Babel Clash

Robin talked about procrastination - yep, that’s me. A few years (yes, years!) into writing Song of Scarabaeus, I was still only two-thirds done with my first draft because… well, mostly because “there’s always time” to write later. In a last-ditch effort to finish this on-again, off-again manuscript, I grabbed a laptop and a change of clothes, and drove to Middle-of-Nowhere, rural Australia, to stay at a friend-of-a-friend’s empty cottage for two weeks.

No internet, no TV, and a broken heater in the middle of winter. I wrote for two weeks solid with one hot water bottle in my lap and another under my feet. The climax of the book takes place in an alien jungle, and while I had a general idea of its physical structure, my imagination dried up over the details.

Enter the coffee table book. Judging from the other books in the house, its owner had a keen interest in gardening and psychotherapy. But what caught my eye was a huge colorful book on machine embroidery (a craft I didn’t even know existed). The photos of what one could accomplish with a sewing machine, fabrics and threads were incredible. Intricate, beautiful, and best of all - despite being designed by computer chip - organic. Here was my inspiration.

Looking at the pictures and the brief paragraphs of accompanying text, I wrote a list. Thread, stitch, knot, weave, tangle, mangle, ripple, enamel, gossamer, crooked, knitted, patchwork, scallop, silk, feathery, vein, lace… As my alien jungle  became an embroidery project, I was starting to clearly see it in my head, and imagine how my characters might navigate it.

Next time you’re searching for inspiration, try something different. If an alien jungle can spring from a craft book, maybe inspiration for a spaceship design comes from looking at a cell under a microscope. Maybe inspiration for the sound of an alien language comes from… thrash metal?

Time for me to pick Robin’s brains for a change…

I read the Liveships Trilogy several years ago and was totally sucked in by the “family saga” aspect of those books. From a writing perspective, can you talk a bit about point of view? My book has a single point of view because, as a new author, I thought that was the simplest way to go. (It has limitations, of course, but I also felt it had the immersive quality I needed.) How do you tackle and keep track of multiple points of view? How easy is it to write from a character’s POV when you don’t necessarily identify much with that character? I’m planning to attempt two POVs for my next book, but I’m not sure I can handle more just yet. Am I worrying about nothing?

On to your dragons in the latest two books. Did you base their behavior on real animals? To me the dragons come across as rather cat-like – bearing in mind that cats express all kinds of personalities. Some of the dragons are indifferent and arrogant, viewing humans as inferior servants, while others are friendly, even doting, and I can imagine them rolling over to have their furry – uh, scaly – bellies scratched.

I know your family moved to Alaska when you were young, with the intention of living self-sufficiently. This idea fascinates me because it makes me think about colonizing new worlds, starting with close to nothing, and also about long space voyages where the spaceship becomes a self-sufficient body. Can you give any pearls of wisdom about coping with this lifestyle? What are the pitfalls? What’s the balance between satisfaction gained from raising your own food, versus frustration at not having a microwave oven?

Writers of science fiction often create alien worlds, sometimes natural and sometimes not. Whether it’s landscapes or creatures, I think it’s better to include at least some familiar features like the ones Robin has talked about – then give them a twist. To me, the monster from the Alien movies is more scary and more interesting than the one in The Blob because of the parallels in its appearance and life cycle to Terran creatures.

In Song of Scarabaeus, I start with the familiar premise that alien life is based upon DNA and can be manipulated with manmade retroviruses. Humans use this technology to terraform other worlds for colonization. When the process goes awry, I feel my task as a writer is to describe the consequences in a such a way that the mutated landscape is unsettling without being so foreign that readers can’t even imagine it.

I’m reminded of my husband’s first visit to (urban) Australia, where he concluded that it was like “America in the Twilight Zone.” It’s that uneasy feeling you get when your environment is essentially familiar but something’s just… wrong. Imagine an alien jungle. We have vines and bugs – everyone recognizes those. But what if the vines are prehensile and the bugs act like schools of piranha?

Just a quick intro post from me before we get stuck into it. Firstly, thanks to Robin for helping me log in!

Secondly, today is the release day for my debut novel Song of Scarabaeus (from Eos) - so far I’ve resisted the temptation to dash over to my local bookstore and check the shelves, just to convince myself it’s real. But I did get my first fan mail, which I guess couldn’t have happened if the book wasn’t out there somewhere…

I’ve lived in southern Arizona for the last five years, home of the saguaro cactus and not the lushest of places. While I appreciate the lack of bugs in this desert climate, I miss the greenery and the flowers and the seasons (I grew up in SE Australia and the UK).

In my novel I played with the idea of taking the most natural thing in the world - a complex evolved ecosystem - and messing with it in increasingly unnatural ways. My inspiration for imagining and describing this strangeness came in part from an unrelated coffee table book - more on that later.