Interview With Nicola M. Cameron
I sat down (virtually) with Nicola M. Cameron for a short interview. Nicola M. Cameron’s latest release, Degree of Resistance, is a SciFi Romance with a cyborg hero! (You know I love those! – grins)
Cynthia Sax: Where did you get the idea for Degree of Resistance?
Nicola M. Cameron: I had gone up to Ontario last October for a writer’s retreat hosted by my publisher, and stayed a few days with my fellow author and sister from another mister L.D. Blakeley. When I got to her place she started raving about this new show called Westworld. I admitted I hadn’t seen it yet. She looked at me in horror and said, “What do you mean, you haven’t seen it? You write SF romance. Sit down – I’ll cue it up.”
*Instant* love. The dialogue, the plot, the casting, the cinematography, the concept of searching for humanity in artificial intelligence, the eminently sexy Louis Herthum – I fell for it all. Later that weekend I had a chat with our PR person Sandra Bunino about the popularity of cyborg romances, and I flashed back to Westworld and thought, “Huh – there are themes here I’d really like to explore.” By the end of the weekend I had a six-book series in my head with at least two prequels and started working on Degree of Resistance while waiting at the airport for my flight home.
Cynthia Sax: What causes trouble between Ben and Evie?
Nicola M. Cameron: The biggest conflict stems from the fact that Ben asked Evie to marry him when she was nineteen, then supposedly died in a jumpship crash. Evie then spent the next twelve years raising his young daughter Ally (which meant giving up her shot at an engineering degree) before finding out that Ben was still alive and had been turned into a cyborg soldier. The two of them have a lot of guilt and anger issues to work out when they get back together; Ben is angry at himself for trusting the wrong superior and guilty that Evie had to give up her dream to raise his daughter, which he sees as his responsibility. Conversely, Evie is angry at the protectorate for screwing up both their lives and guilty that she engaged in a liaison with a rich young man named Gene while working for Gene’s aunt. There’s also the disconnect that, for Ben, the intervening twelve years never happened (cyborg soldiers have their consciousness suppressed) so he still feels the same way he did when he first proposed to Evie, but for her a lot of time has passed and she needs to figure out how she feels about Ben now as opposed to when she was nineteen. They work out some of their issues in this book, but others will crop up as the series progresses.
Cynthia Sax: Is Degree of Resistance part of a series and will you be writing more stories in this series?
Nicola M. Cameron: It’s the first in at least six books with two prequels and a bunch of side stories as they occur to me. I absolutely LOVE this world and these characters, and I want to write more about them and all the people around them, as well as the post-apocalyptic world they’re in.
Cynthia Sax: What do you love about writing in your SciFi Romance?
Nicola M. Cameron: I started off my professional writing career in 1995 as a SF writer. What I absolutely love about writing SF/fantasy romance is that I’m *still* writing science fiction and fantasy – it’s just that I now get to add in the romantic scenes that I always had to censor before.
Cynthia Sax: Thank you for joining us today, Nicola M. Cameron!
Nicola M. Cameron’s Website: http://www.nicolacameronwrites.com
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A perfect society hiding a terrible secret. An innocent man condemned to cyborg slavery. A brilliant woman determined to set him free.
Freelance tech Evie Contreras belongs to the Employee class of the Pacifica Protectorate, the “perfect society” that rose from the ruins of the West Coast. But Evie knows about Pacifica’s festering core and the secrets that keep it in power. And when she discovers that Pacifica has turned her fiancé Ben into a cyborg soldier/slave, she will risk everything to rescue him.
Saving Ben is the first step in a deadly game between Pacifica and a shadowy resistance group known as Rubicon. In return for Rubicon’s help, Evie must retrieve a hidden artificial intelligence that may hold the key to protecting Earth from a deadly new disaster.
Assuming the protectorate doesn’t find Evie first…
Buy Now:
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N2A25GG
On Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N2A25GG
On Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/705076
On Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/degree-of-resistance-nicola-m-cameron/1125853898
On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/degree-of-resistance/id1209817265?mt=11
On Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/degree-of-resistance
In Print: https://www.createspace.com/6938559
Topics: Author Interviews | 1 Comment »
Westworld, The Power Of Unanswered Questions And Sagging Middles
I LOVE HBO’s Westworld (androids in a wild west world? Sign me up!). It is my newest addiction. But this week’s episode left me feeling a bit dissatisfied. It took me some time to figure out why.
There are too many unanswered questions.
Unanswered questions are a powerful writing tool. It is why readers turn pages—to find out the answers. An awesome first page or first paragraph or first line raises a question in the reader’s mind.
The first line to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight is “I’d never given much thought to how I would die–though I’d had reason enough in the last few months-but, even if I had, I would have never imagined it like this.”
How is the heroine going to die? Why is the heroine dying? I HAVE to continue reading to find out the answers. Once I have these answers, I’ll stop reading.
UNLESS there are more questions I want answers to. Then I will continue reading to find out THOSE answers.
The biggest questions at the beginning of a story are around backstory. Why is the heroine doing what she’s doing? What makes her think this way? Why does she have X as a goal?
This is one of the reasons why many editors don’t like prologues or early story backstory dumps. They could eliminate this huge incentive for readers to continue reading. If I’m told on page one how Bella is going to die and why she’s dying, I have no reason to read page two. It is a waste of an absolutely wonderful first line.
In Romance, the big question readers are seeking the answer to is ‘Is the couple (or more) going to achieve their happy ever after or happy for now?’ This is why often the couple (or more) doesn’t exchange ‘I love you’s until the end of the story.
If they DO say that phrase earlier in the story, a skilled writer will ensure readers know the happiness won’t last. Maybe one of them still has a relationship-destroying secret or the killer is lurking outside their bedroom or they love each other but there’s no way for them to be together.
So you’re likely wondering… If unanswered questions are powerful, why am I dissatisfied with Westworld’s gazillion unanswered questions?
Because I can’t keep track of them. My mind can only handle so many unanswered questions before I get frustrated. My rule of thumb is… if I lose track of my own unanswered questions while writing a story, I have way too many of them.
This doesn’t mean we can only raise the same 3 or 4 unanswered questions throughout a 100,000 word/400 page story. That would be challenging and a bit boring.
What we CAN do is answer some of those questions and then ask different questions.
At the beginning of Releasing Rage, while writing this story, I asked myself if Joan, our heroine, would ever be assigned to a cyborg. (question raised) She was. (question answered) Why was she assigned to a cyborg? (another question raised) The last human assigned to the cyborg was killed. (question answered) Would she survive being assigned to this cyborg? (another question raised – this question remains for almost all of the story)
One of the things Game of Thrones (the show) does quite well and quite brutally is answer unanswered questions. When the storylines become too complicated, they kill everyone off in a storyline and simply eliminate it. Then they raise more questions.
We don’t have to be that bloodthirsty. We can simply answer the damn question. We can give the heroine the job she thinks will solve all of her problems but then ensure that job causes her MORE problems. We can allow the hero to escape one mess to step knee deep into another bigger mess. I really like it when the answer to the question makes the situation worse, not better. That’s a lot of fun to write and to read.
Giving readers answers to questions throughout the story creates a sense of movement and a feeling of satisfaction. Shit is getting done. (grins) Often when readers comment that ‘nothing happened’ in a story, they are truly saying that no answers are given and no new questions are raised (mid story or at all).
When we, writers, face a sagging middle, it can mean the same thing-we need to answer questions and raise new ones. This is often the reason for mid story boredom. If you, as a writer, find you can’t finish stories, look at your unanswered questions. Do you have any? Do you have too many? Do you lack answers? Talk to other writing buddies (like myself) and brainstorm both answers AND questions.
Unanswered questions are powerful. Use them wisely.
Subscribe To My Release Day Newsletter: http://tasteofcyn.com/2014/05/28/newsletter/
Wild. Free. Hers.
Mayhem has spent his lengthy lifespan obeying the Humanoid Alliance’s rules. Finally free from their cruel control, the cyborg warrior plans to cause chaos. He infiltrates a remote settlement, provokes the savage locals until they want him dead, and allows himself to be captured by the sexiest little Retriever he has ever laid his mechanically-enhanced eyes on.
Imee’s sole mission in life is to keep her family alive. To do this, she must hunt rebels, returning them to the Humanoid Alliance’s evil clutches where they will be executed. She doesn’t allow herself to feel anything for her targets…until she meets a tall, muscular cyborg with wild hair and even wilder eyes.
With his sure hands, laughing lips and erotic holds, Mayhem makes Imee’s body sizzle and her resistance melt. Their love is doomed. She must deliver the warrior to his death or she’ll place her family’s safety at risk. But she can’t resist him.
Imee soon discovers that Mayhem, life, and love are never predictable.
Chasing Mayhem is Book 6 in the Cyborg Sizzle series and is a STANDALONE story.
It is also a BBW Cyborg SciFi Romance.
Buy Now:
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Mayhem-Cyborg-Sizzle-Book-ebook/dp/B01IRPO9WY#nav-subnav
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chasing-Mayhem-Cyborg-Sizzle-Book-ebook/dp/B01IRPO9WY/
Apple/iBooks/iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/chasing-mayhem/id1136333685
ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-chasingmayhem-2077430-340.html
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chasing-mayhem-cynthia-sax/1124139998
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/chasing-mayhem
Topics: Writing Tips | 1 Comment »
