I Need An Earth Girl! Vital questions answered.

Available from Amazon.Com, Amazon UK
and Smashwords.

Hooray! Just as I release my startling new novella I Need An Earth Girl! noir maestro Paul D Brazill of You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? has given me an excuse to plug it by nominating me for the ME! ME! thingy that's doing the rounds. It seems the recipient has to answer the following ten questions and then pick on five other people to answer the same questions.

1. What is the title of your book?

I Need An Earth Girl!

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

After watching the first Dr Who Christmas Special, back in 2005, the one that introduced David Tennant, I said to myself, "I'm going to write one of those!" And so I did. Admittedly it took me seven years to finally get round to it but, as we all know, you can't rush genius.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Science Fiction. Some might label it Science Fantasy, as I'm perfectly happy to play fast and loose with the laws of Physics in order to achieve my ends. I think it's also probably Space Opera, although possibly on a more human scale than that title might threaten.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

All of the major characters are aliens. One is sort of a bird woman, another is an insectoid and another is an octopod, so I don't have a clue. Are there any actors out there with eight arms? Squid James?

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Sentenced to death, queen Petra 97 becomes a space adventurer but soon discovers that being an official heroine of the empire doesn't guarantee people will be pleased to see you

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It's out right now and it's self-published. My wild, independent streak sees to that.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I think it was two or three days. Normally I break a story down into scenes and then work my way through it a scene at a time, getting each one right before going onto the next. This time, I went straight through it from start to finish, as one piece of narration with no scene or chapter breaks.

Trouble was, when I read it back, I didn't like the effect and therefore completely rewrote it in my usual way, breaking it up and adding scene beginnings and endings.

Also, thanks to the initial method I'd used, I found there was a lot of telling and not showing going on. Therefore I had to totally restructure it in places to better dramatise the situations that were being described.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I can't think of any. I suspect that's more thanks to my ignorance rather then my having totally reinvented literature.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

As I said, Dr Who did. Also, I quite fancied doing what I'd been doing with my Department of Occult Investigation stories but to do it in space, so I could do things on a bigger and more imaginative scale. There's also a couple of things in there that were my attempt to do a Jack Kirby.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Well, there's a fair bit of nudity - although none of it's by humans.

Most of all, I hope people'll like the fact it doesn't take itself too seriously. There are life and death matters involved and, of course, our heroine learns an important lesson about both herself and the universe but it does have a tongue-in-cheek side to it too. I think the characters are quite endearing. They're not like us. And yet, somehow, they are.

I Need An Earth Girl! can be downloaded from:
Amazon.Com, Amazon UK and Smashwords.

Cover credits: 
Teddy Bear 27 by Waugsberg (own photograph - eigene Aufnahme) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 

Earth From Space by NASA (Public Domain), via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_from_Space.jpg 

Overall cover design, copyright Stephen Walker, 2012, available under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)

Argh! Now I have to nominate someone.

In that case I'll try nominating:
Ryan Harvey at the Realm of Ryan.
Craig Smith at the Fantasy/Reality World of a Writer.
Mercedes Ludill at MercedesLudillBooks.
David P Perlmutter at Wrong Place, Wrong Time.
Jeff Whelan of Jeff Whelan.