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Feodar's World Excerpt

 AG:  I should be thanking you. Writing is, by definition, a solitary pursuit. One that has to fascinate you, or you wouldn’t put aside great chunks of your life to pursue it. Indeed, the hardest thing about it is to discipline yourself not to let it take over completely. This is why I set myself limited goals each day and walk away from it when they’re completed. I also try hard not to talk about it with family and friends, so the opportunity to indulge myself is very welcome

SRR:  Before we talk about your books, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you became a writer?

AG:  The only child of an itinerant bush worker, we traveled constantly in rural Australia, often living in quite remote locations with the nearest family a day or more away and little in the way of transport. It made me a reader, not of children’s books, but of what ever was available. This forced me to spend considerable time with a battered old dictionary that was our family heirloom. (In later years our children came to hate my standard answer to their queries about words they didn’t understand “Look it up in the dictionary”)

Constant changes in schooling and the different curriculums in each Australian State forced me to be a quick study and, when the family paused in its wanderings to allow me to complete secondary and tertiary studies, I did well.

Some of my father’s itinerant ways rubbed off on me for I’ve had a varied career, time in the military, sea-going in our Merchant Marine, Professional Fishing, Technical Superintendent, University lecturer, Offshore Oil Industry, and now, writing professionally.

I came to writing initially in 1970 when working for an international organization that required me to send detailed technical reports to head office in London and I found myself involved in time-wasting secondary correspondence, explaining what I should have made clear in the original report. My response was to enroll in a report writing class in my own time, but a clerical mix up saw me in a Creative Writing Group. (My offbeat sense of humor made me enjoy applying to London to cover this expense and they were now used to me enough to see the funny side) This led to my first published story in a long defunct magazine when the tutor, a professional writer set us the first assignment of writing a thousand words on any subject we chose. He said it was impossible to write a short story in so few words so I was compelled to do one in 998. He thought it was good enough to recommend me to a friend and I received the princely sum of thirty-four dollars.

In the latter years of my technical career, I was working eighteen hour days offshore under considerable pressure and found I needed a safety valve so I set aside an hour each day when I wrote fiction rather than reports. People learnt not to bother me during that hour unless the matter was serious, and this included upper management, but it served its purpose and I gained considerable enjoyment from it.

I began writing general fiction, sea-stories mainly, but an unwillingness to spend my time unproductively set me to researching possible markets and I found Romance gave me the best chance so I went to the local library and took twenty Mills and Boon books offshore the next time. (I’ll leave you to imagine the comments this stirred on an offshore rig) Mills & Boon were very complimentary about my first manuscript, but they pointed out my reading material was out of date and suggested I read some of their more modern efforts before submitting again.

A raft of circumstances and a need for change led me to grasp the opportunity for redundancy, to the total horror of upper management, and I found myself unemployed, with the opportunity to write. The first step was to have one of my manuscripts professionally assessed (a sea story) and the wounds this caused gushed bright arterial blood. Picking myself up from the floor and mopping up the mess, I sat down and formulated a plan of courses and competitions and within a year I had won two national competitions in romance writing and had a contract for five books with an Australian print publisher. Mitchell’s Run, which became Mitchell’s Valley in its US release, was the first of these. This publisher has since folded, but they required a pseudonym and Amy Gallow was born.

SRR:  How much of your life experience do you put into your stories?

AG:  An early writing mentor said the golden words “Write what you know,” and I’ve never forgotten them. Mitchell’s Run came from my childhood memories and was about land I’d walked, ridden and flown over in the Victorian High Plains. I’d explored mines exactly like the one described. A Soldier’s Woman, my second book came from my own and my son’s military experience and having done business in Singapore personally. A Fair Trade, came from my share trading experience and Offshore career and Snow Drifter, from my younger daughter’s experience as a wandering ski instructor and my management experience in overseeing amalgamations. The Widowmaker was never released in Australia, but Whiskey Creek Press will release it in the US in May 2008. It is set in the lead up to the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island and, if I never rode in the Grand Prix, I did ride races at Phillip Island when I was young enough to be fearless.

SRR:  Let’s talk about your First Family series.  How did you come to write it?

AG:  I read the obituary of a 107year-old Digger who fought at Gallipoli and was fascinated by the contradiction that his son never learned of his father’s war service until the son was 48, after WWII.

This contrasted completely with my own experience as our family has involved itself as volunteers in every conflict Australia has participated in since the South African Boer War in 1899-1902 and each of us has carried the combined wisdom of former generations into the madness of action. I’m not sure you can call us patriots, but, at a certain age, we find the call to arms irresistible.

I researched the man thoroughly out of interest and found two interesting characteristics, a hatred of war and a desire for environmental sustainability. This led to wondering how you could achieve both without reducing humanity to the status of happy idiots.

Only total control would make war impossible and only immortals have the long term vision to find environmental sustainability essential, so I evolved a group of immortals with the ability to control humanity’s minds. To make them immortal, they had to have no physical body to deteriorate and therefore needed hosts and the hosts had to get something out of the deal to volunteer and the basic idea of the First Family’s World was established.

To make the main character, Peter, more palatable to a US audience, I turned him into an American and gave him a suitable history to produce the man I needed, robbing a little from my own family where needed, and had him create a new reality as an escape from death.

Faced with this new reality, Peter reacted as he must. He’d fought against totalitarian regimes all his life and knew the value of guile rather than outright confrontation, studying the situation until he had a solution and then implementing it with patience.

A secondary theme in First Family stories is that Peter and his children have all the powers of an author. They can change things, but must pay the price demanded by the underlying logic of each change.

SRR:  There are two books out now which are part of your new series, New Blood and Feodar’s World.   Can you tell us a little about each book?

AG:  New Blood opens with Dael, one of the immortal telepaths controlling humanity in Peter’s reality and part of Peter’s plan to change things. The downside of total control and environmental sustainability by immortals is no generational change and no history, every year is the same as the one before, Peter wants to introduce a new generation of thinkers, which means he has to have Dael take on a corporeal reality and give birth to a child, creating the First Family of her race. (My non-US heritage shows in the fact I gave no thought to it being synonymous with the Presidential family).

He falls in love with Dael and worries that she is only a creation of his mind, but when the process of dying reclaims him on his own world, it is his son, Karrel, who uses his inherited powers to rescue Peter and fulfill his plans for Dael’s World.

The story ends with Peter worrying about the close proximity of two individuals who can change things, merely by thinking differently and he gives Karrel the task of finding out how Dael’s world came to be the way it is.

Feodar’s World is Karrel taking up the search of Dael’s past, traveling thirty-five thousand years backwards to find out why they left their original world. The differing time streams between Peter’s and Dael’s world, created to give him time to achieve his purpose in the process of dying, have in turn created the anomaly that Dael’s world is in the far distant future of his own. Thus, Karrel arrives at the Blood’s original home to find a scout ship from Earth entering its orbit as the front-runner of a twenty-seven thousand year Diaspora. Belen, the villain (?) of New Blood is alive and as difficult as ever and managing this confrontation without bloodshed on either side requires all the First Family’s cunning. In the process, Karrel falls in love with Gabrielle, the scout ship commander and resolving the thirty-five thousand year time difference comes at a cost to the planet that becomes Feodar’s World. In the second part of the book, Jack, Karrel and Gabrielle’s son, returns in the present to set things right and meets Rachael, an agent of the Federation, which the First Family resists.

SRR:  How many books do you plan on being in this series?

AG:  Rachael’s Return, the third book is already on the Coming Soon page of the New Concepts. It completes Jack and Rachael’s love story and shows how near immortality can be created in spite of Peter’s original plan. Kayelle follows and shows Peter’s cunning at its cleverest whilst still being a love story between his youngest son, Jean-Paul, and the title heroine. The final book, Anneke, is the love story of Peter and Dael’s daughter Anneke and ties up the loose ends of the overall plot, answering some pf Peter’s secret worries.

SRR:  What made you decide to write a science fiction romance? 

AG:  I didn’t “decide” to write science fiction. I thought of a character who was complex enough to need his own environment and everything he does or thinks arrives from this premise. It began as paranormal, based on the premise of telepathy, and then was constrained by the fact that nothing can occur in the story that Peter, its creator, isn’t capable of imagining.

The science fiction part came out of the internal logic and is firmly based on the realities I have inhabited in my professional career.

SRR:  How was writing science fiction different than writing a contemporary romance?

AG:  In imaginative fiction of any description, there has to be an internal logic that makes the environment believable and apart from the powers I gave Peter and his family, everything is constructed logically and taken from life experience.

SRR:  I personally loved Mitchell’s Run, a contemporary from Rocky River Romance, can you please tell us a little about that book and what your inspiration was for writing it?

AG:  Cynthia, the heroine, is a blonde who is not dumb. She is headstrong, willful, frustrating and many other things, but she is not dumb. The initial confrontation between her and Andrew Mitchell (the original) was its driving force. It was written in the days when I planned meticulously and every chapter ended in a mini disaster of some type up until the final confrontation. Andrew Mitchell’s character was drawn from journals I’d kept over the years which were my lightning conductors, places where I could express thoughts it was impolitic to say aloud. Many of his thoughts were mine. Drew Mitchell was a construct of the situation Andrew had created and Cynthia needed. She could never have loved the original.

It remains my favorite and when Diane Colman of Rocky River Romance requested I rewrite it with an American setting, I jumped at the chance, using My younger daughter skiing experiences and travels in Northern California, plus Google Earth to recreate locations for the story and internet research to draw parallels with Victorian history.

SRR:  Do you see yourself writing any sequels to Mitchell’s Run in the future?

AG:  Before Rocky River Romances folded Diane and I were discussing writing the Australian Andrew Mitchell’s story, but subsequent events put an end to that and I’ve put it on the back burner for the moment. I’d like to come back to some day.

SRR:  Would you like to tell us a little bit about your other releases?

AG:  I’ve already mentioned The Widowmaker from Whiskey Creek Press Its due out in May 2008. It tells the story of a local girl returning to Phillip Island for her father’s seventieth birthday. Born late in her parent’s life she is a remarkably beautiful woman in a family noted for its homeliness, she escapes the Changeling tag by going to London and becoming a promoter’s representative at trade fairs etc, accidentally picking up a reputation as a jinx when she become involved with a Formulas 1 driver.

The hero is the racing manager of a small Italian motorcycle team, which has a prototype suspension with a lethal reputation. An ex-rider himself he does the test rides because the machine is the last chance of the company’s founder, a famous ex-rider, to taste success before he dies. The combination of her jinx and his determination tests their love to the limit until the surprising conclusion.

SRR:  Talking about the future, what can your readers expect from you next year?

AG:  Shadowrose Publications have offered a contract for A Fair Trader, a version Americanized in jargon and spelling of A Fair Trade and are looking at my other Rocky River Romance stories, A Soldier’s Woman and Snow Drifter, freed by the closure of the company. We are currently deep in the editing process of A Fair Trader, which they want to release as soon as possible

 I have begun a Pirate series set in the Caribbean with the opening story during the short-lived peace after the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. The heroine is returning to Jamaica after the failure of her first season in London society and the hero is a lieutenant put on half-pay by the reduction in the Navy due to the peace. The ship they are traveling on is carrying the pay chest of the West Indies Station and the target for unemployed privateers turned pirate by the peace. The hero’s family made their money in The Trade (piracy) in earlier generations and there is some irony in the fact they have been paupered by the depredations of privateers during the war.

 Subsequent stories will tell about his ancestors and the women who loved them.

SRR:  Thank you so much, it was a real pleasure to interview you.

AG:  The pleasure was entirely mutual – as it should be.