Alice asked Anna Faversham:

What was the greatest challenge for you in writing in a different genre?

Anna Faversham Thank you, Alice, for your question - it's certainly made me think.

When I wrote my Dark Moon trilogy, I could use the extensive research for the first book, One Dark Night, for the second and third books. I had already written a time travel romance, which was my first published novel, and this was set in the same era as the trilogy as well as being in the contemporary style/era - easy.

Then came the book that Amazon have called 'speculative fiction'. Immortality: This is Probably a Novel. Definitely different and also set in several different countries. This should have been my greatest challenge - but for most of the time it wasn't.

A character - Chester - had been knocking around in my head for some time and it was obvious he had a story to tell. Other authors might know what I mean. I do know that Emily Bronte had the same experience. The character she created, Heathcliff, strongly led, she said (and that's an understatement). In my case, Chester did, so it should have been plain sailing. However, he was eager in early London scenes, the Middle East and New Zealand, leading my fingers to fly across the keyboard, but then left me stranded. It was as if he said, 'You're on your own now'. That was my greatest challenge. He was off the South American coast - an area I don't know at all and I had never read speculative fiction before, nor much sci fi. So I was stranded in a different genre and a different setting. I suddenly had to do a whole lot of unexpected research. Loved it, of course.

Chester eventually made it back to New Zealand, a country he grew to love, and I could leave him there - where he was meant to be.

I'm fairly certain I shan't be writing sci fi or speculative fiction again - but who knows?

flag