns that we ran into right off the bat.
Merry: Such as?
Danny: Such as the fact that three escape pods landed on the new world, but they contained members of two competing factions. It was pretty much war from the moment we stepped out of those pods.
Merry: And that was it? Just you guys from the pods?
Danny: …Yes.
Merry: I see. And what about Grace? Everything ends up revolving around her, doesn’t it?
Danny: It does, but mostly because Grace is a take-charge kind of woman. She was sent along on the mission as a logistics coordinator, so naturally she stepped in to organize things when the pods crashed.
Merry: But she was important before that, right?
Danny: True. Grace was involved in a few key incidents before the transport ship crashed.
Merry: Interesting. The first book, Saving Grace, begins with your escape pod crashing. Do we ever find out what happened on the transport ship?
Merry: Is that you, Danny?Danny: Yes, it is!
Danny: Yes, you get to see some of that in flashbacks.
Merry: So what exactly is your relationship with Grace? Are the two of you a couple?
Danny: (takes a long time to answer) No. We’re not a couple.
Merry: But you’re close?
Danny: …Yes.
Merry: Is there a reason why you don’t want to talk about the exact nature of your relationship with Grace?
Danny: … There is a reason, yes.
Merry: Some people have complained that a lot of men who crash with you seem to want Grace, and that that makes her a little unbelievable.
Danny: (laughs) Well, Grace is unbelievable for several reasons. But no, every man who crashed does not want Grace. … Just three of us.
Merry: A three-way love triangle?
Danny: (hesitates) It’s not really about love. Well, not for all of us. Some of it is about power. Think of Grace as the queen on a chess board.
Merry: Oh really?
Danny: (pauses) Maybe I’ve said too much. Oh, and the moon that we crashed on also seemed to have had some properties that made people…amorous.
Merry: Okay! So, do you think I’ll ever have time to write more about Grace’s Moon?
Danny: I sure hope so. I know that our story doesn’t end after only two books. I also know that you put in a lot of work on the third book in the series, only to realize an important part of the plot was physically impossible.
Merry: That’s true, but I might just have come up with a way to work around that recently.
Danny: So do you think you’ll have time to write more in our series? I know you have ideas for generation after generation of inhabitants of the moon and their stories.
Merry: I do! We’ll just have to see if enough people bug me to keep writing them!
So there you have it! The books in the Grace’s Moon series do need to be read in order. Saving Grace comes first, then Fallen from Grace. They’re available exclusively at Amazon and for Kindle Unlimited.
