Blog Hop

These questions are hopping over to my blog from the gorgeous and sexy (she told me to say that) Jo Zebedee who answered them just last week on her blog. Jo's represented by Molly Ker Hawn of the Bent Agency and her first novel is out in Autumn from Tickety Boo Press. Go check it out.

What am I working on?

I'm currently working on an urban fantasy which is possibly the most complex thing I've ever written. So it's slow going! Lots of angst and real-life problems mixed in with the supernatural.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Well, the MC is an immortal lesbian, for a start. It's like Hollyoaks meets Lost meets Buffy, I guess. My style of writing is easily read and I'm hoping to get some humour in there too, I don't want everything to be all dark and depressing.

Why do I write what I do?

I write lots of supernatural and paranormal stories because I love that sort of thing! As you can see from my blog, I go on ghost hunts quite a lot. I'm not necessarily a believer, but I'm open minded and would love to see something for myself. My cousin's a medium too, and a few years ago now I used to sit with a group and we'd all learn about tarot and crystal healing and various things that I wasn't very good at.

How does my writing process work?

I usually get a feel for a character come into my mind and then I just sit down and start writing. I don't plot. I might scribble down ideas for future scenes in my notebook though. I have to have silence when I'm writing - no music, and the dog has to be asleep!

Who's next on the blog hop?

Stephen Palmer is the author of eight novels: Memory Seed (Orbit 1996), Glass (Orbit 1997), Flowercrash (Wildside 2002), Muezzinland (Wildside 2003), Hallucinating (Wildside 2004) and The Rat And The Serpent (Prime Books 2005). In 2010 PS Publishing published Urbis Morpheos. In 2014 Infinity Plus Press published his surreal slipstream steampunk novel Hairy London. Ebooks of Muezzinland, Hallucinating and The Rat And The Serpent are available from Infinity Plus, who also recently acquired the ebooks of Memory Seed, Glass and Flowercrash. His short stories have been published by Wildside Press, Spectrum SF, NewCon Press, Mutation Press, Eibonvale Press, Solaris, TFQ and Unspoken Water. Further short stories will appear in 2014.

Thaddeus White is the author of fantasy novels Bane of Souls and Journey to Altmortis, as well the fantasy comedy Sir Edric's Temple.

Hunter Frost is the author of What Can Brown Do For You? which features in Torquere Press's Men in Uniform anthology. Visit her site to see what else she's up to.

Shuttered Q&A

Ok, so I've been sent these questions by the lovely Jo Zebedee as part of a blog tour. It's my turn to answer them today and I'll be passing them over to Brynn Stein at Stein's Station and she'll be answering them on the 14th.

1. What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

The main character is a man called Daniel Hopson. He's a product of my imagination and not historic at all.

2. When and where is the story set?

The story is set in 2013/4 and the action takes place in the south west of England. Weybury is a fictional town, based on my own home town. Lyme Regis is a very real, and lovely, seaside town about twenty minutes from where I live. Bristol is a city about an hour away – my cousin lives there. And Bell Tor is based on Bellever  - a ridiculously beautiful part of Dartmoor.

3. What should we know about him/her?

Daniel can communicate telepathically with his dog, Sasha.

4. What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

A fake medium called Rowan shows up and Daniel falls for him. Rowan conned money out of some very shady characters and now they want him to pay them back - which he can't do, because he's spent it all.

5. What is the personal goal of the character?

Daniel's a good guy, he wants to help Rowan. I guess he wants to be a hero. He also wants to get laid.

6. Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

The title is Shuttered.

7. When can we expect the book to be published?

Shuttered will be published by Dreamspinner Press in December 2014.

Sex on Wings by Jo Zebedee

Today I'm being joined by Jo Zebedee author of the soon-to-be-released Abendau trilogy (which I've had the pleasure of reading - they're brilliant so keep an eye out for them!)

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Sex on Wings

I've always had a soft spot for a nice, sexy space pilot. I blame Han Solo for it, mostly, but Barbarella - all thigh-high boots, wide-eyed and shocked by the evil Dr Durand-Durand - has something to answer for, too.

pic by Victor Habbick from Free Digital Photos

It's not just the sexy ones; I even like the Buck Rogers of this world, and the never-seen outside of the pages of a book, Ellie Quinns. For me, frankly, no space opera is complete without a space pilot, blaster hip-holstered, dashing, irreverent, and unpredictable. (There might be predictable ones out there; they're not real space pilots. Ever. No matter how low their intimate voice is, or how their eyes flash, they don't know their landing bay from their orbital habitat.)

So, why do space pilots equal sci-fi to me?

Firstly, full disclosure. I say science and I say fiction and they're not equal. For me it's three quarters fiction and one quarter science, half of which is dodgy. I used to be embarrassed about that. What sort of sci-fi writer couldn't give a stuff that faster-than-light travel isn't possible, or that you can't hear sounds in a vacuum? Surely these things matter? And they do, to an extent - mainly to ensure I'm not laughed at too badly. But, frankly, being constrained by little details like the speed of light doesn't get you to the end of the Kessel Run in a half-decent time, and I always fancied a run at that.

So, when I say sexy pilot, I mean space opera in all its gloriously colourful, cheesy, shoot-from-the-hip best. Because space opera brings something to the genre that it needs: escapism. Not grim stories about surviving the colonisation of a hostile world wearing an oxygen tank and a baggy space suit, equipped only with a magnetic tool-kit. My one attempt at such a story was terrible. Only the sex scenes were interesting and, frankly, by then I needed something to excite me. Which isn't to say all such stories are awful, but that a space-opera-bunny shouldn't be forced to obey the laws of physics.

It makes me wonder if sci-fi doesn't shoot itself in the foot a little. The genre remains niche compared to its elf-clad brother, fantasy. Escapism, surely, is part of the reason we read fiction. For realism, I could turn to misery-memoirs (but won't.)

I'm a die-hard sci-fi reader, with a library behind me including Clarke and Heinlein, Bradbury and Herbert. I adore Paul Atreides as the Fremen do, but I still feel (or felt, I'm in recovery) the need to hide what I love of the genre, for fear of being seen as low-brow, light-weight even. When popular writers like Bujold get criticised for winning the Hugo and Nebula by factions of the community, it drives the belief that such writing - the kind I love and the kind I write - isn't worthy of the serious genre of science fiction. If that's the case, how we attract new readers seeking escapism? For me, it's about widening the genre and accepting that some readers like to escape into new worlds, with characters beyond those who are Earth-bound.

For that reason, I say bring me your space pilots who don't know what gravity does. Hand me your mavericks who don't care about a critter-ridden planet with no air. Give me a quirked smile, a raised eyebrow, and a thigh-high boot and I'm yours for every page-turning moment. Because, for me, that's what sci-fi's about.

Jo Zebedee is represented by Molly Ker Hawn of the Bent Agency. Her first novel is due for release in Autumn from Tickety Boo Press.