A Question

Have you ever noticed during the question and answer period of book signing events, one of the questions that will be asked every time is, “Who is your favorite author?”

My answer tends to confuse them as I write science fiction, but my favorite author is a historian. I do have other favorite authors, but I do not limit myself to one author or one genre of fiction. The favorite ones do have something in common. They write sweeping epics following the generations into another century or more

My first acquaintance with such a novel was The Awakening Land by Conrad Richter. His family moves out of Pennsylvania into Ohio in the seventeen hundreds and he tells of their lives, loves, and family until after the Civil War. Another is Alex Haley’s Roots. Roots like the Awakening Land trilogy, takes one from the seventeen hundreds through the aftermath of the Civil War.

I did not realize when I read King Rat by James Clavell that one of the characters in there related to another story that he wrote years later. The family and their business enterprises begin with the novel Tai Pan and continues through Whirlwind, the fifth of his Asian saga. It really saddened me when I read of his death as I knew I would never read another of his novels for I had read all of his published ones.

The most famous science fiction novels following a family and theme through the generations and centuries are the six Dune novels by Frank Herbert. Yes, I have read all of those too.

Another favorite was The People by Zenna Henderson. It was never a full novel, but it was about aliens living on Earth and trying to avoid being recognized as different.

Somehow I've managed to mix all those elements in my novels about the MacDonald and Rolfe families. Earthbound (Volume I), http://www.amazon.com/Earthbound-1-Ma..., begins the saga of a man from the planet Thalia trapped on Earth. He manages to survive in a violent, primitive world. He takes the name of Zebadiah L. MacDonald. Before the novel ends, he has discovered that another alien has survived on Earth. He will marry and there is a mixed alien-Earth child.

Gather the Children, http://www.amazon.com/Gather-Children..., continues where the first novel stops. It is just after the Civil War. Texas and the South are broken lands filled mostly with broken families. The North needs beef, and MacDonald and Rolfe have beef to spare. The other alien does come after MacDonald and his family, and the Texans aren’t happy about Rolfe and MacDonald siding with the North.

The third novel, Before We Leave, http://www.amazon.com/Before-We-Leave..., follows the MacDonald’s and the Rolfe’s through the middle of the twentieth century. They endure Comanche and outlaw raids, blizzards, hangings, and betrayals.

Return of the Maca, http://www.amazon.com/Return-Maca-Vol..., is the fourth novel. MacDonald returns to his home planet with some of his Earth family. Nothing is ever quite that simple and the battle begins over the control of the planet Thalia.

Several of my fans have asked if this would be the last novel of the series. How can it be? Lorenz has found a new love and his Earth grandson is about to discover that living alone on Thalia can be a lonely proposition. MacDonald has his name and his land back and he intends to replenish his House.

How many of you have been asked, “Who is your favorite author?”