All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.
I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Communications and left formal education behind.
Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.
I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.
I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.
I think the diversity of authors and readers is expanding, which is wonderful, because it means the type of story being told is also expanding.
I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.
I'm told my SF is of the hard variety and my Fantasy is romantic but hopefully all the characters are strong and the plots are lively.
Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.
Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.
The Lord of the Rings movie set an entirely new standard for fantasy in the movies.
When I was in college, I spent a summer working in London. I'd enjoyed tea before that, but then I got actual, really good tea there and never looked back.
I describe my plots as follows; A character is walking down the street when all of a sudden a piano falls on them. They spend the rest of the story digging out from under that piano. How they dig, how long and how well, this all depends entirely on the character.
So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians.
I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.
I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
Fortunately, many people also enjoy a stand-alone as a sample of something new, like trying the special at a favourite restaurant one night instead of going for the usual.
Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.
Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians.
Mama took me in her arms and held me tight. Her embrace was hot and she smelled like sweat, dust, and grease, but I wanted her. I wanted to crawl inside her mind to find that place that let her smile and sing through the worst dust storms. If I had to be crazy, I wanted my mama's kind of crazy, because she was never afraid.
When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking.
As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.
For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses.
I did not feel I could create a more beautiful or interesting Mars than Kim Stanley Robinson or Greg Bear had, so I turned my attention elsewhere.
First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.
