Ficlets

1. Quick! Tell us about yourself and The Outback Stars!

Quick! I’m a science fiction TV geek who’s been in love with Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and just about “Star” anything (but not Star Jones) for a long time. I’m also a not-so-secret Anglophile, while a fondness for the British Empire and all its colonies. The Outback Stars takes science fiction adventure and Australian mythology and meshes them together in a romantic adventure far beyond Earth.

2. You’re a formal Naval officer. What about your experience informs The Outback Stars? Also, and equally importantly, what in this future Navy have you imagined out of whole cloth? And in a general sense, when does imagination separate itself from experience in your writing (or does it)?

I served eight years as a commissioned officer in the tropics of Guam, the wilds of Newfoundland, and other remote places. Everywhere I went, I found the military to be an incredibly interesting sub-culture with its own language, customs and quirks. There are acronyms, of course, and idioms (“That’s all hosed up” was one I learned quickly), and also secret traditions and not-so-secret traditions such as when a sailor crosses the equator for the first time. I tried to incorporate many of those details into the story, changing some and adding others for flavor. Millions of men and women in the United States have little experience with our all-volunteer military, so I wanted to give readers a feel for what it’s like to put on the uniform, attend quarters, stand overnight shifts, etc, just as soldiers, sailors and airmen do today.

I also put in many of the leadership challenges a young officer might face, especially in peace time. Gene Roddenberry, when creating Star Trek, very deliberately staffed the Enterprise with only the best and brightest of Federation personnel. They all wanted to be there and were exceptional in their abilities. In the real military, a division officer has little control over who gets assigned into the unit. Sailors are united by uniform and divided by race, gender, age, interests, skills and attitude. I had amazing people working for me, but some of them struggled with substance abuse, criminal charges, marriage problems and other situations that affected their ability to carry out duties. The trick was getting the mission accomplished anyway, often under arduous circumstances. My heroine, Lieutenant Jodenny Scott, faces a lot of the same problems I or my fellow officers encountered.

As for the future, because running a military organization is incredibly expensive, and because space travel is also amazingly expensive, I created a civilian-military organization that’s staffed by people of all different nationalities and with a rank structure that incorporates both land, sea and air forces. It’s got a deliberately politically correct name (“Team Space”) that I imagine was devised by some bland committee at the United Nations. I left in the bureaucracy and waste that’s endemic to such organizations but also the fun stuff, too. The spaceships are full of computers and handheld devices, of course, but there are also mounds of paperwork including reports, files, folders and such, all printed ineffectively and wastefully on dead trees. There was an article by Malcolm Gladwell a few years ago in the New Yorker (“The Social Life of Paper”) that really influenced my thinking on how we incorporate paper into our lives now and how we will in the future. The article is easy to find online.

3. Your heroine comes to a troubled ship with her own troubled past. So here’s a question: Do you think your character, if she were to meet you and understood that you were the one who did all these things to her, might try to pop you one for all the things you put her through?

No, she wouldn’t try to pop me one! Jodenny Scott is, above all, a professional military officer. She understands that with the good comes the bad and that every achievement has setbacks. No matter what happens, her job is to get up in the morning, square her shoulders, and get the job done. She’s based on two amazing female officers I had the pleasure of serving with. Every day my friend Kathy would push, push, push herself to the best of her abilities, and push her sailors as well, until they achieved great things. My friend Robin juggled her duties, her family, and the needs of her sailors with confidence and aplomb. They both inspired me greatly as an officer.

4. Share a piece of advice you’ve been given about writing.

Dory, in the movie “Finding Nemo,” goes around singing, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” Originally it was, “Just keep writing, just keep writing,” but that didn’t work for the script. Dory knows that fish who don’t swim end up sinking. Writers need to write to stay afloat.

5. You’ve studied writing with writers like Dennis Lehane and James Patrick Kelly. What can others teach you about writing? What are the things you had to learn for yourself?

No one can teach you to be a better writer. It’s a process that has to come entirely from within. Dennis and Jim, and many other fine writers, instead taught me how to be a better reader and thinker. Jim has an uncanny ability to take any story I throw at him and dissect it into sparkling pieces that illustrate what works and doesn’t work. His mentorship during my graduate studies helped me increase my skills a hundred times over. Dennis can see through the surface of a story to its interior heart and gauge its health, its strength, and its potential for heartbreak or triumph. Working with him opened my eyes to all new possibilities.

I’ve also learned a lot from going away to workshops. The very first one I attended was Viable Paradise on Martha’s Vineyard and the most recent was Blue Heaven on an island in Ohio. (There’s an recurring island theme in my life, beginning with Guam.) For several years I workshopped monthly in Boston, and I’ve started a new group since moving to Florida. It’s enormously helpful to hear what people think or feel about a piece of my writing so I can ascertain its – and my – effectiveness. Plus, hanging out with other writers is fun!

6. On your Web page, you’ve listed a “soundtrack” to your book. Is this for the readers, or were these songs that inspired you while you were writing? What does music do for you when you write?

The songs are ones that I thought fit the mood and theme of the novel. I listened to them on a loop for hours at a time as I was writing, or taking long walks, or working out at the gym. For me, music is a fun way to open up to new possibilities and ideas. Sometimes I sit back, close my eyes, and imagine the music video for a story (more VH1 than MTV, more Kelly Clarkson than Beyonce) to help me concentrate on key scenes and events. I listed the songs on my website as a way for readers to identify or get into the story. If you like Men at Work or KT Tunstall, maybe you’ll like the book!

“Also on the book’s website”: http://www.theoutbackstars.com are comics that explore the first three chapters. I commissioned a great new artist named Paul Abbamondi and we turned some of the key scenes into strips that give a look and feel to the story. Paul’s version of Jodenny and her leading man, Sergeant Terry Myell, really tickled me. I think both the music and the comics are entry points for readers who might not regularly read science fiction.

I do have soundtracks for book two, which is called The Stars Down Under, and I’m just starting work on book three, tentatively titled The Stars Blue Yonder. Book three will have some strong American characters in it, so I’m rounding up some George Gershwin and Aaron Copland. There’s nothing quite like “Fanfare for the Common Man” to get me up and writing in the morning.

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Visit Sandra McDonald at her LiveJournal.