The creation of Goudrogen Crystals in PASSAGES by @LaurelWanrow #scifi #romance #giveaway

Goudrogen Crystals

When readers first meet Eve, the empathic cyborg heroine of Passages, she is wearing a crystal ring. It’s not just any crystal, or even a familiar one.

I did consider using quartz, scientifically known as silicon and the second most common mineral on earth. (Feldspar is the most common.) It is abundant on other rocky planets we’ve explored, so it makes sense for it to be found on another planet.

But, it was quartz, a mineral everyone knows, which would make it meh in my story.

Goudrogen is anything but meh.

Yet I had to base the tory crystal on something familiar, so I considered its properties. Goudrogen, or ‘goud’ as Passages’ characters refer to it, is a non-metal element. Only 18 of the elements on our Periodic Table of Elements are non-metals, but they make up most of earth’s crust, atmosphere and oceans, and are even found in the tissues of living organisms. Goudrogen had to be a non-metal, because it is everywhere on Aarde, and even has its own cyclic system.

I decided goud crystals would be in the hexagonal crystal family, like quartz and its other forms, such as amethyst. They form six-sided prisms, with six-sided pyramidal ends.

In my world, they are all doubly-terminated crystals, which if I told you why, would be a spoiler.