SFR Brigade Showcase — Keys to Me
Welcome to the Science Fiction Romance Brigade’s first showcase of 2017. Once a month the brigade’s authors highlight snippets from new work, WIPs, cover reveals or other fun things.
Science. Fiction. Romance. Three words that are keys to who I am.
Key 1: Science
[image error]Although I love learning about the universe, I’m not a serious science geek. I subscribe to Science News but read only half the articles. I used to subscribe to Scientific American, but read way less than half.
In my science fiction, I’ve come up with only a couple of sorta original ideas (although that’s not to say others didn’t think of them first):
“The Jungian Extension” — The idea that Jung’s Collective Unconscious would be vastly more powerful on a world of telepaths. In The Trilogy of Tompa Lee , the natives consider Tompa a goddess — and their belief gives her startlingly godlike powers.
“Tugships” — The idea that incoming spaceships should be escorted to safe docking. Freewheeling ships, traveling at torpedo speeds, are a recipe for disaster unless they land perfectly. In Constellation XXI , tugship pilot Sienna fights to control a runaway freighter headed straight toward the space station where she grew up.
Key 2: Fiction
Sometimes, I can be really dense. I was nearly 40 before I realized I was a creative person — even though by then I’d been playing oboe in orchestras for half my life. Looking back, how could I not have realized my fundamental nature? Dumb, dumb, dumb.[image error]
Indicative of my self-ignorance, my first books were non-fiction programming books for children. As I came to realize I needed to create or die, I finally turned to fiction.
Initially, I wrote contemporary romances for Silhouette books because my wife suggested that “anyone could write one of those.” Yes, she actually said that.
Key 3: Romance
I married my high school sweetheart a week after graduation. We’re still together. We’ll reach FIFTY YEARS when this decade dies and oh my God I’m getting old.
[image error]By any measure, our marriage has been better than most. That alone qualifies me to handle love stories with HEAs, but I also prefer Jane Austen movies to superhero flicks. I’m a guy, but I’m a romantic.
So it is that romance shares center stage with science in my SFR’s such as the Alien Contact for Idiots series or the Repelling the Invasion series.
Even in my science fiction that doesn’t quite qualify as romance, such as Future Love or The Midas Rush, love is usually a primary motivation.
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There you have it — my writing career has been a voyage of discovery. You can launch a discovery voyage of your own by checking out the posts by the members of the SFR Brigade.
