5 Questions with Greg Byrne, author of NINE PLANETS

Greg Byrne is an English teacher, grammar consultant, and lecturer. He enjoys exploring places, ideas, history, languages and science, dinners with friends, watching his family grow, and living life’s great adventure. His next projects are a young adult thriller with a twist, developing a grammar teaching system for schools, and writing a grammar text for ESL students. He lives in Perth, Western Australia, with his beloved wife and family and an overweight British Blue.

About the book:

In the world of despair, Father Nick’s Day is the only hope…

Peter Blackwell wakes from a coma into a world he doesn’t recognize. Without memory or identity, all he has are nine random images. Nine planets. Eight he can see, although he does not understand them, but the impenetrable ninth is the secret that two opposing and hidden brotherhoods have been seeking for nearly two millennia. Pursued, betrayed, Blackwell has twelve days to unlock his Ninth Planet and prevent terminal worldwide suicide. And his only ally is a manic assassin sent to extract the secret and kill him.

NINE PLANETS is a debut Christmas-themed science fiction thriller from an Australian author.

Find out more on AMAZON.

Q: What’s inside the mind of a fantasy author?

A: Wild extravagant thoughts. Real and unreal people in unreal worlds. Plenty of hypothesizing and re-imagining stories, images, characters and worlds in new ways. A whole library of histories and myths. Any number of fragments of constructed languages.

Q: Tell us why readers should buy Nine Planets.

A: Because it is unlike anything available today on the market, a story that hides one story beneath another, a very real and human story in a very unusual world.

Q: What makes a good fantasy novel?

A: A story that combines everything that makes us human with everything that does not: real human desires, character, brokenness, rages, loves, weaknesses, strengths and courage placed among strange landscapes, creatures, physical laws, languages and realities. Tolkien embodies this: the small hobbit, with all his simple desires, placed among the wide, legendary vistas of Middle Earth.

Q: What is a regular writing day like for you?

A: Have coffee, check emails and site posts, and write down all the dreams, images, mental tastes and flavours marinating in my subconscious. Then sit down at the computer and read the chapter I wrote the night before. Start writing. Walk around the park. Let thoughts rise up. Make connections. Get excited. Rush back to the keyboard. Write. Talk to the family. Disconnect from the book. Go to bed. Repeat.

Q: What do you find most rewarding about being an author?

A: It fulfils me. It activates all the DNA that make me who I am. It honours my parents for their gift to me. It gives me the opportunity to share my stories with the world.