Can South African Coloured Girls Write SciFi?

Can South African Coloured Girls Write SciFi? - Back Catalogue Secrets

SciFi Picked Me

It came as quite a revelation that SciFi was my chosen genre for my second novel. At the time I didn’t analyse my choice but now I think I understand the why. The genre gives me the freedom to explore ideas to an end point which could be. I can people my world with whomever I please. The very possibility thrills me. Fantasy does this too, but there is something linked to the here and now in SciFi which cannot be escaped I feel. It centres around the fact technology is moving at such a pace now that in my lifespan telephones have evolved into flat slabs of plastic, keyboards can be rolled up and you can tell your TV what you want to watch. Hell, our house didn't get a Blaupunkt TV till I was 13. When I’m reading SciFi these days, it feels as though I’m reading predictions of a future lurking on the very near horizon.

Book the 1st

Where Rainbows Hide was born out of my love for chimpanzees. As a child I always wanted to have one as a pet and was distraught my parents didn’t feel as enamoured of the idea as I was. In the news at the time, Dolly the sheep had recently been cloned, Global warming was becoming a catch phrase and I was missing the myriad number of rainbows regularly seen in South Africa but rare in London. Hence the title, genetically engineered characters and subject matter. My main character is mixed-race and has a name which hints at this. My South African heritage made me wary of instigating the wrath of the state, so I decided on a stealth campaign instead. In essence Neera is actually a very brave me who speaks her mind, can rock climb, ride a futuristic motorbike, hack computers and chill with overgrown chimpanzees.

Again, as with my debut novel, I intended to write a stand-alone and move on. But as ever, my characters had other ideas and my readers were also asking for more.

Book the 2nd

While I was getting on with the writing of my Robert Deed Magic Realism series, the genetically engineered chimps of When Rainbows Cry were busy sorting out their version of the world. Time had passed for them as well as me and they wanted that reflected. New characters came into being and I wrote twin toddlers into the plot. Obviously childcare was going to become an issue and it does, much to the chagrin of my much more youthful protagonist, Petra. I got the opportunity to bring back characters from the 1st book and take a more indepth look at character relationships. Family dynamics was important to me in this one; how we resolve issues which rear up, how we deal with that tricky transition from child to adult and the huge responsibilities we unwittingly and perhaps unfairly, impose on our youth.

I wrote this book very quickly because the main ideas and characters were solidly formed in my mind early on. About a quarter of the way through the writing of it, I became aware I wanted to write a 3rd book and knew exactly who the protagonists would be. I've learnt now that claiming a book is a stand-alone invariably bites me in the butt. When something begs to be written; be it a spin-off, sequel or prequel, I can hardly refuse now can I?

Book the 3rd
Am scheduled to start work on the final book in this trilogy early in 2021. I already have some initial ideas plotted out and roughly drawn up character profiles. There will also be a love story at the heart of it. A departure for me as I tend to keep these to a minimum. The title is When Rainbows Dare. Use the title link to see a video of what I have planned.

A gentle reminder:

If you have read either book 1 or 2 I would greatly appreciate you using the links below to write a Goodreads review. If you're not up to using words, a star rating would be wonderful.

Thank you.

Where Rainbows Hide

When Rainbows Cry

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