One of the challenges of being a writer—any artist, really—is the balance between the creative urge and the dictates of everyday life. While I would love to be able to dedicate ALL my time to writing, it simply isn’t always feasible for a number of reasons, both creative and practical.
Read MoreOne of the joys of writing is the exploration. My writing is organic, unfolding in a vivid tapestry of ideas, characters and discovery. I uncover my world as my readers do, finding the story within, taking it step-by-step toward a finished product - sometimes misstepping (okay, often misstepping) - so that I have to start all over again.
Read MoreIn reality, Festival is nothing like Tamara’s fear and shame paint it. Since most participants don’t remember what happened, including Merran, I went instead to another source. Galadrian Raderth is a sage, a seer and someone who bears a perspective and awareness far beyond our own. I’ve only begun to learn the depths of this character, who spends quite a bit of time whispering in my ear about Azelle and Azellian life. I have my suspicions about just who Galadrian actually is, and I suspect he’ll be surprising me for some time to come—but for now, I am content to ask him questions and see which ones he’ll actually answer.
Sara: Thanks for sitting down with me, Galadrian.
Galadrian: It’s my pleasure.
Read MoreMy writing has always been very organic, morphing and changing as I evolve and grow. The stories I wrote ten years ago don’t even begin to resemble the stories that are currently being published, for example. I wrote nine stories at one point, all of which are utterly irrelevant now, not even story seeds, except in very broad, general ways, as the story has moved into totally new realms of exploration.
Read MoreDo supernatural abilities exist? It’s an interesting question—and one that might have a surprising answer. In my series, The Azellian Affairs, I have been writing about an alien race who has psychic abilities. That has inevitably led to the question of whether or not I believe in these kinds of abilities.
Read MoreBook 3 of The Azellian Affairs continues to challenge me. I have received the first edit back from the editor, and with her usual sensitivity and grace, she has shown me the places I have refused to face the depths of my characters and the story I am telling. One of those biggest questions: Who is Alarin Raderth? One of the characters in the Tamara character arc I am currently exploring with The Azellian Affairs, Alarin is a mysterious, blank character that I haven’t tried to connect with in any deep or meaningful way—not like I have with Merran, or even Tamara herself.
Read MoreIn the four years that my team and I have been posting blog posts, I’ve noticed a strange trend—posts about sad or difficult things tend to get WAY more attention than posts about successes and joys. In a similar vein, posts about something that scares or disturbs people gets more interaction than posts that are unremittingly positive.
Read MoreThis morning I decided to go for a—well, not a hike. More of a ramble through the prairie grasses, really, but it was in a small wildlife refuge not far away. My goal for this early morning ramble was twofold: to get ideas for writing and to slow and soften my energy to the point that nature forgot that I am “human”.
Read MoreAll Hallow’s Eve—a non-religious holiday that has become quite celebrated in our American culture. Doing a quick search as to the roots of the holiday, one explanation by the History Channel that I found connects it to the All Soul’s Day’s parades in England, a time period in the past when people thought that ghosts of the dead could cross back into the land of the living and be observed by those who had not yet passed on. This made me think about Azelle, the planet that I have been exploring since I was twelve, and wonder what they would think about the concept of ghosts. Are there ghosts on Azelle? If so, do they interact with the living? As always when I have questions, I went back to Merran Corina, character in my book and my contact for all things Azellian and asked.
Read MoreAs I come to a close on the active writing part of book 3, I find myself casting my thoughts to the next story. Yes, there is a book 4 bubbling around in the back of my mind. It’s starting to take shape, growing out of the character development in book 3.
Read MoreAs I take a break from beginning production on Triangle: Book Two of The Azellian Affairs, I find myself reflecting a bit on writing. One aspiring writer I met recently worried that she couldn’t write stories as good as the ones she was reading. This is a very real, and very legitimate fear. I still face it. With every new book it pokes at me—I’ve just gotten better at facing it and fear doesn’t change my behavior any more.
Read MoreWhen I was digging through my old stories, I found treasure untold. First of all, yes, I do hold onto copies of old stories, excised chapters and failed starts. You never know when inspiration might strike!
Read MoreI recently interacted with people who are struggling with another very real and very legitimate fear: “okay, I got over all those hurdles to begin writing, wrote a book, published it and now it’s not doing as well as I’d hoped it would. What if my time is being wasted and I’m losing money and it’s all for nothing?”
Read MoreOur society loves to play with the concept of “the one”—the “prince” or “princess” who is our soulmate, bound to us through all eternity. We see it over and over again in romantic comedies and romance stories. For some of us, it’s a knight on a white charger who will battle our demons and rescue us from our lives. For others, it’s a person with whom they have an intense, soul-deep connection. Still others fight against the concept and dismiss it out of hand.
Read MoreI’ve always loved language. Using a different word might completely change the subtle shading of what I am trying to say—how each and every word contributes to the look, the feel, and the texture of a book. Words deepen the experience a reader has with a book, or drags the reader out of the story if something is jarring or out of place. Words are also one of my favorite “geek out” places.
Read MoreWhen my friend, Alissa Tyler, asked me to hunt for a picture of the first car that made a powerful impression on me, I had some trepidation. The burgundy Mazda 626 represented my first foray into true independent adulthood. I am not a picture taker—could I even find a picture of my first experience of the independence of owning a car?
Read MoreOne of the strangest experiences I have had recently is an awareness that the “fiction” I’m writing might not be entirely fiction. The Azellian Affairs series is about an alien race with psychic abilities and its interaction with humanity. Is it possible that I’m not writing about things as “out there” as I think? Where DO I get my inspiration?
Read MoreI’ve seen and experienced some very strange, inexplicable things over the years. Some fun stuff that makes its way into my stories, sometimes. And some really not so fun stuff, that also might make its way into my stories. Because let’s face it. Being human hurts, sometimes, and pain, as much as we don’t want it to be, is a very powerful, very present human experience.
Read MoreScience fiction/fantasy is an interesting genre. Over the years, it has encompassed many kinds of stories, from magic and futuristic space battles. Star Wars to Star Trek are two famous screen sci-fi epics and authors like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey offered print sagas of their own. When I was younger, science fiction/fantasy was a catch-all for any kind of fantastic storyline that wasn’t in the form of a reality based, traditional romance, mystery or real life drama.
The genre has since matured into countless types of science fiction and fantasy categories (high fantasy, urban fantasy, hard science fiction, sci-fi romance, to name a few). Cross-genre stories have appeared, melding fantastic elements such as vampires and werewolves into mystery stories, or gritty detective crime solving. Spiritual elements introduced themselves, although the best science fiction has always had a layer of enduring spiritual truth to it, speaking of humanity’s struggles and fears about being alive. Many of the authors I read as a teenager: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Alan Dean Foster, Ursula K LeGuin, to name a few, wrote stories that were thinly veiled societal commentaries (and some of them not veiled at all), exploring real world problems in a fantastical way. Some writers were positive—humanity would prevail—and some were a bit less optimistic, but all of the best ones wrote stories that revealed our human condition in the midst of even these impossible stories.
Hard core sci-fi, many stories written by bonafide scientists who could see what was coming, would provide warnings by weaving thrilling stories about what could be. Many of these have come true—try spending any time in the telecom industry and you’ll discover that artificial intelligence is not quite so fantastical as you might think, although as of now, we haven’t created a Terminator-esque SkyNet. Yet). Softer sci-fi explored culture clash between aliens and humans or alien races, de-emphasizing the technology aspect, but honing in on basic human experience nonetheless.
Yet through all of this, the basic reality remains: the best stories explore our human experience, whether it be through technology or ordinary life with a science fiction twist. We might be writing about other cultures, but we are really writing about ourselves. We are writing about our hopes, fears, experiences, and the truths we are just now beginning to see and experience. It might have fantastic underpinnings, but the truth is, we are writing about ourselves. We are writing about something that we suspect, but don’t necessarily fully know yet. The best stories, the ones that resonate, are the ones with some germ of truth in them. And science fiction, like all of humanity, is evolving with us. We like to escape, but we want to hear truth. And to merge the two: truth cloaked in fun—well, what is better than that?
It’s been a while since my last post—and I apologize to my readers.
Such is the life of an author—the muse can get derailed by all kinds of unexpecteds and apparently, the blog muse is very similar. In my case, however, the derailing was in the form of something quite exciting: I was quite focused on my launch of Book Two, Triangle: Book Two of The Azellian Affairs. I’m happy to say my book launch at Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado went beautifully—I was able to share my experiences on writing the story and the process of getting it launched with a fun group of people. I do so love to stand in front of people, answering their questions about being an author—and questions about my book and the backstory that underlies it.
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