M. Lachi's Blog
December 2, 2023
The Art of Writing Villains - "Death Tango" Edition
My new Science Fiction Thriller book and audio drama "Death Tango" is out to some great reviews--mentioning everything from the horrifying setting, to the well-versed characters and world-building, to the inclusion of music and soundscapes in the audio version.The two questions I'm getting the most is "what inspired the horrific utopian setting you've build" and "where did you pull from to create such terrifying yet realistic characters.
The Art of Writing Villains
I’m super excited to talk about my favorite character-type to pen. Villains—and Death Tango is full of ‘em. As a WhoDunIt, pretty much everyone you encounter in the Sci-Fi is the villain-elect depending on the lens you’re wearing when you encounter them. But before I ramble on about villains, and in honor of Audio Drama Day, I’m excited to share that we are also releasing an Audiobook version of Death Tango this week voiced by the talented Alexander Cantrell and complete with music and fx, so look out for it!
What is A Villain?
A villain is defined as a character who opposes the hero. But what is a hero really? The dictionary defines a hero as a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements or noble qualities. However, admiration and idealization are wholly subjective, i.e. the hero in your story could be the villain in mine.
I define a hero as the character we’re conditioned to root for. We as consumers of the finite medium of a film, book or TV episode already know that the person whose perspective we’re following will encounter an obstacle and hopefully overcome it by the end. The obstacle personified is the villain.
But I think to myself—isn’t Mario just breaking and entering into Bowser’s meticulously arranged castle? Like, Bowser is just hanging out on a relaxing Sunday, forcing the Princess to listen to him practice guitar, and then a call comes in. “Boss, some dude just broke in downstairs and is setting fire to all the furniture. Do we take him out?” Bowsers says, “No, let him all the way through. I’d like to speak with him and come to an understanding.” Maria shows up and it’s all head-pouncing from there.
Relatable Villains
Generally we’ll grow with the hero and sympathize with their hurt and damage. We typically meet the villain after their “damaging event” and thus do not sympathize with their hurt. But no human is a single-issue human. We’re far more complex beings than that. We all have damage and have damaged. We’re all a villain in someone else’s story—a liberating realization—but we’re still pretty cool people, maybe even heroes.
So I had fun blurring that line in Death Tango. The characters run the gamut from text-book BadGuy to “I can’t tell if they’re a GoodGuy or a BadGuy”, to GoodGuy bad person, BadGuy good person, and some other just fun terrible people in between.
Some BadGuys just flow off the page, like my favorite to write in Death Tango, Pebble Whittaker—the epitome of camp-style creepy. Others are more difficult to see all the way through because their weapon of choice is any one of the true systemic vallanies of today, like my character Johnny Angelo. While others still are just a mood, a journey the story takes you on, like my Neutral Evil character (DND reference) Paul Oscar.
Where I Pull From
I inhaled Horror and SciFi novels before trying it at home. My first horror novel was Cold Fire by Dean Koontz and my first Sci-Fi was Asimov’s Foundation followed by Frank Herbert’s Dune series. I found out through this process that my favorite villany was a bit amorphous, nameless and was often larger than the typical hero-villain dichotomy.
As a person with a disability, I was drawn to horror and the creepy and the crawly, because of the villains. I could always relate to them. I had a physical / visible disability when I was younger so, you guessed it, I was excluded and bullied. The villains in my life were portrayed as heroes on TV and film. I often thought to myself, if someone showed Freddy some love when he was younger, maybe he wouldn’t grow up to become.…well, Freddy. Thanks to my outlets in writing and music, I ended up pretty well adjusted, but wonder what if one of my electrons went a different direction.
Check out Death Tango HERE! And feel free to leave a review!
May 9, 2020
Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law (Review)
★★★★★ A Necessary Story Showcasing the Strengths of a Black, Blind Immigrant Woman There just aren't enough long-form narratives highlighting the plights of persons with disabilities, let alone women of color with a disability. As a visually impaired daughter of African immigrants myself, I can relate to a good lot of Haben's story: everything from parental cultural fears to the barriers brought forth by non-malicious close-mindedness.
What I like best about Haben's stroy is that, while she does possess visual and hearing impairments, Haben is a woman of agency and celebrates that fact. And in my experience, most persons with disabilities, if given the proper agency, can lead a fulfilling and successful life.
But this would require some stigma busting. Haben very gently yet eloquently reminds the reader throughout the book the hazard of ablest assumptions: these immediate associations of disabled person with charity case. "...resist these ablest assumptions. After identifying and removing them, people can begin to lay the groundwork for a positive philosophy, based on the idea that blindness is nothing more than a lack of sight."
I love that Haben is stepping forward to showcase herself as a strong, passionate, ambitious woman of color who's traveled the world and conquered Harvard Law. Oh...and she happens to be hearing and visually impaired.
Five Stars.
March 8, 2018
Let's Celebrate a Trailblazing Black Female Scientist
In light of #InternationalWomensDay and #WomensHIstoryMonth, for todays thoughts, let's once again celebrate an amazing woman of color...in science!
Today I invited IAPWE writer (published in the Journal of Neuroscience and amazing woman in her own right), Haley Kynefin to share the research of Timnit Gebru, recent presenter at the NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference and founder of Black in AI, helping to increase diversity in the field.
Artificial Intelligence Research Specialist Timnit Gebru
by Haley Kynefin
Timnit Gebru is best known for her groundbreaking doctorate work at Stanford, analyzing over fifty million Google street view images to predict demographics and voting habits.
But as a pioneering black woman at the forefront of her field, she is also an inspiring leader in the fight for technological fairness and diversity. Originally from Ethiopia, she arrived in the US at the age of 16. After her studies at Stanford she started working with Microsoft as part of their FATE team (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics in AI). She is also one of the founders of the group Black in AI, which attempts to increase connectivity between and visibility for black researchers in the field of artificial intelligence.
“I went to NIPS(Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems),” she says, in an interview with Technology Review, “and someone was saying there were an estimated 8,500 people. I counted six black people. I was literally panicking [...] that is almost zero percent. I was like ‘We have to do something now.’ [...] Because it is an emergency.”
Discrimination in the field of AI comes in multiple forms. For one thing - as Gebru noticed that year at NIPS - the employment landscape in AI research lacks diversity. “It’s important for me to interface with someone that has [a certain type of] domain knowledge,” she says, talking about employing a diversity of backgrounds when embarking on research questions, “in order to know about [the] biases [in that domain].”
For another thing, training datasets for machine learning algorithms are usually biased. A well-known study by ProPublica, for example, analyzed a machine learning algorithm called COMPAS, which aims to predict crime recidivism rates, and found that it was biased against blacks. This is an obvious problem.
Gebru’s current research aims to uncover some of these algorithmic biases existing in commercial APIs (application program interfaces). APIs are important for providing routines and protocols through which software components interact. She envisions that they can be sold to customers with “datasheets” included, outlining some of the pitfalls inherent in their datasets.
This is called “unbiasing”, “debiasing”, or “bias mitigation”. In her latest paper, working alongside Joy Buolamwini, she analyzed 3 commercial gender classification APIs, finding that they performed the worst on dark female faces, and the best on light male faces.
Critically, though, Gebru realizes that technical algorithmic bias and field diversity are not separate problems - they are one and the same. “These issues of bias and diversity go hand in hand,” she comments, in an episode of the Google Cloud Platform Podcast. “Sometimes I get kind of frustrated when we only talk about the technical aspects [...] if you have an all-male panel on AI for Ethics or AI for Social Good or something like this, I have very little faith that this is actually AI for social good [...] it’s not just like, [...] creating the next coolest fairness algorithm.”
You can find Gebru’s research by following Black in AI on Facebook or Twitter, or join the discussion through their Google Group by signing up here.
Today I invited IAPWE writer (published in the Journal of Neuroscience and amazing woman in her own right), Haley Kynefin to share the research of Timnit Gebru, recent presenter at the NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference and founder of Black in AI, helping to increase diversity in the field.
Artificial Intelligence Research Specialist Timnit Gebru
by Haley Kynefin
Timnit Gebru is best known for her groundbreaking doctorate work at Stanford, analyzing over fifty million Google street view images to predict demographics and voting habits.But as a pioneering black woman at the forefront of her field, she is also an inspiring leader in the fight for technological fairness and diversity. Originally from Ethiopia, she arrived in the US at the age of 16. After her studies at Stanford she started working with Microsoft as part of their FATE team (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics in AI). She is also one of the founders of the group Black in AI, which attempts to increase connectivity between and visibility for black researchers in the field of artificial intelligence.
“I went to NIPS(Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems),” she says, in an interview with Technology Review, “and someone was saying there were an estimated 8,500 people. I counted six black people. I was literally panicking [...] that is almost zero percent. I was like ‘We have to do something now.’ [...] Because it is an emergency.”
Discrimination in the field of AI comes in multiple forms. For one thing - as Gebru noticed that year at NIPS - the employment landscape in AI research lacks diversity. “It’s important for me to interface with someone that has [a certain type of] domain knowledge,” she says, talking about employing a diversity of backgrounds when embarking on research questions, “in order to know about [the] biases [in that domain].”
For another thing, training datasets for machine learning algorithms are usually biased. A well-known study by ProPublica, for example, analyzed a machine learning algorithm called COMPAS, which aims to predict crime recidivism rates, and found that it was biased against blacks. This is an obvious problem.
Gebru’s current research aims to uncover some of these algorithmic biases existing in commercial APIs (application program interfaces). APIs are important for providing routines and protocols through which software components interact. She envisions that they can be sold to customers with “datasheets” included, outlining some of the pitfalls inherent in their datasets.
This is called “unbiasing”, “debiasing”, or “bias mitigation”. In her latest paper, working alongside Joy Buolamwini, she analyzed 3 commercial gender classification APIs, finding that they performed the worst on dark female faces, and the best on light male faces.
Critically, though, Gebru realizes that technical algorithmic bias and field diversity are not separate problems - they are one and the same. “These issues of bias and diversity go hand in hand,” she comments, in an episode of the Google Cloud Platform Podcast. “Sometimes I get kind of frustrated when we only talk about the technical aspects [...] if you have an all-male panel on AI for Ethics or AI for Social Good or something like this, I have very little faith that this is actually AI for social good [...] it’s not just like, [...] creating the next coolest fairness algorithm.”
You can find Gebru’s research by following Black in AI on Facebook or Twitter, or join the discussion through their Google Group by signing up here.
March 1, 2018
Thoughts with J.P. Jamin, Economist, Lawyer, Activist and Author of "The Seas Come Still"
Happy first day of march! Let's celebrate with some magic realism!
J.P. Jamin, author of USA Book News Best Book Awards and BGS Readers' Choice Awards finalist "Seas Come Still" is a New York-based writer, economist, lawyer and vocal civil rights activist for those in the LGBTQ+ community as well as other marginalized groups..
With prose dubbed as "lovely," "immacualte and "almost cinematic" by WritersDigest,this epic historical novel invites readers into the hearts of a closely-guarded sisterhood, separated by millennia, but linked by a code of love older than faith itself. Though the ignorant call them witches and mermaids, they remain resolute in protecting themselves and their secrets from extinction.
The novel, released January 2017 by Akelarre Press (imprint of Sovalgo LLC), can be found here! Check out the loads of positive feedback!
1. What inspired you to write ‘Seas Come Still’
It’s an accidental novel, really. It started out as a compendium of historical research on the links between Minoan feminine spirituality, Hermetic history, and what we think we know about paganism. I realized after several years that I lacked the academic credentials to publish it as historical non-fiction. So I created a storyline and characters to convey the ideas for me. That’s when the real fun started. I could fill in historical blanks with my imagination and best guesses; take risks that can only be forgiven a novelist with narrative license. This included a re-invention of the Minoan language, about which we still know very little. It’s best read with your Google machine open, as there is at least some plausible factual basis for pretty much everything in the book. But I also fell in love (or hate, or both) with many of the characters.
2. What drew you to mix Historical Romance with Magic Realism?
Wow, great question! To me they seem inextricably linked. (Thinks a while). You may be hitting on the heart of the matter here! I’ve felt like these women, throughout history the ones (mostly falsely) called witches, were feared not only for their perceived power and independence, but also for their sexuality. The book tries to strip them of shamanistic myth and patriarchal polemic, and take an intimate and often very passionate look at the real magic that remains. So I’ll answer by once more hiding behind my characters. Selkie Singer says “true magic is neither pure nor perfect, and arises only when divinity meets passion.”
3. What are your thoughts on how LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed in major novels and film? Do you feel improvements could be made?
Definitely improvements can be made. I think there are fundamental, generational sea changes in LGBTQ voice and character indices. But many stereotypes of the past are still incorporated in modern literature and media, innocently or not. The spectrum of queer expression has expanded at the same time that the acceptance—and more importantly the self-acceptance—of the millennial community have grown. Look at the decline in the number of “gay bars,” as the community feels perhaps less wanting of social privacy, and are demanding a broader range of safe space. That said, the latest mode of LGBTQ expression is anger, and rightly so, given the potential 180 degree turn we are facing in government policy here and globally.
Of course writing historical LGBTQ characters is particularly challenging. There will always be significant differences in expression across time and culture. The novel runs from the Bronze Age Mediterranean, which was likely not only indifferent but in many cases exploitative of alternative sexuality, to Georgian English naval society, in which my characters have to hide their preferences under literal pain of death. Tragically, sexual injustice and predation seem the only constant. I take a fairly matter-of-fact approach to my LGBTQ characters. Their lives are authentic and subjectively valid, without the necessity of explanatory narrative and regardless of how others may view them. In some cases, as with the transgender experience, I try to bring it home to the reader though living metaphor rather than direct description. Hope that’s not too vague, but want to avoid spoilers. J
4. What do you do to get into the mindset of characters that don’t necessarily posses your qualities, so much so that you can write their voice?
Writing dialog turned out for me to be the most unexpectedly fulfilling aspect of the novelist’s journey. As a native New Yorker, I’ve grown up amidst one of the richest hodgepodges of dialects and cultural voices in the world. New Yorkers are proudly accepting of diversity, yet at the same time very intense in their emotional judgment and reaction set. But for me, this was just the brush and pallet. It had to be combined with deep introspection. Many of my characters are based on family members, friends, etc. But to avoid making characters into caricatures, the writer needs to meet these people again in her own mind, apply empathy and love, even for antagonists, and inhabit their deeper motives, fears and dreams. I’m not sure—in the end maybe we discover, like the Buddha did, that everyone we meet is really ourselves. The art may lie in making the reader reach the same conclusion.
5. When reading a book, does the gender, preference or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign to the novel in your head?
It shouldn’t right? But it does, at least at first. This is one of the reasons why I much prefer knowing little about an author until I’ve read something she wrote. I think the devotion of the novelist is that of interpreter. To convey the voice, character and experiences of others to those who have not lived them. But if you confine that gift only to your own experiences and worldview, then you are writing memoir, not fiction, in my opinion. Maybe you could say that it has to start with humanistic tourism. Get into people. People as different from yourself as possible. Breathe with them, weep with them, share their values but also learn to get their joke. And then, if they have conveyed something compelling to you, bear it artfully to your readers. Hope that makes sense.
6. What are you currently reading and why did you pick it up?
The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. Edited by Ian S. MacNiven. I love historical correspondence, which I think may show in my epistolary writing style. I picked it up wandering though an out-of-print bookstore. Durrell is a big influencer for me. Also there are two naked guys on the cover.
7. What do you do outside of writing awesome novels?
For fun I read and review books, especially history and historical fiction, cook, sail and sing, sometimes simultaneously. Predictable results. I love Pilates, and walking as far as possible in our big city.
8. What’s next for J.P. Jamin?
My current novel project is The Clip of a Galloping Goddess, which I hope will come out this year depending on how much of my editor’s abuse I can take without losing the will to live. It another historical novel, set in 18th century colonial America, and traces the sometimes bizarre experiences of Prince Dimitri Gallitzin, a ghost hunter and missionary. It has character and narrative ties to The Seas Come Still, but I’m not sure I’d totally call it a sequel. If you like, it shows the much, much darker side of the Minoan witches. J
J.P. Jamin, author of USA Book News Best Book Awards and BGS Readers' Choice Awards finalist "Seas Come Still" is a New York-based writer, economist, lawyer and vocal civil rights activist for those in the LGBTQ+ community as well as other marginalized groups..
With prose dubbed as "lovely," "immacualte and "almost cinematic" by WritersDigest,this epic historical novel invites readers into the hearts of a closely-guarded sisterhood, separated by millennia, but linked by a code of love older than faith itself. Though the ignorant call them witches and mermaids, they remain resolute in protecting themselves and their secrets from extinction.
The novel, released January 2017 by Akelarre Press (imprint of Sovalgo LLC), can be found here! Check out the loads of positive feedback!
1. What inspired you to write ‘Seas Come Still’It’s an accidental novel, really. It started out as a compendium of historical research on the links between Minoan feminine spirituality, Hermetic history, and what we think we know about paganism. I realized after several years that I lacked the academic credentials to publish it as historical non-fiction. So I created a storyline and characters to convey the ideas for me. That’s when the real fun started. I could fill in historical blanks with my imagination and best guesses; take risks that can only be forgiven a novelist with narrative license. This included a re-invention of the Minoan language, about which we still know very little. It’s best read with your Google machine open, as there is at least some plausible factual basis for pretty much everything in the book. But I also fell in love (or hate, or both) with many of the characters.
2. What drew you to mix Historical Romance with Magic Realism?
Wow, great question! To me they seem inextricably linked. (Thinks a while). You may be hitting on the heart of the matter here! I’ve felt like these women, throughout history the ones (mostly falsely) called witches, were feared not only for their perceived power and independence, but also for their sexuality. The book tries to strip them of shamanistic myth and patriarchal polemic, and take an intimate and often very passionate look at the real magic that remains. So I’ll answer by once more hiding behind my characters. Selkie Singer says “true magic is neither pure nor perfect, and arises only when divinity meets passion.”
3. What are your thoughts on how LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed in major novels and film? Do you feel improvements could be made?
Definitely improvements can be made. I think there are fundamental, generational sea changes in LGBTQ voice and character indices. But many stereotypes of the past are still incorporated in modern literature and media, innocently or not. The spectrum of queer expression has expanded at the same time that the acceptance—and more importantly the self-acceptance—of the millennial community have grown. Look at the decline in the number of “gay bars,” as the community feels perhaps less wanting of social privacy, and are demanding a broader range of safe space. That said, the latest mode of LGBTQ expression is anger, and rightly so, given the potential 180 degree turn we are facing in government policy here and globally.
Of course writing historical LGBTQ characters is particularly challenging. There will always be significant differences in expression across time and culture. The novel runs from the Bronze Age Mediterranean, which was likely not only indifferent but in many cases exploitative of alternative sexuality, to Georgian English naval society, in which my characters have to hide their preferences under literal pain of death. Tragically, sexual injustice and predation seem the only constant. I take a fairly matter-of-fact approach to my LGBTQ characters. Their lives are authentic and subjectively valid, without the necessity of explanatory narrative and regardless of how others may view them. In some cases, as with the transgender experience, I try to bring it home to the reader though living metaphor rather than direct description. Hope that’s not too vague, but want to avoid spoilers. J
4. What do you do to get into the mindset of characters that don’t necessarily posses your qualities, so much so that you can write their voice?
Writing dialog turned out for me to be the most unexpectedly fulfilling aspect of the novelist’s journey. As a native New Yorker, I’ve grown up amidst one of the richest hodgepodges of dialects and cultural voices in the world. New Yorkers are proudly accepting of diversity, yet at the same time very intense in their emotional judgment and reaction set. But for me, this was just the brush and pallet. It had to be combined with deep introspection. Many of my characters are based on family members, friends, etc. But to avoid making characters into caricatures, the writer needs to meet these people again in her own mind, apply empathy and love, even for antagonists, and inhabit their deeper motives, fears and dreams. I’m not sure—in the end maybe we discover, like the Buddha did, that everyone we meet is really ourselves. The art may lie in making the reader reach the same conclusion.
5. When reading a book, does the gender, preference or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign to the novel in your head?
It shouldn’t right? But it does, at least at first. This is one of the reasons why I much prefer knowing little about an author until I’ve read something she wrote. I think the devotion of the novelist is that of interpreter. To convey the voice, character and experiences of others to those who have not lived them. But if you confine that gift only to your own experiences and worldview, then you are writing memoir, not fiction, in my opinion. Maybe you could say that it has to start with humanistic tourism. Get into people. People as different from yourself as possible. Breathe with them, weep with them, share their values but also learn to get their joke. And then, if they have conveyed something compelling to you, bear it artfully to your readers. Hope that makes sense.
6. What are you currently reading and why did you pick it up?
The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. Edited by Ian S. MacNiven. I love historical correspondence, which I think may show in my epistolary writing style. I picked it up wandering though an out-of-print bookstore. Durrell is a big influencer for me. Also there are two naked guys on the cover.
7. What do you do outside of writing awesome novels?
For fun I read and review books, especially history and historical fiction, cook, sail and sing, sometimes simultaneously. Predictable results. I love Pilates, and walking as far as possible in our big city.
8. What’s next for J.P. Jamin?
My current novel project is The Clip of a Galloping Goddess, which I hope will come out this year depending on how much of my editor’s abuse I can take without losing the will to live. It another historical novel, set in 18th century colonial America, and traces the sometimes bizarre experiences of Prince Dimitri Gallitzin, a ghost hunter and missionary. It has character and narrative ties to The Seas Come Still, but I’m not sure I’d totally call it a sequel. If you like, it shows the much, much darker side of the Minoan witches. J
February 22, 2018
Thoughts with Reverse Harem Author and Night Nurse, Yumoyori Wilson
Today I've got a special treat! I just met my favorite purple-haired black Canadian, and not only does she write awesome paranormal fiction between night shifts, she's also giving away free money!As soon as I caught wind of Yumoyori Wilson, I wanted in on her blog tour (Amazon gift card giveaway below)! If you're new to Yumoyori, she's no newcomer to Young Adult Paranormal Mythology as seen by her heavily reviewed and well received collection of novels.
Her title Dark Wish, first in the Starlight Gods Series, is a Reverse Harem tale of a young 'experiment' fighting for her freedom.
I asked my friends to define Reverse Harem, and they almost unanimously responded with, "Picture any straight male fantasy...and then reverse the genders....then go read manga!" A harem with a female at the helm? I'm liking the sound of this! #girlboss
I caught up with Yumoyori to ask about her love of writing Reverse Harem and how young female readers can find a healthy boost of empowerment within the genre. Here are her thoughts.
GoodReadsWhat is 'Reverse Harem' and how can young female readers find empowerment in the Reverse Harem genre?
Reverse Harem (RH) is one woman being with multiple men (a minimum of three at least). With many of the new Reverse Harem series that are releasing (and what I myself write) is to show that women are strong, powerful and don’t always need protection from a man (or men).
It seems to some people, especially in the RH genre, they believe that when a woman is in a relationship with multiple men, she’s a slave or submissive. In RH, that isn’t the case. It's a relationship, the same way with just one single individual. I find in RH, the main woman is amazing in just balancing herself among her men. Some RH have up to nine men, so you can see how hard it may be to juggle.
Regardless, female readers should read and see that it's okay to love and that with love comes challenges--some that will be harder than others--but with those challenges the love or lovers in your life will help you overcome them.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
February 8, 2018
Thoughts with Greg Ramsay, Sci-Fi Horror author of 'Lia, Human of Utah.'
Excited to have spotted my first #AmWriting doppelganger! A disabled horror-tinged Sci-Fi Thriller author who writes strong intelligent female leads! Finding gems like Greg Ramsay is why I love writing this blog and why you love reading it!
Greg is a photographer and an insightful sci-fi/horror author from Cavan, ON who happens to have cerebral palsy. He lives with his family, a cat that thinks he owns the universe, and two overly-yappy dogs that serve as the cat’s punching bags.
Greg is not only into Sci Fi and Horror, but enjoyes writing Mystery and stories with gripping violent action--all of which can be found in his latest release, Lia Human of Utah, a dystopic horror following a young woman struggling with amnesia.
Greg's synopsis had me at "She wakes up only knowing her name"!
Find Lia Human of Utah on Amazon, give it a read and leave a review!
Goodreads
1. What inspired you to write science fiction and the Human of Utah series specifically?
My major inspiration growing up was Bungie’s Halo videogame series in terms of science fiction influences. I was inspired to write Lia’s story as a means of challenging the demons of my own mental illness, (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychosis, and Attention Deficit Disorder) by creating a woman stronger than all of them. My goal was also to pay homage to women like my mother, whose strength during my turbulent childhood was one of many influences for Lia’s character.
2. Do you avoid or embrace Sci Fi tropes and why?
I do neither explicitly. I just write what I enjoy, and if that happens to avoid, subvert or embrace a trope of my genre I’m fine with that.
3. As a male writer, do you find it difficult to write a female voice?
No. My motto is to write a strong character first, then consider gender. I grew up almost exclusively around females and avoided males so I’m conditioned more towards the feminine perspective. You could say I was a feminist for most of my life. I knew Lia would end up being female subconsciously because I always believed women were stronger than men in terms of character, and one of my goals was to create a character I could believe in.
4. Have your experiences with Cerebral Palsy influenced your writing? How?
Yes. From the age of five for ten years I was abused by a step father largely due to my disability, or at very least it gave him more reasons to be mad. I think due to those experiences that also helped inform my mental illnesses, (which in turn inspired elements in my books) I became a natural at writing graphic violence.
5. There aren’t many physically disabled heroes in books and media, nor are there many notable disabled actors, authors and artists. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
The easiest yet most impactful answer is to simply create more characters that happen to be disabled. I emphasize ‘happen’ because it’s imperative to create a character first or one will end up with an empty pandering attempt that anyone can see through. For example I see taking established characters and swapping their genders, (excluding a passing of the torch etc. I mean the literal character. i.e. making Thor a woman.) as pandering, even if unintentional.
A good example of a strong disabled character is Oracle from Batman. Spoilers: Joker shoots Batgirl, she ends up paralyzed, and rather than give up she becomes Oracle – legendary technical expert and the Brain leading Batman at times. That was a great way of giving a character great adversity and showing them overcome it for themselves.
Disability and its effects can vary from person to person providing individual challenges and stigma that may make an actor or individual unfit for certain roles. Though there’s no reason with modern, or even fantasy technology, that a character can’t overcome and find their own path to heroics/success in their stories/lives. I argue there are many qualified disabled authors, actors etc. We just don’t know about them. For every famous writer, i.e. Stephen Hawking, or famous actor i.e Peter Dinklage, there are hundreds of those who either simply haven’t published, haven’t been noticed, or haven’t the technology/opportunity to translate their imaginations to their preferred mediums. The easiest way to remedy this is to continue evolving, as technology, and society are, to ensure that gradually more doors of opportunity will open. The more disability is featured overcoming adversity the less negative stigma there will be around it and more opportunies for unknown artists will arise as a result.
6. Which do you enjoy more, old school Sci Fi, or modern Sci Fi?
Modern sci-fi circa 2000’s
7. If you woke up one morning and everything you’d known had disappeared, what one thing would you want to have remained with you?
My life experiences, resulting disabilities and all. Without them I wouldn’t be who I am and I’ve no interest in trying to be someone else. Being myself is challenge enough.
8. How can an author cope with feeling their story deserves to be heard, but fearing criticism?
Consider criticism the adversity one will inevitably face, and welcome it. I’ve been told many negative things in my life, but I write and publish for me and me alone. Criticism can’t stop me anymore and it can’t hurt my work because my work is the best I can do, which is stronger than any negativity.
9. What’s next for Greg Ramsay?
I hope to see Lia’s story adapted into a movie and/or video game someday. In the meantime, I’ll keep on writing the kind of stories I think are cool.
Greg is a photographer and an insightful sci-fi/horror author from Cavan, ON who happens to have cerebral palsy. He lives with his family, a cat that thinks he owns the universe, and two overly-yappy dogs that serve as the cat’s punching bags.
Greg is not only into Sci Fi and Horror, but enjoyes writing Mystery and stories with gripping violent action--all of which can be found in his latest release, Lia Human of Utah, a dystopic horror following a young woman struggling with amnesia.
Greg's synopsis had me at "She wakes up only knowing her name"!
Find Lia Human of Utah on Amazon, give it a read and leave a review!
Goodreads1. What inspired you to write science fiction and the Human of Utah series specifically?
My major inspiration growing up was Bungie’s Halo videogame series in terms of science fiction influences. I was inspired to write Lia’s story as a means of challenging the demons of my own mental illness, (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychosis, and Attention Deficit Disorder) by creating a woman stronger than all of them. My goal was also to pay homage to women like my mother, whose strength during my turbulent childhood was one of many influences for Lia’s character.
2. Do you avoid or embrace Sci Fi tropes and why?
I do neither explicitly. I just write what I enjoy, and if that happens to avoid, subvert or embrace a trope of my genre I’m fine with that.
3. As a male writer, do you find it difficult to write a female voice?
No. My motto is to write a strong character first, then consider gender. I grew up almost exclusively around females and avoided males so I’m conditioned more towards the feminine perspective. You could say I was a feminist for most of my life. I knew Lia would end up being female subconsciously because I always believed women were stronger than men in terms of character, and one of my goals was to create a character I could believe in.
4. Have your experiences with Cerebral Palsy influenced your writing? How?
Yes. From the age of five for ten years I was abused by a step father largely due to my disability, or at very least it gave him more reasons to be mad. I think due to those experiences that also helped inform my mental illnesses, (which in turn inspired elements in my books) I became a natural at writing graphic violence.
5. There aren’t many physically disabled heroes in books and media, nor are there many notable disabled actors, authors and artists. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
The easiest yet most impactful answer is to simply create more characters that happen to be disabled. I emphasize ‘happen’ because it’s imperative to create a character first or one will end up with an empty pandering attempt that anyone can see through. For example I see taking established characters and swapping their genders, (excluding a passing of the torch etc. I mean the literal character. i.e. making Thor a woman.) as pandering, even if unintentional.
A good example of a strong disabled character is Oracle from Batman. Spoilers: Joker shoots Batgirl, she ends up paralyzed, and rather than give up she becomes Oracle – legendary technical expert and the Brain leading Batman at times. That was a great way of giving a character great adversity and showing them overcome it for themselves.
Disability and its effects can vary from person to person providing individual challenges and stigma that may make an actor or individual unfit for certain roles. Though there’s no reason with modern, or even fantasy technology, that a character can’t overcome and find their own path to heroics/success in their stories/lives. I argue there are many qualified disabled authors, actors etc. We just don’t know about them. For every famous writer, i.e. Stephen Hawking, or famous actor i.e Peter Dinklage, there are hundreds of those who either simply haven’t published, haven’t been noticed, or haven’t the technology/opportunity to translate their imaginations to their preferred mediums. The easiest way to remedy this is to continue evolving, as technology, and society are, to ensure that gradually more doors of opportunity will open. The more disability is featured overcoming adversity the less negative stigma there will be around it and more opportunies for unknown artists will arise as a result.
6. Which do you enjoy more, old school Sci Fi, or modern Sci Fi?
Modern sci-fi circa 2000’s
7. If you woke up one morning and everything you’d known had disappeared, what one thing would you want to have remained with you?
My life experiences, resulting disabilities and all. Without them I wouldn’t be who I am and I’ve no interest in trying to be someone else. Being myself is challenge enough.
8. How can an author cope with feeling their story deserves to be heard, but fearing criticism?
Consider criticism the adversity one will inevitably face, and welcome it. I’ve been told many negative things in my life, but I write and publish for me and me alone. Criticism can’t stop me anymore and it can’t hurt my work because my work is the best I can do, which is stronger than any negativity.
9. What’s next for Greg Ramsay?
I hope to see Lia’s story adapted into a movie and/or video game someday. In the meantime, I’ll keep on writing the kind of stories I think are cool.
January 25, 2018
Thoughts with JC Kang, Chinese Medicine Doctor, Martial Artist and Author of 'Songs of Insurrection
With Chinese scientists turning sci-fi to sci-ence, breaking barriers by cloning a monkey (and with non-embrionic cells), I thought it fitting to pay homage to barrier breaking science fiction author, JC Kang.
Martial arts instructor and Chinese medicine doctore, JC Kang has had an unhealthy obsession with Fantasy and Sci-Fi since he was introduced to it at an early age. As a Publishers’ Weekly Booklife Award Quarterfinalist, Kang is no no stranger to technical yet colorful writing. When penning his multicultural epic fantasies, he combines his geek roots with his professional experiences as as a doctor and martial arts instructor.
Find Kang's latest release, Songs of Insurrection, on Amazon!
Goodreads1. What inspired you to write Songs of Insurrection specifically?
Specifically? There’s a sordid, convoluted story behind it. Basically, I wrote what would become Book 3 of the Dragon Songs Saga first. However, my crit partners connected more with the secondary characters than the main character, Kaiya. I decided to write a prequel, to try make her more relatable; and then I wrote the sequel. In the meantime, I was querying Orchestra of Treacheries (originally Book 1, now Book 2), and agents were telling me the jump in time from chapters 1 to 2 to 3 were too jolting. At that time, I was critting one of Pam Godwin’s Dark Erotica thrillers, and immediately felt connected to a main character who I wouldn’t normally be interested in, and saw how the author used tension. With that in mind, I stripped out the first two chapters of Orchestra of Treacheries, and bookended a story between them.
2. What inspired you to write Fantasy and Science Fiction?
I read a lot of fantasy as a kid, and used to play Dungeons and Dragons. The Dragonlance Chronicles made me want to write.
3. Does your heritage influence your writing, and if so how?
All that fantasy I read as a kid featured mostly Caucasian characters, and if a PoC did appear, it was most likely to be a villain. At that age, growing up in the South, and very much in denial of my identity, I didn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t until college that I became something of a Born-Again-Asian. Even though my militancy had since moderated by the time I started writing, I wanted to begin with an Asian-themed story.
4. A good amount of popular Science Fiction and Fantasy novels and movies do not feature minorities leads, especially Asian. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
I think it is a reflection of the market. So much classic fantasy are set in a medieval pseudo-Europe, and that has set the standard for the trope. I would hazard to guess that most SFF readers are Caucasian, and perhaps the publishing companies assume they want to read about that classical setting.
As a member of many online SFF groups, I can tell you that is NOT the case. While there are certainly readers who fall back on classic tropes, many more are clamoring for something new, something different; and if mainstream publishers aren’t willing to take that risk, Small Press and Indies sure are. It’s just a matter of showing to diehard readers that the quality can be just as good as a traditionally published book. Contests like Mark Lawrence’s SPFBO are a great way.
5. When reading a book, does the gender or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign the novel in your head?
Not really. Actually, one of my biggest complaints with the movie versions of my old favorites, The Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, is that they totally ruined the voices and faces my own imagination had come up with!
6. What advice would you give your younger writer self?
Don’t skateboard
7. Tell us more about your Chinese Medicine practice and your Martial Arts!
I always wanted to learn martial arts because of Bruce Lee in the 70s and Ninjas in the 80s. I specifically wanted to learn Wing Chun because of its connection to Bruce Lee, but I didn’t have a chance until moving to Taiwan in the 1990s. I was fortunate to have found an awesome Sifu in Lo Man Kam, the nephew of Bruce Lee’s Sifu, Ip Man. While I was training there, one of my Kung-Fu brothers introduced me to his acupuncture master, Dr. Betty Long, and I started apprenticing under her. The cool thing about learning these things is that I can put them into my writing!
8. What’s next for JC Kang?
The Dragon Songs Saga is complete at four books, but there are two other series in the same world that intersect with it. I am chronologically following a popular secondary character from the first series, the half-elf/half-Asian ninja Jie.
I’m almost done with the second revision of Masters of Deception, Book 1 of Series 2. It takes place in my world’s version of Renaissance Italy. In addition to Jie, it also features an “Italian” con-man Diviner; an “Ethiopian” Sorceress looking to restore her clan’s honor; and an “East Indian” “Jedi” apprentice who struggles with the ideals of his order and his personal desires.
Book 1 of Series 3 is a conflict between the Chosen people of the Sun God, and the descendants of said God’s mortal son. The first draft is done; and I started writing a prequel to all three series, about a one-eyed fisherman who acquires a glass eye possessed by a demon.
Martial arts instructor and Chinese medicine doctore, JC Kang has had an unhealthy obsession with Fantasy and Sci-Fi since he was introduced to it at an early age. As a Publishers’ Weekly Booklife Award Quarterfinalist, Kang is no no stranger to technical yet colorful writing. When penning his multicultural epic fantasies, he combines his geek roots with his professional experiences as as a doctor and martial arts instructor.
Find Kang's latest release, Songs of Insurrection, on Amazon!
Goodreads1. What inspired you to write Songs of Insurrection specifically?Specifically? There’s a sordid, convoluted story behind it. Basically, I wrote what would become Book 3 of the Dragon Songs Saga first. However, my crit partners connected more with the secondary characters than the main character, Kaiya. I decided to write a prequel, to try make her more relatable; and then I wrote the sequel. In the meantime, I was querying Orchestra of Treacheries (originally Book 1, now Book 2), and agents were telling me the jump in time from chapters 1 to 2 to 3 were too jolting. At that time, I was critting one of Pam Godwin’s Dark Erotica thrillers, and immediately felt connected to a main character who I wouldn’t normally be interested in, and saw how the author used tension. With that in mind, I stripped out the first two chapters of Orchestra of Treacheries, and bookended a story between them.
2. What inspired you to write Fantasy and Science Fiction?
I read a lot of fantasy as a kid, and used to play Dungeons and Dragons. The Dragonlance Chronicles made me want to write.
3. Does your heritage influence your writing, and if so how?
All that fantasy I read as a kid featured mostly Caucasian characters, and if a PoC did appear, it was most likely to be a villain. At that age, growing up in the South, and very much in denial of my identity, I didn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t until college that I became something of a Born-Again-Asian. Even though my militancy had since moderated by the time I started writing, I wanted to begin with an Asian-themed story.
4. A good amount of popular Science Fiction and Fantasy novels and movies do not feature minorities leads, especially Asian. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
I think it is a reflection of the market. So much classic fantasy are set in a medieval pseudo-Europe, and that has set the standard for the trope. I would hazard to guess that most SFF readers are Caucasian, and perhaps the publishing companies assume they want to read about that classical setting.
As a member of many online SFF groups, I can tell you that is NOT the case. While there are certainly readers who fall back on classic tropes, many more are clamoring for something new, something different; and if mainstream publishers aren’t willing to take that risk, Small Press and Indies sure are. It’s just a matter of showing to diehard readers that the quality can be just as good as a traditionally published book. Contests like Mark Lawrence’s SPFBO are a great way.
5. When reading a book, does the gender or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign the novel in your head?
Not really. Actually, one of my biggest complaints with the movie versions of my old favorites, The Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, is that they totally ruined the voices and faces my own imagination had come up with!
6. What advice would you give your younger writer self?
Don’t skateboard
7. Tell us more about your Chinese Medicine practice and your Martial Arts!
I always wanted to learn martial arts because of Bruce Lee in the 70s and Ninjas in the 80s. I specifically wanted to learn Wing Chun because of its connection to Bruce Lee, but I didn’t have a chance until moving to Taiwan in the 1990s. I was fortunate to have found an awesome Sifu in Lo Man Kam, the nephew of Bruce Lee’s Sifu, Ip Man. While I was training there, one of my Kung-Fu brothers introduced me to his acupuncture master, Dr. Betty Long, and I started apprenticing under her. The cool thing about learning these things is that I can put them into my writing!
8. What’s next for JC Kang?
The Dragon Songs Saga is complete at four books, but there are two other series in the same world that intersect with it. I am chronologically following a popular secondary character from the first series, the half-elf/half-Asian ninja Jie.
I’m almost done with the second revision of Masters of Deception, Book 1 of Series 2. It takes place in my world’s version of Renaissance Italy. In addition to Jie, it also features an “Italian” con-man Diviner; an “Ethiopian” Sorceress looking to restore her clan’s honor; and an “East Indian” “Jedi” apprentice who struggles with the ideals of his order and his personal desires.
Book 1 of Series 3 is a conflict between the Chosen people of the Sun God, and the descendants of said God’s mortal son. The first draft is done; and I started writing a prequel to all three series, about a one-eyed fisherman who acquires a glass eye possessed by a demon.
January 11, 2018
Thoughts with Sci Fi author of the "Earth to Centauri" series, Kumar L
With a former pentagon investigator claiming viability to UFO technologies, Snopes reporting on a hilariously controversial alien sighting in Romania, and Anonymous claiming NASA will soon reveal secret alien research, I thought it fitting to highly a new indy space opera by Kumar L!
Kumar is an engineer passionate about manufacturing. and technology. Fluent in 7 languages, Kumar loves to globe-trot. His travels have given him a utopian outlook on the future along with a desire to make science fiction a bit more realistic.
His debut title 'Earth to Centauri,' released in English and Hindi on May 2017, is a space mystery/thriller following a crew as they seek to uncover the source of a signal claiming to have received the Voyager 1 Gold Record.
Goodreads
1. What inspired you to write Earth to Centauri?
I am a bit of a tech and sci-fi nerd. The story of what an actual first contact with an alien race was ganging around in my head for some time and I just thought I’d give it a try. The spicing up happened much later as I started writing.
2. What inspired you to write Science Fiction?
I am a bit of a tech and sci-fi nerd. Guess that’s also because I am an engineer and love to tinker around with stuff. I’m a huge star trek fan and I think that’s where my inspiration comes from.
3. As a male writer, do you find it difficult to write from a female prospective?
I do find it difficult and even now I am not sure I am doing justice to the character. Guess I’ll have to keep writing and learning and trying to incorporate as much as I can to build the characters. Being surrounded by two daughters and a wife at home does give me a little bit of a perspective.
4. Though there are many Indian authors, not many embark upon science fiction. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
I think there is much more focus on historical fiction in India at the moment and there are plenty of excellent books out by some great people. The lack of focus on SciFi may be a result of the Indian belief in faith and destiny. As such I believe SciFi has always been western centric. Its difficult to break into the genre for an Indian author even though India has had some of the greatest scientific minds. I am translating y book into Hindi the predominant Indian language – getting it across to the mainstream in a language they understand will be key to breaking the barrier.
5. When reading a book, does the gender or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign the novel in your head?
It should but this has been difficult for me to accomplish. Having travelled to many countries I understand little bit of how people speak but getting in a different gender or ethnicity is very very difficult without making them a stereotype.
6. What are you currently reading, and why did you pick it up?
I am reading Retrieval by Regina Clarke to give her a feedback. In the name of God by Ravi Subramanian to get a feel of Indian writing styles and also The Long Walk by Stephen King to get a feel for pace and dialogue.
7. How can an author cope with feeling their story deserves to be heard, but fearing criticism?
Oh. You’ve hit a raw nerve. I’ve recently got some review stating my grammar is bad. Honestly it hurt. It took me a few days to get over the criticism and find another editor to help me.
Besides, I always feel, what if someone says the story line is awful? Fortunately this has not happened so far.
There is always hope that I will be able to find my own sweet set of readers who like my stories and my style and I have been fortunate to find a few whole have actually loved it.
8. What else do you do outside of writing, and how do you maintain the balance?
I hold a full time job which requires 6 days working and a while lot of travel. I try squeezing in time whenever I can – on the plane, in the hotel. Mostly I use travel to keep making the story in my head. It does mean a whole lot of late nights.
Balancing work, family and writing is very difficult.
9. What’s next for Kumar L?
The translation for Book 1 has just been released. I am finishing off Book 2 of the series and focusing on marketing. Ideas for Book 3 and 4 are forming up at the same time!
Kumar is an engineer passionate about manufacturing. and technology. Fluent in 7 languages, Kumar loves to globe-trot. His travels have given him a utopian outlook on the future along with a desire to make science fiction a bit more realistic.
His debut title 'Earth to Centauri,' released in English and Hindi on May 2017, is a space mystery/thriller following a crew as they seek to uncover the source of a signal claiming to have received the Voyager 1 Gold Record.
Goodreads
1. What inspired you to write Earth to Centauri?I am a bit of a tech and sci-fi nerd. The story of what an actual first contact with an alien race was ganging around in my head for some time and I just thought I’d give it a try. The spicing up happened much later as I started writing.
2. What inspired you to write Science Fiction?
I am a bit of a tech and sci-fi nerd. Guess that’s also because I am an engineer and love to tinker around with stuff. I’m a huge star trek fan and I think that’s where my inspiration comes from.
3. As a male writer, do you find it difficult to write from a female prospective?
I do find it difficult and even now I am not sure I am doing justice to the character. Guess I’ll have to keep writing and learning and trying to incorporate as much as I can to build the characters. Being surrounded by two daughters and a wife at home does give me a little bit of a perspective.
4. Though there are many Indian authors, not many embark upon science fiction. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
I think there is much more focus on historical fiction in India at the moment and there are plenty of excellent books out by some great people. The lack of focus on SciFi may be a result of the Indian belief in faith and destiny. As such I believe SciFi has always been western centric. Its difficult to break into the genre for an Indian author even though India has had some of the greatest scientific minds. I am translating y book into Hindi the predominant Indian language – getting it across to the mainstream in a language they understand will be key to breaking the barrier.
5. When reading a book, does the gender or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign the novel in your head?
It should but this has been difficult for me to accomplish. Having travelled to many countries I understand little bit of how people speak but getting in a different gender or ethnicity is very very difficult without making them a stereotype.
6. What are you currently reading, and why did you pick it up?
I am reading Retrieval by Regina Clarke to give her a feedback. In the name of God by Ravi Subramanian to get a feel of Indian writing styles and also The Long Walk by Stephen King to get a feel for pace and dialogue.
7. How can an author cope with feeling their story deserves to be heard, but fearing criticism?
Oh. You’ve hit a raw nerve. I’ve recently got some review stating my grammar is bad. Honestly it hurt. It took me a few days to get over the criticism and find another editor to help me.
Besides, I always feel, what if someone says the story line is awful? Fortunately this has not happened so far.
There is always hope that I will be able to find my own sweet set of readers who like my stories and my style and I have been fortunate to find a few whole have actually loved it.
8. What else do you do outside of writing, and how do you maintain the balance?
I hold a full time job which requires 6 days working and a while lot of travel. I try squeezing in time whenever I can – on the plane, in the hotel. Mostly I use travel to keep making the story in my head. It does mean a whole lot of late nights.
Balancing work, family and writing is very difficult.
9. What’s next for Kumar L?
The translation for Book 1 has just been released. I am finishing off Book 2 of the series and focusing on marketing. Ideas for Book 3 and 4 are forming up at the same time!
December 21, 2017
Thoughts with Metaphysical Fantasy Author, Ono Ekeh
Regardless of the recent FIFA upset, I'm still excited--albeit a terrified excitement--to be packing for my two week visit to Nigeria tomorrow. I haven't been to my parents' village home in over ten years; and while I'm super proud of my posh one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, my mother lives on a villa-style machine. It's high time I check out the fuss and finally get started on my mother's memoirs.
To celebrate my upcoming trip to Nigeria, I want to highlight a fellow America-born Nigerian novelist, Ono Ekeh Ph.D. Though married with four kids up in Connecticut, Ono finds the time to crank out twisted, emotive theological series teaming with political intrigue, magic realism and fantastical love triangles.
These concepts shine through in his 'Children of Clay' series. The series' third book, Icon of Clay releases December 27th!
Facebook | GoodReads
1. What inspired you to write The Children of Clay series?
There’s a scene in the bible where God is speaking with a prophet, Jeremiah. God tells Jeremiah to visit a potter and observe him. What Jeremiah notices is that the potter has exacting standards and any clay pot that did not meet his standards, he destroyed. God then compared himself to the potter, willing to destroy any of his people that exhibited unacceptable imperfections.
This episode always fascinated me and I wondered, “What if the clay pots could speak? How would they defend or advocate for themselves?” I imagined that they would argue that their value lay not in the clay but in what they could carry or contain.
And so I imagined a god who was so transcendent that she cared little for humans but also that she was very fascinated by these beings who mattered little in the grand scheme of things. And the overall arc of the story is a struggle between Ryna, the transcendent god and her counterpart, the demiurge, pure matter, who is presently manifested as Queen Nouei. It is Nouei’s self-imposed task, as the lesser god, to convince Ryna that there is value in the children of clay.
The story takes place in different times: a dystopian world, seven-thousand years into the future, in the present contemporary world, and in a set of parallel worlds. So while it is, overall, a fantasy/supernatural story, it is rooted in current science and politics.
Icon of Clay, the third book in the series continues the story of a woman, Bridget Blade, is a reincarnation of a god, and gets caught up in international intrigue as she struggles to sort out her identity and put her life back together.
2. What inspired you to write Fantasy?
I write science fantasy which means that I can weave science elements into a fantasy context. I like fantasy because of the near total freedom to create and fashion a world of your choosing. Although the challenge is to not make the world so foreign that people can’t relate to it.
The Children of Clay series is contemporary fantasy. So the fantasy elements have to work in a restricted context of science and politics. I enjoy that because you have to think carefully when developing the connective tissue that merges a supernatural/fantasy world with a contemporary society.
3. Does your heritage influence your writing, and if so how?
My heritage is Nigerian-American. I find that Africans live in a world that easily blends the traditional with the technological. The supernatural and the scientific coexist comfortably for Africans. So it is very natural for me to bring science and fantasy together without feeling like such a move needs to be justified.
In The Children of Clay there are a series of parallel worlds, same people, but different probability configurations. This means that the same set of people act differently in different worlds. This gives me the flexibility to write situations that don’t have to be so logically binary and in which I can bring together fantasy and science. So, for instance, in The Clay Queen, we meet the people of a world of zero-probability and someone from the complement world, a world of 100% probability. In both worlds, science would and does coexist with the supernatural very easily, far more easily than in a world of … 50-50 probability configurations.
This gives me the flexibility to create a world that I am comfortable with, in that it doesn’t have to be so logical and binary in the way that the culture imposes on us.
4. As a male writer, do you find it difficult to write from a female prospective?
I never assume I understand the female perspective by default, so I primarily work on creating a three-dimensional character. I try to listen and study how women approach things and see if I need to modify the perspective of my characters. I also pay attention to the reactions of my critique partners. Ultimately, if my readers can buy into the humanity of the character, then I feel like I’ve succeeded, even if I fall short on certain aspects of characterization.
I should note that The Children of Clay series features female leads but the very first initial drafts didn’t. Nouei, who is the anchor of the series, was an absent character in a dystopian future. She was a Queen whose presence consisted in her being referred to by her husband who had killed her father. But I was so intrigued by her that I felt I need to develop her character because she had so much more to say. She did. She took over the entire series.
Bridget, who is the reincarnation of Queen Nouei, was similar in the very initial drafts. She was a tertiary character and the main characters were all male. But she had powers and abilities and a presence I needed to explain and eventually the story only fit when I came to realize that Nouei and Bridget were the same person and the series became about them.
So in that sense, I never consciously set out to write female leads, they emerged organically. So my goal has always been to strive to be true the character and in doing so, I hope I reflect authentic women.
5. There are not as many black science fiction and fantasy authors and filmmakers in comparison. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
This is true. In general, it’s going to be a slow process of encouraging more black science fiction and fantasy authors to take the plunge. But it is encouraging that there are black authors currently making waves. That can’t be discounted.
I think conscious steps can be taken all through the process of production in both film and books, to embrace diversity. I think the more people are used to seeing blacks in films on and behind the screen, or in the book production process, the more audiences embrace that.
In science fiction and fantasy, my experience is that characters are white by default unless specified. In my books, I don’t identify my characters as black unless there’s a reason to. The four main characters are black and sometimes when people find out later in the respective stories, they are surprised.
6. What are your thoughts on how Africans are portrayed in popular media?
Yeah, as an African, I tend to notice Africans in popular media. I can’t say that I’m an expert here, but in casting my mind back to films I’ve watched, there are many positive roles and I choose to focus on them.
Chiwetel Ejiofor in 2012 and Serenity; John Boyega in Star Wars and Pacific Rim; Djimon Honsou in any number of roles; Idris Elba in Pacific Rim; Freema Agyeman in Doctor Who; Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in a bunch roles; Fana Mokoena in World War Z; Rachel Luttrell in Stargate Atlantis.
I’ve mostly drawn from science fiction and some fantasy, but they jump out at me because they are positive representations of or by characters or actors of black African heritage.
I do get frustrated when Africans/African Americans get typecast into the mysterious or warrior race, e.g., Michael Dorn (Worf) and others as Klingons, and Christopher Judge (Teal’c) and others as the Jaffa. I’m not opposed to these roles, but it would be good to see a broader scope of representation such as in a show like Eureka.
Guinan in Star Trek Next Generation was played by Whoopi Goldberg but the character always felt very African to me. In fact, the most awesome episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” was one in which the timeline had changed and only Guinan sensed it. She insisted to Picard that everything was wrong and that he needed to send an entire ship back through time to certain death.
Of course, Picard was torn, but based on not much else but his belief in Guinan, he sends the ship back in time and it corrects the timeline. At the end of the episode, again, only Guinan had a vague sense that something had been or could’ve been terribly wrong, but wasn’t. That’s the sort of science fiction I like, where often there are no real answers and one has to take a leap of faith based on trust in another person.
7. Is Western culture ready to embrace non-Western fantasy?
He smirks. I suppose we’ll see with Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death being optioned to HBO. I think people enjoy good productions. So if non-Western fantasy is done well and it doesn’t appear that anyone’s trying to make a political point of it, then it’s likely to do well. Western Culture has embraced a lot of Asian fantasy, but African fantasy is still an open question. It’s really an issue of quality, production values, and the audience getting used to it.
8. When reading a book, does the gender or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign the novel in your head?
It probably does, but I don’t tend to notice. I don’t like authors imposing a look or sound on the characters, especially when I’m into them and want to imagine them the way I want to. I think my writing is a little minimalist in that sense. I want to leave as much to my reader as possible.
9. What else do you do outside of writing, and how do you maintain the balance?
I like watching movies. I love sports: soccer, football, basketball, etc. I love jogging in the morning. I’m fortunate to live in a beach town and I jog to the beach as often as I can. Recently, my sister visited Connecticut from New York and was amazed at the clarity of the night sky. I realized then just how much I had taken the stars for granted. But I absolutely feel blessed that I can go jogging two or three times a week when it is still dark and see a night sky with sparkling stars laid out for me.
10. What’s next for Ono Ekeh?
The Children of Clay series is on its third book, Icon of Clay. There are about five more to go. It’s a story arc I have sat on for almost a decade and it is burning to come out. Most of it is written, but the cleaning up and editing process does take a while. This series is very theological and metaphysical. When it’s done, I have more lighthearted stories I want to explore. I might even venture into the world of vampires, but with more of a humorous take.
To celebrate my upcoming trip to Nigeria, I want to highlight a fellow America-born Nigerian novelist, Ono Ekeh Ph.D. Though married with four kids up in Connecticut, Ono finds the time to crank out twisted, emotive theological series teaming with political intrigue, magic realism and fantastical love triangles.
These concepts shine through in his 'Children of Clay' series. The series' third book, Icon of Clay releases December 27th!
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1. What inspired you to write The Children of Clay series?There’s a scene in the bible where God is speaking with a prophet, Jeremiah. God tells Jeremiah to visit a potter and observe him. What Jeremiah notices is that the potter has exacting standards and any clay pot that did not meet his standards, he destroyed. God then compared himself to the potter, willing to destroy any of his people that exhibited unacceptable imperfections.
This episode always fascinated me and I wondered, “What if the clay pots could speak? How would they defend or advocate for themselves?” I imagined that they would argue that their value lay not in the clay but in what they could carry or contain.
And so I imagined a god who was so transcendent that she cared little for humans but also that she was very fascinated by these beings who mattered little in the grand scheme of things. And the overall arc of the story is a struggle between Ryna, the transcendent god and her counterpart, the demiurge, pure matter, who is presently manifested as Queen Nouei. It is Nouei’s self-imposed task, as the lesser god, to convince Ryna that there is value in the children of clay.
The story takes place in different times: a dystopian world, seven-thousand years into the future, in the present contemporary world, and in a set of parallel worlds. So while it is, overall, a fantasy/supernatural story, it is rooted in current science and politics.
Icon of Clay, the third book in the series continues the story of a woman, Bridget Blade, is a reincarnation of a god, and gets caught up in international intrigue as she struggles to sort out her identity and put her life back together.
2. What inspired you to write Fantasy?
I write science fantasy which means that I can weave science elements into a fantasy context. I like fantasy because of the near total freedom to create and fashion a world of your choosing. Although the challenge is to not make the world so foreign that people can’t relate to it.
The Children of Clay series is contemporary fantasy. So the fantasy elements have to work in a restricted context of science and politics. I enjoy that because you have to think carefully when developing the connective tissue that merges a supernatural/fantasy world with a contemporary society.
3. Does your heritage influence your writing, and if so how?
My heritage is Nigerian-American. I find that Africans live in a world that easily blends the traditional with the technological. The supernatural and the scientific coexist comfortably for Africans. So it is very natural for me to bring science and fantasy together without feeling like such a move needs to be justified.
In The Children of Clay there are a series of parallel worlds, same people, but different probability configurations. This means that the same set of people act differently in different worlds. This gives me the flexibility to write situations that don’t have to be so logically binary and in which I can bring together fantasy and science. So, for instance, in The Clay Queen, we meet the people of a world of zero-probability and someone from the complement world, a world of 100% probability. In both worlds, science would and does coexist with the supernatural very easily, far more easily than in a world of … 50-50 probability configurations.
This gives me the flexibility to create a world that I am comfortable with, in that it doesn’t have to be so logical and binary in the way that the culture imposes on us.
4. As a male writer, do you find it difficult to write from a female prospective?
I never assume I understand the female perspective by default, so I primarily work on creating a three-dimensional character. I try to listen and study how women approach things and see if I need to modify the perspective of my characters. I also pay attention to the reactions of my critique partners. Ultimately, if my readers can buy into the humanity of the character, then I feel like I’ve succeeded, even if I fall short on certain aspects of characterization.
I should note that The Children of Clay series features female leads but the very first initial drafts didn’t. Nouei, who is the anchor of the series, was an absent character in a dystopian future. She was a Queen whose presence consisted in her being referred to by her husband who had killed her father. But I was so intrigued by her that I felt I need to develop her character because she had so much more to say. She did. She took over the entire series.
Bridget, who is the reincarnation of Queen Nouei, was similar in the very initial drafts. She was a tertiary character and the main characters were all male. But she had powers and abilities and a presence I needed to explain and eventually the story only fit when I came to realize that Nouei and Bridget were the same person and the series became about them.
So in that sense, I never consciously set out to write female leads, they emerged organically. So my goal has always been to strive to be true the character and in doing so, I hope I reflect authentic women.
5. There are not as many black science fiction and fantasy authors and filmmakers in comparison. Why is this and how can it be remedied?
This is true. In general, it’s going to be a slow process of encouraging more black science fiction and fantasy authors to take the plunge. But it is encouraging that there are black authors currently making waves. That can’t be discounted.
I think conscious steps can be taken all through the process of production in both film and books, to embrace diversity. I think the more people are used to seeing blacks in films on and behind the screen, or in the book production process, the more audiences embrace that.
In science fiction and fantasy, my experience is that characters are white by default unless specified. In my books, I don’t identify my characters as black unless there’s a reason to. The four main characters are black and sometimes when people find out later in the respective stories, they are surprised.
6. What are your thoughts on how Africans are portrayed in popular media?
Yeah, as an African, I tend to notice Africans in popular media. I can’t say that I’m an expert here, but in casting my mind back to films I’ve watched, there are many positive roles and I choose to focus on them.
Chiwetel Ejiofor in 2012 and Serenity; John Boyega in Star Wars and Pacific Rim; Djimon Honsou in any number of roles; Idris Elba in Pacific Rim; Freema Agyeman in Doctor Who; Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in a bunch roles; Fana Mokoena in World War Z; Rachel Luttrell in Stargate Atlantis.
I’ve mostly drawn from science fiction and some fantasy, but they jump out at me because they are positive representations of or by characters or actors of black African heritage.
I do get frustrated when Africans/African Americans get typecast into the mysterious or warrior race, e.g., Michael Dorn (Worf) and others as Klingons, and Christopher Judge (Teal’c) and others as the Jaffa. I’m not opposed to these roles, but it would be good to see a broader scope of representation such as in a show like Eureka.
Guinan in Star Trek Next Generation was played by Whoopi Goldberg but the character always felt very African to me. In fact, the most awesome episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” was one in which the timeline had changed and only Guinan sensed it. She insisted to Picard that everything was wrong and that he needed to send an entire ship back through time to certain death.
Of course, Picard was torn, but based on not much else but his belief in Guinan, he sends the ship back in time and it corrects the timeline. At the end of the episode, again, only Guinan had a vague sense that something had been or could’ve been terribly wrong, but wasn’t. That’s the sort of science fiction I like, where often there are no real answers and one has to take a leap of faith based on trust in another person.
7. Is Western culture ready to embrace non-Western fantasy?
He smirks. I suppose we’ll see with Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death being optioned to HBO. I think people enjoy good productions. So if non-Western fantasy is done well and it doesn’t appear that anyone’s trying to make a political point of it, then it’s likely to do well. Western Culture has embraced a lot of Asian fantasy, but African fantasy is still an open question. It’s really an issue of quality, production values, and the audience getting used to it.
8. When reading a book, does the gender or ethnicity of the author impact the voice you assign the novel in your head?
It probably does, but I don’t tend to notice. I don’t like authors imposing a look or sound on the characters, especially when I’m into them and want to imagine them the way I want to. I think my writing is a little minimalist in that sense. I want to leave as much to my reader as possible.
9. What else do you do outside of writing, and how do you maintain the balance?
I like watching movies. I love sports: soccer, football, basketball, etc. I love jogging in the morning. I’m fortunate to live in a beach town and I jog to the beach as often as I can. Recently, my sister visited Connecticut from New York and was amazed at the clarity of the night sky. I realized then just how much I had taken the stars for granted. But I absolutely feel blessed that I can go jogging two or three times a week when it is still dark and see a night sky with sparkling stars laid out for me.
10. What’s next for Ono Ekeh?
The Children of Clay series is on its third book, Icon of Clay. There are about five more to go. It’s a story arc I have sat on for almost a decade and it is burning to come out. Most of it is written, but the cleaning up and editing process does take a while. This series is very theological and metaphysical. When it’s done, I have more lighthearted stories I want to explore. I might even venture into the world of vampires, but with more of a humorous take.
December 14, 2017
Thoughts on Mixed Reality with Engineer Shannon Holloway
No one can deny POC women are kicking ass right now (and always have been). From #BlackWomen shaping history at the Alabama special elections, to Robin Roberts being one of the highest paid news anchors since Matt Lauer's firing, women of color are redefining politics, media and business.
But let's not forget the fields of science and engineering, with innovative technology making math sexier by the minute!. And with my current VR and AR obsession, I set out to find a superstar POC female in the field, and Shannon Holloway is just that! A James Dyson Design awarded Berkeley graduate with an M.S. in Engineering from NYU, Holloway is a user experience researcher, passionate about making technology user-friendly.. She focuses on human centered design of mixed realities (MR) environments and stopped by to share her research along with her thoughts on the future implications of VR/AR integration into the human experience.
website
1. What inspired you to work in a technology?
I was inspired to work in technology, to use my creative skills to have an impact and design a better future. Growing up I was good at art and computers, but I never thought of myself as a technical person so I studied art. My original career path consisted of a day job at a hedge fund while painting in my free time. I spent my days frustrated with complex software applications, and when I began working in the venture capital arm of the fund, I noticed similar usability problems even in slick new mobile apps. That’s when I discovered the field of human-computer interaction and began working as a user experience (UX) designer, leveraging my artistic and technical capacities to design user interfaces. I now work as a UX researcher, which allows me to use my left brain to analyze how users interact with technology and my right brain to guide the design process.
2. What exactly is Mixed Reality, and what drove you to explore it?
Mixed Reality (MR) is a continuum of environments between the real world and the virtual world. There are various enabling technologies that can create an MR environment such as mobile devices, wearables, and displays embedded in the physical space. Many people are now familiar with the term augmented reality (AR) thanks to popular games such as Pokemon Go. AR fits within the broader range of MR environments, but the terms are often used interchangeably.
3. What are some benefits MR can bring to our society?
Rather than splitting our attention between digital devices and the physical world around us, MR enables a user to interact with both digital and physical objects together in context. This can make digital information readily available while continuing to operate in the real world. MR opens up opportunities for more natural and collaborative ways of interacting with computers.
4. Could exposure to MR have negative effects on the human biome (motion sickness, neurological footprints, dependence, agoraphobia or attention deficit)?
MR has been known to cause symptoms such as motion sickness, eye strain, and fatigue, but further research on long-term effects is needed. Some of the issues we have with digital experiences today could be heightened with MR, such as distracted attention and information overload. Agoraphobia is a possibility, imagine the equivalent of spammy banner ads or push notifications completely surrounding you.
5. How could MR change how humans interact and function as a society? Could MR completely replace real world interactions and experiences?
Just as mobile devices transformed our everyday lives by making computing power available anytime and anywhere, MR presents the next paradigm shift in how we interact. We will be able to navigate with directions overlaid on our field of view, meet someone and have facial recognition to search and display their information, and create and share 3D holograms. Instead of tapping a screen, we will interact using voice, gesture, gaze, and locomotion detected by cameras and sensors on our devices, bodies, and in our environment. This will prompt many changes in social norms, particularly around privacy.
The advantage of MR is that it allows humans to continue to interact in the real world while aided by digital tools. However, I do believe that the more immersive end of the MR continuum, such as virtual reality (VR), has the potential to replace real world experiences.
6. One of my favorite series, Black Mirror, talks about how advertisers can use AR and VR to collect volumes more personal information, interrupt experiences and pay-to-win syndromes. What are your thoughts on this?
Black Mirror is great at keeping a finger on the pulse of how technology and society might change in the near future. Advertisers will definitely be able to collect more personal information and interrupt experiences based on your location, direction of your gaze, etc. It’s hard to understand the value of something like privacy until it’s gone, and then people will be willing to pay for it.
7. There just aren’t enough women of color in science and technology. Why is this and what can we do to remedy it?
Unfortunately there are so many contributing factors to the lack of women of color in STEM fields. It starts early, with different societal expectations making girls internalize the message that they aren’t good at science and technology and not pursue this. But even if she pursues her studies in STEM, she then enters the field facing racist and sexist power structures that can stunt her career growth, to the extent that some women switch careers.
One way we can help remedy this is by changing who we picture when we think of an engineer, doctor, or innovator. By celebrating the achievements of women of color in these roles and having them represented in the media, we can inspire others and shift cultural attitudes.
8. When will Mixed Reality become reality? And where can one go to learn more and keep up on its progress?
A number of mobile apps, wearables, and digital displays in the built environment are making MR a reality today. But the technology is still evolving, and usability is a key factor in consumer adoption.
9. What’s next for Shannon Holloway?
I’m excited to continue to research, write, and speak about making technology user-friendly!
But let's not forget the fields of science and engineering, with innovative technology making math sexier by the minute!. And with my current VR and AR obsession, I set out to find a superstar POC female in the field, and Shannon Holloway is just that! A James Dyson Design awarded Berkeley graduate with an M.S. in Engineering from NYU, Holloway is a user experience researcher, passionate about making technology user-friendly.. She focuses on human centered design of mixed realities (MR) environments and stopped by to share her research along with her thoughts on the future implications of VR/AR integration into the human experience.
website1. What inspired you to work in a technology?
I was inspired to work in technology, to use my creative skills to have an impact and design a better future. Growing up I was good at art and computers, but I never thought of myself as a technical person so I studied art. My original career path consisted of a day job at a hedge fund while painting in my free time. I spent my days frustrated with complex software applications, and when I began working in the venture capital arm of the fund, I noticed similar usability problems even in slick new mobile apps. That’s when I discovered the field of human-computer interaction and began working as a user experience (UX) designer, leveraging my artistic and technical capacities to design user interfaces. I now work as a UX researcher, which allows me to use my left brain to analyze how users interact with technology and my right brain to guide the design process.
2. What exactly is Mixed Reality, and what drove you to explore it?
Mixed Reality (MR) is a continuum of environments between the real world and the virtual world. There are various enabling technologies that can create an MR environment such as mobile devices, wearables, and displays embedded in the physical space. Many people are now familiar with the term augmented reality (AR) thanks to popular games such as Pokemon Go. AR fits within the broader range of MR environments, but the terms are often used interchangeably.
3. What are some benefits MR can bring to our society?
Rather than splitting our attention between digital devices and the physical world around us, MR enables a user to interact with both digital and physical objects together in context. This can make digital information readily available while continuing to operate in the real world. MR opens up opportunities for more natural and collaborative ways of interacting with computers.
4. Could exposure to MR have negative effects on the human biome (motion sickness, neurological footprints, dependence, agoraphobia or attention deficit)?
MR has been known to cause symptoms such as motion sickness, eye strain, and fatigue, but further research on long-term effects is needed. Some of the issues we have with digital experiences today could be heightened with MR, such as distracted attention and information overload. Agoraphobia is a possibility, imagine the equivalent of spammy banner ads or push notifications completely surrounding you.
5. How could MR change how humans interact and function as a society? Could MR completely replace real world interactions and experiences?
Just as mobile devices transformed our everyday lives by making computing power available anytime and anywhere, MR presents the next paradigm shift in how we interact. We will be able to navigate with directions overlaid on our field of view, meet someone and have facial recognition to search and display their information, and create and share 3D holograms. Instead of tapping a screen, we will interact using voice, gesture, gaze, and locomotion detected by cameras and sensors on our devices, bodies, and in our environment. This will prompt many changes in social norms, particularly around privacy.
The advantage of MR is that it allows humans to continue to interact in the real world while aided by digital tools. However, I do believe that the more immersive end of the MR continuum, such as virtual reality (VR), has the potential to replace real world experiences.
6. One of my favorite series, Black Mirror, talks about how advertisers can use AR and VR to collect volumes more personal information, interrupt experiences and pay-to-win syndromes. What are your thoughts on this?
Black Mirror is great at keeping a finger on the pulse of how technology and society might change in the near future. Advertisers will definitely be able to collect more personal information and interrupt experiences based on your location, direction of your gaze, etc. It’s hard to understand the value of something like privacy until it’s gone, and then people will be willing to pay for it.
7. There just aren’t enough women of color in science and technology. Why is this and what can we do to remedy it?
Unfortunately there are so many contributing factors to the lack of women of color in STEM fields. It starts early, with different societal expectations making girls internalize the message that they aren’t good at science and technology and not pursue this. But even if she pursues her studies in STEM, she then enters the field facing racist and sexist power structures that can stunt her career growth, to the extent that some women switch careers.
One way we can help remedy this is by changing who we picture when we think of an engineer, doctor, or innovator. By celebrating the achievements of women of color in these roles and having them represented in the media, we can inspire others and shift cultural attitudes.
8. When will Mixed Reality become reality? And where can one go to learn more and keep up on its progress?
A number of mobile apps, wearables, and digital displays in the built environment are making MR a reality today. But the technology is still evolving, and usability is a key factor in consumer adoption.
9. What’s next for Shannon Holloway?
I’m excited to continue to research, write, and speak about making technology user-friendly!
