Today I’d like to welcome Traci L. Slatton, who recently published the sweetly surprising and terrific SF romance The Love of My (Other) Life (review here). She’s here to talk about…
Why I Write Science Fiction
By Traci L. Slatton
When I was 6 years old, I fell in love with reading. It happened fast, like most experiences of true love. It was a thunderbolt, in fact. I went from reading “See Spot Run” to reading ‘big books,’ that is, chapter books for older kids, in a few weeks.
The dazzling thing about reading was that it allowed my imagination to play. I started with the usual kid’s books but picked up a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, and I was hooked. I read everything Burroughs wrote, all his Mars and Venus and Pellucidar books. I loved them. I devoured them. I consumed them utterly.
From Burroughs, I branched out into other science fiction. Every new novel was a whole new set of imaginal possibilities. New worlds, new wonders, came to life within me—possibilities I had never before conceived of took root and grew in my soul.
My first published novel was a historical novel, but even Immortal had elements of sci fi in it. (I won’t give those away….) After Immortal, I turned to a dystopian series, the After series, a dark and romantic story set after a global apocalypse.
The After series is tense and dark, and I wanted to write something lighter, with serious elements, that still allowed my imagination to play—and that invited readers to play with me. Ultimately, as an author, that’s my goal: to engage readers playfully and heartfully; to give readers a sense of wonder and discovery; to open up minds to new options and hitherto unconsidered possibilities.
I had this flash of an idea: what if a man showed up in my life, and he stalked me and claimed that we were married in an alternate universe, and I thought he was a crazy homeless dude, but he turned out to be the love of my life, but I couldn’t be with him because he belongs to another world? Excuse the run-on sentence, but the initial reverie the love that was the genesis for The Love of My (Other) Life was just like that, a big cram-up of ideas about love and loss and laughter and choice.
So the main character Tessa Barnum encounters this man, Brian Tennyson, who stalks her and tells her that they’re married in a parallel universe. And through him, she discovers the person she might have been, except for choices she made here that altered her path. The heart being what it is, an eternal force in all universes, it leads her back to Brian….
About Traci L. Slatton
Traci L. Slatton was born into a Navy family. She grew up in Great Lakes, IL; Norfolk, VA; Olathe, KS; Millington, TN; and Groton, CT. Traci now lives in Manhattan with her husband sculptor Sabin Howard, three daughters, stepdaughter, and two labs, all of whom are wonderfully opinionated creatures.Traci has published dozens of poems, short stories, and articles in magazines and literary journals. She greatly enjoyed researching Edgar Cayce, quantum physics, and Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields for Piercing Time & Space. For the historical novel Immortal, she inquired deeply into the art and life of the Italian Renaissance, a period when thinkers like Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo da Vinci, and Marsilio Ficino were engaged in questioning the nature and relationship of science, art, and the soul. Immortal was a bestseller in Italy, Russia, and Brazil and was also translated into French, Greek, Spanish, and Polish.To learn more about Traci, visit her website and blog or follow her on Twitter and Goodreads.
~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~
Traci is giving away ebook copies of The Love of My (Other) Life to two lucky winners! To enter, use the Rafflecopter: