What’s the story behind your latest book?

coutelier:

This is a Smashwords ‘Interview’ question that I will now attempt to answer seriously (may contain some spoilers for my projects).

It’s a story about lost innocence, growing up, finding a family… and also murderous Queens and invisible killers.  But seriously, all of the characters start off estranged or seperated from their families in some way, or both estranged and seperated in Tenley’s case leaving her a mess of confused emotions that she mostly channels into anger. Even the main villain is kind of the way she is because her parents, so it’s sort of about how family messes people up. But in the end the heroes all come together and support each other. And there’s some stuff about synthetic biology and faeries in there too.

The actual story behind is… nothing special really. I just wanted to write a mystery/adventure and over time it developed into this. The story behind The Crystal Eggs and the ELFs is years ago I would play games like The Settlers, when all your new settlers would just walk out in a line from a central palace and go off to work, and I wondered what it would be like if people could be manufactured the same way. I was young, and over time that idea grew and was influenced by various other things, so now it’s not just people but entire ecosystems can be designed and created, their genomes created on a Mother Machine and grown in Crystals absorbing energy from the Sun.

I’m planning other stories set far in a future where all this has become much more widespread.