I’ve just learned that Cerelia’s Choice has been awarded second place in the 2016 CIPA EVVY Awards in the Fiction/Romance category.

I recently re-watched Blade Runner, one of my all time favourite films (The much-maligned Theatrical Release for those who care about such things. I don’t mind The Final Cut, but I’m not a big fan of the Director’s Cut.)

The story is set in 2019, just three years from now, and important events in the backstory are occurring right now, like Roy Batty’s “birthday.”

The movie was released in 1982, just over thirty years ago (though the Philip K. Dick story on which it was based – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (best title ever) – was published in 1968). The conception of the future portrayed in the film was interesting, not only in terms of technology but also social developments.

There’s the proverbial flying cars, and Replicants who are almost indistinguishable from humans, but no cell phones or flat screens. People are moving to “off world colonies” but most of them still smoke!

As a science fiction writer I’ve been trying to decide what the lesson in this is. I think it’s that you should lay off predicting future technology and society unless it directly affects the story, i.e. don’t use tech as the literary equivalent of eye candy.

Even then, you’ll probably get it wrong. But you’ll at least have a shot at drawing out some plausible implications, and perhaps to make the reader question some assumptions about their present. What more could an author ask for than that?

My latest novel, Cerelia’s Choice, is now available in ebook format on Amazon (US, UK, Australia, and the other stores). The paperback should be available in a week or two.

I’m really proud of this book. It’s a mix of space opera and romance, and I feel I’ve done a decent job of being true to both genres, resulting in a story with a little of something for everyone. I have a picture in my mind of the scene in The Princess Bride, where the grandfather is explaining to the boy that the book has sword fights and pirates and giants and chases, and of course true love. Well there are no giants, and the fighting is all done without swords, but the rest is true!

 A beautiful princess.

A handsome space pirate.

It could be a match made in heaven—if they survive…

When the luxury spaceliner carrying Crown Princess Cerelia across the Galactic Empire is attacked by space pirates, she is forced to flee for her life in the company of the ship’s captain, Jefferson Rydel. Having left behind her home and family forever to marry Lord Veraney, the man she has selected to succeed her father as Emperor, her disappearance throws the Imperial succession into question and destabilizes the Empire.

As she struggles to adapt to a harsh and challenging environment completely unlike the refined, sophisticated, and comfortable world she has always known, she discovers again and again that Captain Rydel is not what she thought he was.

Has he really uncovered the secret of Earth, its location lost in the passage of time and regarded by most as a myth? It would be a discovery to rock the very foundations of the Empire, its fourteen worlds each having been selected and terraformed to resemble as closely as possible humanity’s supposed original home. Or is he nothing but an unprincipled charlatan exploiting the hopes of millions?

Whoever he is, she has no choice but to accept his help. As they fight to stay ahead of the forces trying so desperately to kill her, and to stop the plot against the Imperial throne, she begins to wonder if she has found what she always longed for but never believed she would find—a man she can truly love without turning her back on the duty she was born to fulfill…

I just watched the movie of Orson Scott Card’s best-selling novel Ender’s Game.

The movie was enjoyable, but lacked the emotional impact of the book which is a sci-fi classic and one of my favorites, by which I mean that it still affects me when I think about it, even now several years after I first read it.

In the book we see the slow, deliberate process by which Ender is transformed from an innocent six-year-old boy into a ruthless military commander. How and why this happens is fundamental to the story and the skill with which Card carries it off is what makes Ender’s Game so unique.

In Fuller’s Mine, there’s a process of a character being broken down psychologically. My character’s transformation is nowhere near as dramatic as Ender’s–it doesn’t so much change her as simply force her to act against her wishes–and occurs over a period of only a month, but it still required nearly 15,000 words (45 paperback pages) to do it justice.

In the movie of Ender’s Game the transformation happens to quickly. We don’t see enough detail of the experiences which change Ender for such a dramatic change in his character to be convincing. They’ve also compressed the timeline, so rather than being six years old at the start of the story he’s more like eleven or twelve.

If you’ve seen the movie but haven’t read the book, you really must.

Since I’ve started writing I’ve found that when I’m daydreaming, it’s primarily dialogue. Not storylines, not structure, but literally dialogue. I hear my characters talking – not to me, but to each other.

The biggest problem is that this mostly happens in places where I can’t immediately write it down – in the shower, the car, falling asleep!

The paperback edition of Fuller’s Mine is now available on Amazon.