Dystopian Cyberpunk and Asian High Fantasy: An interview with Camille Picott

1) Tell us about your book. 

Sulan is a near-future YA book that’s a blend of dystopia and cyberpunk (which I call dystopunk). It stars a Chinese heroine. There aren’t a lot of Asian heroes and heroines in YA lit right now. I wanted to create an Asian heroine kids and teens could admire. 

2) Dystopia is popular right now, but very few dystopia stories have a sovereign default as their precipitating event. Were you at all influenced by recent economic turmoil is setting that background for the book? 

I was definitely influenced by current trends when creating the backdrop for Sulan. I took current events—climate change, global economic turmoil, simmering conflict with North Korea, and the growing power of China—and extrapolated them ten-fold.

3) Tell us about your lead, Sulan

Sulan is a math prodigy who feels pigeon-holed by her gift. The adults in her world all expect Sualn’s life to take a certain path. Sulan resents this and struggles against it. I think a lot of teens struggle against adult expectations. I know I did.

What Sulan really loves is sparring and learning to defend herself. Though she’s not gifted in this area like she is with math, she finds happiness when she’s sparring. Hard work and dedication go a long way to enhance her skill set. She enjoys working hard for something she’s passionate about, as opposed to excelling at something that comes easy to her.

4) How did you approach world-building? Was it more about extrapolating from existing tech or more about highlighting certain techs to enhance your story?

I definitely extrapolated on existing tech. I wanted to create a near-future dystopian setting—one that readers could imagine being our reality in the next 10 – 20 years. (As opposed to a dystopian setting that exists several hundred years in the future.) I expect to see virtual reality as mainstream technology within my lifetime, so it seemed natural to include that.

5) What are the primary themes your book explores?

I covered a lot of themes in the questions above, but one I haven’t talked about yet is the corporate theme in my book. Corporate lobbyists hold a lot of power in our current political system. I was interested in exploring what might happen if corporations and the individuals who lead/own them gained an even larger share of power and control in our country. Again, I took a current trend and extrapolated ten-fold.

6) How do you feel writing young adult books is different than adult books? Is just about age or do you feel there should be a thematic focus difference?

This is a great question! I actually wrote a blog post addressing this very issue. You can read the entire piece here. In summary, here’s what I see as the main differences between YA and adult.

1. Themes and situations. The themes found in Adult vs YA are a vastly different. Examples of themes I've found in adult books: Dating with kids. Work-life-balance. The joys and struggles of maintaining a long term relationship. Parent-child relationships from the parent's POV. Examples of YA themes I've seen: Conflicts with friends. Love angst. Friendship angst. School conflicts. Parent conflicts (from the teen's POV). Coming of age.

2. Pacing. I think adult novels often have a slower pace. Not always, but I definitely think authors can get away with a methodical pace in an adult novel. YA, on the other hand, tends to be very fast-paced—one of the things I personally love about it.

3. Length. It's not very often I see a 700 page YA novel. I see them quite a bit in the adult section. I think long YA books are, in general, shorter.

4. Age of the Protagonists. This is sometimes a good indicator of where a book should be shelved, but not always. One example I can think of is Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. One of the main characters is sixteen at the start of the series, but the series is definitely written for adults. The characters, even the young ones, are all very adult with adult problem. So I don't think protagonist age should be the only thing taken into consideration when calculating the target audience for a novel.

7) Please tell us about some of your other projects.

My current project is an adult book entitled The Warrior & The Flower. It’s a high fantasy in an Asian-inspired setting. I’m aiming to have it out in December. Here’s the synopsis:

Yi, a retired soldier, has lost everything he loves—his wife, his daughter, and his home. With nothing left to live for, he focuses on serving the aging World Emperor. His duty is to transport precious liquid steel arrowheads to the imperial army. Unfortunately for Yi, the cloud shamans—lightning-wielding warriors of the Sky Kingdom—seek the precious commodity as well.

Tulip, the young child of a prostitute, constantly draws the ire of the house madam with her irrepressible curiosity. An impulsive stunt results in a wrathful beating from the madam.

Yi, fleeing from pursuing cloud shamans, witnesses Tulip’s beating. Drawn by the child’s striking resemblance to his own lost daughter, he impulsively negotiates for her purchase—after all, how hard can it be to care for one little girl?

But with Tulip’s inquisitive and precocious nature, he gets more than he bargained for. With the cloud shamans on his heels, Yi must confront his own grief and learn to be a father all over again.

8) Do you have an excerpt you'd like to share?

Sure! Here’s a scene from Chapter 1 of The Warrior & The Flower. (It’s still a working draft, so please excuse anything that seems rough at this point.)

Jen Yi resisted the urge to whistle as he rode. Just because he was less than an hour’s ride from home did not give him an excuse to be a fool. Whistling could attract attention of a menghai, the spiky bovine-like creatures that stalked this area of the mountains.

Sweet little Jian would be terrified if her papa arrived home covered in quills and bleeding from a tumble with a menghai. Sei, on the other hand, would be overjoyed to have menghai quills for her embroidery work, even if she did have to pull them from her husband’s backside. Of course, she would not be pleased if the beast managed to kill him. Damnable menghai could be harder to kill than cloud shamans. The last time he’d come up against a menghai—

Beneath him, Fire Foot hissed and shied sideways.

Yi snapped out of his reverie. He drew his sword, scanning the evergreen forest on either side of the road. He was a fool to let himself daydream in menghai territory. 

“What is it?” he asked his kylin, pressing one hand to the beast’s scaled flank.

Fire Foot snorted and hissed again, his forked tongue flicking out to taste the air. His ears pricked forward beneath a bushy red-and-gold mane. He flared his nostrils, pausing to paw at the ground with a cloven hoof.

Yi inhaled deeply. Fire Foot carried him forward another hundred yards before he caught the scent. Smoke. The smell of burning was faint yet discernible. 

The forest was tall and thick on this section of the road. Yi had little visibility beyond the trees on either side of him and the ribbon of blue sky overhead. He leaned forward, urging Fire Foot toward a rise in the road. From there, he would be able to see more of the land.

Fire Foot broke into a canter, red-and-gold scales rippling beneath the afternoon sun. As they crested the rise, Yi saw a thick column of smoke churning up from the northwest—from a small village comprised of tidy pine cottages.

It was Fen-li. His village. And it was burning. Smoke obscured most of the houses and shops from sight, but great gouts of orange flame licked at the clear sky.

“Sei,” he whispered. “Jian.” He jammed his boot heels hard into Fire Foot.

The kylin shrieked and bolted forward, galloping down the road and toward the village. Yi leaned low over him, wrapping his free hand in the mane.

How could there be a fire in Fen-li? The earth was still wet from the spring snow melts. Even when the elders did burn fields, they were careful and never burned this early in the season.

A shadow flickered above him. It blotted out the light for a fraction of a second. Had Yi not spent fifteen years of his life as a soldier, he likely wouldn’t have noticed it. But in that split second, Yi knew exactly how the fire had started. More specifically, he knew who had started it: the cloud shamans.

They can’t be this far east. They can’t be.

But they were.

Looking up, Yi saw a lone cloud shaman bank sharply on his cloud. Dressed in the tight-fitting brown leathers of the Sky Kingdom, the shaman rode the cloud with his knees slightly bent. As he spun the cloud around to charge at Yi, there were several heartbeats when his body was parallel with the ground.

Yi jammed his sword into his sheath and pulled out his bow. The cloud shaman raised his hands, honey jade bracelets winking pale yellow beneath the sun. Silver chains connected the bracelet to honey jade rings on his fingers. The stone jewelry glowed, the honeycomb interior charged with lightning harvested in the Sky Kingdom.

Fire Foot screamed at the sight of the bracelets, his mane fluffing with anticipation. The kylin craved lightning the way Jian craved sweets. Even from this distance, Fire Foot smelled it. He reared and pranced, straining in its direction.

In that instant, the cloud shaman hesitated. If he fired at Yi, he risked hitting Fire Foot instead—and a lightning-charged kylin was dangerous, even more dangerous than Yi. A kylin in a lightning frenzy was deadly.

That hesitation was all Yi needed. He snatched an arrow from his quiver. It was tipped with a liquid steel arrowhead, the only metal in the Three Kingdoms that could obliterate a shaman’s cloud.

In one smooth notion, he drew and fired. The first arrow barely left his bow before he fired a second one. Both shot forward in whistling arcs.

In his youth, he’d been the best archer in Emperor Chun’s army. Even in retirement, his shots flew true. There was the solid thunk of one arrow hitting flesh, and the telltale hiss as the other pierced the cloud and turned it to insubstantial mist.

The shaman cried out as he plummeted earthward. As he fell, he raised one bracelet and fired. Yi was blinded as lightning blazed forth from the honey jade, flashing straight for him.

He threw himself against the kylin’s neck for protection. Fire Foot reared and hissed with excitement, his body guided by his instinct. Yi felt the kylin take the strike square in the chest. It reverberated through Fire Foot’s body like a gong, sending out shockwaves that made the beast quiver in response.

Fire Foot shrilled in ecstasy. Yi opened his eyes to see the lightning crackling across his scales. It quickly disappeared, absorbed by the kylin’s body. The beast glowed red-gold. His eyes emitted a white-hot light, and even his dark gold antlers glowed.

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Sulan: Episode One: The League is now available in physical, ebook, and  audio book format at Amazon.

Please visit the author at http://www.camillepicott.com/.

National Bankruptcy, Climate Change, and Anti-American Terrorists in the Future: A Review of Sulan by Camille Picott

In Camille Picott's Sulan, Episode 1: The League the United States has been reduced to a weakened former shell of itself. A sovereign default, compounding the effects of advanced climate change that has reduced agricultural viability in North America, has left the country poor and scrambling to provide the most basic of services. Famine and refugees camps are common. If that wasn't enough, a terrorist group, the Anti-American League, is waging a bombing and assassination campaign against anyone they deem useful to the country, including innocent college kids. The most powerful entities in this new power structures are multi-national corporations jockeying for position as they work on producing everything from weapons to programs for virtual reality.

Teenage math prodigy Sulan Hom is somewhat shielded from these harsh realities. Her parents are important employees in one of the more powerful corporations. She attends virtual reality school. In such an unstable world, though, no one is truly safe.

There's a lot to like about Sulan. The near-future science fiction setting provides a lot of cool toys and ideas that still come off as rather plausible. I don't want to spoil the book, so I'll note I particularly liked a few things they did with genetic engineering.

The main character herself is likable and proactive, even if she's a bit understandably sheltered at the beginning. Interestingly enough, I'll even note she comes off naive early on, despite the fact her witnessing a terrorist broadcast of a college execution ostensibly is a chief motivating factor for her to start wanting to learn to protect herself. That said, when we're first introduced to her, it's obvious that her issues, despite the horror around her, are really more about more typical adolescent struggles to define themselves and assert some control in a time of responsibility and transition. That said, she doesn't really come off as self-centered, an interesting feat in a book centered around a 16-year-old genius girl living in conditions well superior to many people in the setting. One of my particular bugbears in YA fiction centered around female leads are non-proactive heroines, and Sulan Hom is a character that is doing everything she can to influence her situation.

The primary side characters, her friends, are likable enough. Similar to Sulan, they all a solid combination of teens with believable teen issues and desires who are a just a bit more impressive than your average teen. This is, though, to be expected. By the nature of the setting, these characters represent the children of the elites.


The primary antagonists of the book, the Anti-American League, don't get as perhaps as much depth as probably needed. They certainly come off sinister and present a credible threat, but as presented, generate more than a few questions about the actual plausible nature of the terrorist group represented. Additional geopolitical context perhaps would have benefited our understanding of their League, their goals, and their strategies, and, as such, made them come off as a slightly more realistic, and therefore menacing, terrorist group. It also may be that some of these questions are answered in sequels.


Though the plot overall is brisk, it initially lingers a bit slightly too long on Sulan training in virtual reality. Despite some setting elements introduced to make it clear she's not totally safe even there, it still dampens some of the tension. The second and third acts, though, move along at a solid clip that is exciting without seeming too rushed, despite the relatively short length of the book. There are several nice action scenes combined with more than a few times where the characters have to try and think their way out of a predicament. At the same time, the plot provides plenty of mystery for sequels but still tells a complete and satisfying story arc.

Please stop by tomorrow to read an interview with the author.

Sulan: Episode One: The League is now available in physical, ebook, and  audio book format at Amazon.

When Medicine Is Forbidden: An interview with dystopia writer David Kubicek

Today I'm talking with David Kubicek about his dystopian story of illegal medicine, A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY.
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1) Please tell us about your book.

A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY is set in a desolate future where medical doctors are illegal, and Healers who practice such primitive and superstitious methods as bleeding and chanting are the norm.  Hank is a doctor who practices medicine only for himself and his family. His fear of losing  everything he’s worked for has estranged him from the Underground, the loose network of physicians that tries to help people who have lost faith in the Healers. Then late one evening a 16-year-old girl named Gina knocks on his door. She has a secret of her own and the power to destroy Hank’s life if he doesn’t come with her and make her seriously ill father well. But there is one catch  —Gina’s father is the brother of a Healer who could send Hank to prison for the rest of his life.

2) Can you tell us a little about how conventional medicine becomes illegal in your setting? 

Two things happen to cause society to turn away from conventional medicine:

• A large number of people must be willing to reject science and embrace unscientific, popular folk beliefs.
• A catalyst such as the nuclear war in my story disrupts society, and when civilization is rebuilt those unscientific, folk belief people emerge as the majority, which suppresses and oppresses the minority.

I believe a society like this could exist, given the right catalyst. A few examples of the kind of thinking that could lead to such a thought shift are conspiracy theories about aliens having set up a base on the dark side of the moon, the belief that the world is flat, and the belief that men did not land on the moon but in a desert somewhere on Earth. None of these ideas are supported by any hard scientific evidence, yet many people believe them. What if a war happened, and these people became the majority?

3) Did this book require you to do any research on the practice of medicine?

This story was originally written in the mid-1980s and published in 1987 in a magazine called Space and Time. I revised it—including a new beginning and a revamped ending—for this new release. I didn’t do any specific research, but I was inspired to write it after reading some magazine articles and a book about problems with the medical profession and how health care is administered. For the current release I did a little research, aided by some life experience. For instance, the oxygen generator mentioned in the story is a real piece of equipment. We had one for my mother when we were caring for her.  

4) Given the furious political debate over health care and, to a lesser extent, the continuing clash over the very nature of what sort of medicine (science-based, empirical, traditional, et cetera) should be practiced, books with health care as a central theme are going to naturally be associated with some of these debates. Did any of these continuing cultural and political discussions influence or inspire your book?

The two things that inspired my book were 1) The high cost of medical treatment, and 2) The medical profession’s dehumanizing approach to treating patients.

The high cost of medicine has been an ongoing problem for years. Most of us, unless we have really good jobs and exceptional insurance, are one catastrophic illness away from bankruptcy.

The medical profession’s increasingly dehumanizing approach to treating patients is more subtle and more insidious. It can take the form doctors not sharing information with the patient (this is the kind of arrogance Hank refers to when he says the old time doctors “thought of themselves as gods”). It can take the form of a doctor who is supposed to discharge a patient at a certain time, but leaves town without making arrangements for another doctor to discharge the patient (that happened to me). In a case I read about, a woman, for philosophical reasons, wanted to give birth at home. The family engaged the services of a midwife and took all the necessary precautions, but when she went into labor the authorities took her to the hospital against her will.

Although these issues weren’t the burning reason I wrote A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, they certainly were skittering around the edges of my mind while I rattled away at the keyboard. The story isn’t a treatise on the sorry state of the medical profession or a warning of what could happen if we don’t mend our ways. It’s a personal journey of characters interacting in a world that is out of kilter.

I’d like to point out, however, that this story isn’t a scathing indictment of our current medical system. I still have faith in the medical profession and medical professionals. Remember that in the A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, the doctor is the hero and the Healer is the villain.

5) Dystopian settings allow the exploration of controversial issues by providing distance from the current socio-political context. At the same time, that same distance somewhat undermines its ability to directly comment on those issues. Could you share your thoughts on these ideas and what difficulties you found in balancing such issues?

I view dystopian stories like all literature: they give you things to think about, but the stories won’t change anything or be catalysts for change. I’ve never had trouble making the connection between a dystopian story and the real world issues that could cause it to come about. Maybe that’s why I like dystopian fiction so well. In FAHRENHEIT 451, for instance, it’s clear to me that Ray Bradbury was concerned that declining interest in reading and increased dependence on television would lead to a desensitization of the citizens. When you factor in video games and the internet (YouTube, anonymous cyber bullying, etc.), much of what Bradbury feared has come to pass (all except wide-scale book burning; fortunately that’s still a little farther down the road).

In my fiction (usually) I focus on the characters rather than the society as a whole. What kinds of choices do they make given the restrictions of their societies? How do they interact with one another?  And I hope that within their interactions the readers will find a nugget of truth that will help them to be a bit kinder, a bit more thoughtful, or will inspire them to say “This can’t continue and it must be changed.”

As a character in another of my stories says: “Revolutions start by one man speaking his mind.”

6) Can you tell us briefly about some of your other work?

IN HUMAN FORM is a science fiction/literary novel about an android, built by the last survivor of an alien spacecraft crash, who loses her memory in a house fire and forgets that she is an android. The few townspeople who have learned her secret lead her to believe she is human, with disastrous consequences. This is the first novel in a trilogy; I’m currently working on the second book.

THE MOANING ROCKS AND OTHER STORIES is a collection containing 14 of my best stories from the science fiction, horror, and mainstream genres. I’ve included notes telling how each story came to be written. This collection includes the original version of A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY.

“Elevator” is a stand-alone Twilight Zone-like short story about a man’s claustrophobic nightmare. Not recommended for folks who are nervous about riding elevators.

Two of my earlier books—THE PELICAN IN THE DESERT AND OTHER STORIES OF THE FAMILY FARM and OCTOBER DREAMS, A HARVEST OF HORROR—are out of print, but copies usually can be found on Amazon.


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Thanks, David.


If you'd like to see more from David, please check out his website http://davidkubicekblog.com, his twitter at  http://bit.ly/hGcjOU, or his Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/hFwJ7u.


A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY is available for purchase at Amazon.


In addition, David is running a little contest with a giveaway of a $25 Amazon Gift Card as a prize. Please see his March 29 Meet and Greet at http://www.vbtcafe.com/ for details.

Religious Dystopia: An interview with author Randy Attwood

It's been said that one should shy away from discussing certain topics such as religion if one wants to avoid controversy. Today I'm talking with author Randy Attwood, who seems to have decided to confront such  controversy head-on with his religiously and politically charged dystopian story, RABBLETOWN.

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1) Please tell us about your book.

The title, RABBLETOWN: LIFE IN THESE UNITED CHRISTIAN STATES OF HOLY AMERICA, pretty much explains everything. The religious right has won. The Pastor President and Pastor Governors rule with a Bible in each fist and the computer in your hovel.

2) What inspired this book?

Years of watching evangelical churches gaining increasing power in the political field: Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, for example. Ed Meese once said when he was Attorney General under Ronald Reagan that the freedom of religion didn't mean freedom FROM religion. Oh-oh, I thought. This is not good. It was starting to sound as though religion was becoming a litmus test for whether you were a good citizen or not.

3) What is the fundamental theme you explore in this book?


Power corrupts. And absolute religious power corrupts absolutely.

4) Your setting posits that a particularly extremist form of fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity takes control of the United States. How does that happen in your story?


Perhaps it's time for an excerpt from the book. A history teacher is speaking:

Great strides had been made by Christians in winning elections to the U.S. Congress and state legislatures after the devil Muslims attacked our country in 2001. Our country came to its senses and recognized that the Islamo-fascist-communist-socialists wanted nothing more than the eradication of Christianity. Good Christians woke up and gained vast political majorities. There were a few hold-out areas that still elected liberals who claimed to be Christian, but of course you couldn’t be both, and there were even a few Hebrew people elected from districts that had high Hebrew populations and that was becoming more and more intolerable. The problem was that there were so many old line denominations that still had liberal leanings that the evangelical leaders realized they needed to consolidate their power into one true Christian church. They started their meetings with much prayer and worship on March 25, 2007, and asked God’s direction. On April 1, the Holy Spirit descended into the body of President Jerry Falwell I, who, it turned out, was in the last year of his life on this world, and God spoke. He wanted them to form God’s Church of the Evangels and he wanted all Americans to have a chance to convert to that true church. Those who did not would be an abomination to the Lord. All the leaders present recognized the voice of the Holy Spirit and fell to their knees and all instantly joined the newly-formed church. The Great Conversion had begun...

5) Religion is one of the most fundamental aspects of human society, yet also one of the most divisive. Did you ever worry about the controversy that can come into delving so thoroughly into religious themes? Some Christians may read your book and become offended, for example.

The religious right has offended me for decades. I think other Christians will relate and take to RABBLETOWN just fine. The recent barbaric measures in many state legislatures requiring women seeking abortions to be raped by a sonogram probe is offensive to me, and I think to many Christians. My book shows the logical outcome of the religious right's approach. In RABBLETOWN, if you are a woman and married and fertile and not pregnant, you will be artificially inseminated--art pregged. The whole Rush Limbaugh slut-debacle shows that some Christians need to face the consequences of their extreme positions.

6) Why did you choose to set your story so far in the future?

George Orwell's 1984 had a tremendous impact on me when I read it in high school. I wanted to write a novel about what life would be like in 2084. After many starts and stops and stalls, RABBLETOWN resulted. At one point, I had written myself into a corner. I gave up on the book for many years. But I returned to it after realizing that the character Bobby, who had a remarkable memory for Bible verses, was my savior in this story. And that I should let him make miracles. Bobby became a way of showing that the teachings of Jesus can show us again the way to our better natures. One reviewer now calls herself a "Bobbyite." RABBLETOWN is not a cynical sarcastic portrayal of right-wing Christianity, but a reminder that redemption is very much through the teachings of Jesus.

7) You have a rather large body of work. Can you tell us about some of your other work? Do you have any particular unifying thematic concerns or subject matter focus?

I have written since I was in my 20s and I'm now in my 60s. I had very little publishing success, and, quite frankly, admitted defeat. I told myself that I had written as well as I could, given what talent and discipline I had. But each work was unique to itself. Nothing fit easily into any genre (though RABBLETOWN is considered a dystopia). I had always been against self-publishing, but I did have an agent for one work, SPILL, and editors at two houses urged my agent to urge me to epublish. So I did, and then thought, well, why not epublish everything. I have now 13 works live with two more soon to come that will fit into the suspense/thriller genre. The ability to epublish has meant that my work has gone from my filing cabinet to the digital realm where people can find it. The most gratifying thing to me is that this work has connected with many people in a meaningful way. More detail can be found at this blogpost:

http://www.randyattwood.blogspot.com/2011/08/reflections-from-aging-writer.html

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Thanks, Randy. 

You can find more from Randy at http://www.randyattwood.blogspot.com/.

RABBLETOWN is available for purchase at Amazon.

The Dangerous Task of Writing a Sequel: A Guest Post By Chrystalla Thoma

I am above all and foremost a reader – have been since I learned to read, and even before that, when I blackmailed my parents into reading to me every night before falling asleep. Such a long addiction and deep love of stories can only mean that I’m a demanding reader. I can’t stand clichés. I frown at wooden dialogue and flat characters. I can’t abide plot holes and bad prose.

See how difficult I am? But I think we all are, when it comes to something we truly love.

As luck had it (or fate, or just natural predisposition), I ended up a writer. Since then, I find myself divided between two opposite camps – on the one hand, I am the creator, the founder, the writer, and on the other I am the world’s most demanding critic.

No wonder I feel I’m going crazy some days.

Series are a particularly touchy topic for me. I love them. Since I’m an escapist and want my books to be thick as bricks so that I can lose myself in them forever, series accomplish this to the utmost degree: they allow me to be lost in a greater world.

But series are tricky to write well. Very often, the first book is amazing, but midway through the second book things go awry and by book three you want to strangle the author – not so much for the waste of money, but for the destruction of the magic.

Cue dramatic music: I decided to write a trilogy (Elei’s Chronicles). I wrote the first book, Rex Rising and released it last summer. Meanwhile, I began working on the second book, Rex Cresting.

Cue percussion. Stress. Fear. Insecurity. Will my second book deliver? Will the third?

As a result, I pestered my friends and beta readers (critiquers) for months with questions such as “is this too melodramatic”? “Is this a good sequel?” “Is this crap?”

I swear, I’ve never felt such stress and angst about writing a story. First books are easier: you set up the characters, the premise, the conflict, the world. But the second book has to follow through and develop those characters more, bring the conflict to the next level, give hints as to the resolution that is coming in the final book.

I now sympathize with all writers who write series. A marvelous idea can degenerate in the second book and fall to pieces. Wonderful characters can step over that thin line that turns them from likable to disagreeable. The writer walks a tightrope.

And have I succeeded with my second book?

Too soon to tell. Besides, I’m too close to the book to be able to see it critically right now. I have done my best. Now it’s up to the readers to tell me whether it fulfilled promises made in book 1 or not.

Let’s hope it has.

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Thanks, Chrystalla.

Chrystalla lives in Cyprus with her husband and her hoards of wild books. She writes fantasy and science fiction and is now starting a non-fiction book about the dragons of the world. She is interested in parasites, ecology, Indian recipes, love in all forms and medieval music, not necessarily in that order. She is currently writing Book 3 of the dystopian sci-fi YA series, Elei’s Chronicles, and a gay sci-fi novel with androids and lots of mayhem.

Mayhem, in fact, is her middle name. You’ve been warned.

Chrystalla is all over the internet:

Blog: http://chrystallathoma.wordpress.com
Amazon profile: http://www.amazon.com/Chrystalla-Thoma/e/B001JOWZCC
Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrystallathoma
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Chrystalla-Thoma/117863861560579
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4397966.Chrystalla_Thoma
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Chrys

Elei’s Chronicles series (YA dystopian science fiction):
Rex Rising (on sale this week for .99 cents)
Rex Cresting Rex: Equilibrium (coming summer 2012)
Also: Hera (a novelette set in the world of Rex Rising)