Thursday Thoughts: To read or not to read.

I read. Not a lot, but I read.

While looking for a new science fiction book, I came across one that sounded familiar. Did I read it before? Nope. I was writing it. I had decided on a premise for my next book, started outlining the plot, wrote some intros and interesting dialogue, and now? What do I do?

As I wrote last week on tropes, there are only so many to go around, so the odds of writing a similar book to another author is fairly high, just like how songwriters can inadvertently write a song that sounds like another.

In my sci-fi trilogy, there were a few parts that had similarities to Andy Weir’s, Project Hail Mary, which I read after I had completed writing the story, so I wasn’t ripping him off, but I can see how readers might think that.

Maybe I should put a disclaimer in the book:

Similarities to any other author’s work is purely coincidental. So don’t sue me.

-Leon

Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.

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