Like #steampunk? Fancy a bit of #scifi? Then check out this author interview with .@RichardDockett1 #syfy #fiction .@rararesources

Richard Dee is a sci-fi and streampunk writer, and WWBB has been lucky enough to pin him down for an interview about himself and his book:  Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café.

So, without further ado, grab a coffee, relax and read on…

Writers always have unfinished files, handwritten or typescripts hidden somewhere (usually under beds!) How many unpublished books do you have tucked away?

Last time I looked under my bed, there were three completed novels, about five halfway written and a bunch of short stories. There were also some socks, a lot of dust and fluff and a suitcase with a broken handle.

What’s your least favourite part of the writing process?
The bit in the middle, when the story is still developing as you write it. At this point, I’m never sure if it will just fizzle out and become a short story or go on to be the start of a series.

I think most writers can relate to that! So, how long does take you to write a novel?
It took me thirty years to write the first one! I wrote the short story that became Freefall in 1979 and completed it in 2012. I guess you could say that life got in the way. I have speeded up a little since then. Now, I write 2 or 3,000 words a day, so a first draft will take…, hang on while I get my socks off. Longer probably, because I’m always jumping around from project to project.

Seriously, about four months. Andorra Pett was my fifth novel of seven so far and a bit of a departure, the others are Space Opera (Freefall, Myra, Ribbonworld and Jungle Green) and Steampunk (The Rocks of Aserol and A New Life in Ventis).

Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café is the start of what I hope will be a series, Andorra has grown on me as a character and I can see her having lots of adventures.

How do you juggle a writing schedule?

I’ve retired from my ‘proper’ job, but I had to get up early for it and it became a habit. I still get up early and write for an hour or so, then my wife and I have the rest of the day to do what we want. I might do a bit more in the evening. I carry a notebook so if I see or hear an interesting situation during the day I can jot it down for future reference. But you must be careful, being spotted can be embarrassing!

Who do you aspire to be like as an author?

I grew up reading Isaac Asimov, Rad Bradbury and Phillip K. Dick. They had a gift, a way of describing a universe in three sentences. I’m not a big fan of pages and pages of flowery description; I’d rather get straight to the action and keep it coming. I try and give the reader a reason to turn over on every page.

Do you set yourself goals when you sit down to write such as word count?

I just want to know what happens next, my writing process is like watching a film in my head and typing what I see. I can rewind, pause and slow it down but I can’t fast forward. Every time I start I must keep going until I get to a good bit. Sometimes that can be after 1,000 words, sometimes 5,000.

When did you first call yourself a writer? 

When I used my first royalties to buy myself a celebratory drink. I think that once you’ve sold a book to someone you don’t know and spent the money you can call yourself a writer.

Abso-bloody-lutely When people ask, ‘what do you do for a living’ do you tell them you’re a writer or do you buckle and say something else?

Now that I’ve retired from my real job, I introduce myself as a writer at every opportunity. After all, it’s how I pass my time, I might not make a fortune, but I do have an income from it.

Do you have a critique/editor partner?

I have a team of wonderful beta readers scattered around the globe. They get a first look at all my work and I really value the fact that they are prepared to tell me if they think that its rubbish. And they do sometimes! Which also saves me from bad reviews.

What’s your talent for writing this book?

I can write female characters thanks to my wife and three daughters, who taught me so much about the way that the female mind works. I like to think that there’s a little of each of them in my books, strong, loyal women who are resourceful and clever, as well as being beautiful.

Why did you write Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café? 

My wife was reading a book about someone who moved to the country and opened a café on a beach and the story involved lost love and new beginnings.

She challenged me to write something similar but in a sci-fi setting, and never one for refusing a challenge, I got stuck it. I wrote it as a short story first, but then my editor encouraged me to develop it, and the rest is history.

Tell us about Andorra Pett, what’s her story?

It features a reluctant amateur detective called Andorra Pett.

Written through her eyes, it’s a story of new beginnings in strange surroundings. She just wants a quiet life, but events conspire against her, as they so often do. As well as dealing with her new life, running a café on a space station and all that entails, there’s a mystery for her to solve. In the process, she discovers a lot about herself and the people around her. Mostly she finds that she’s quite clever, which is a surprise to her.

There’s a lot of friendship, some new romance and a murderer to catch.

But basically, Andorra is a fish out of water, a stranger in a strange land. It’s all about how she learns to thrive.

 I’ve done my best to make the characters familiar, I’ve just placed them in a different setting. I now have ideas for another three sequels to Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café. The first of them, Andorra Pett on Mars, will be published in April 2018.

It has a mixture of themes, doesn’t it?

Well, I gave the tale a crime element as I thought that a space station would be the perfect place for a mystery—especially as it was all a mystery to Andorra! It could also be called a comedy, although there is plenty of drama in it, nothing too heavy or explicit.

Mainly, I want it to be perceived as light-hearted entertainment hence the cartoon cover. I’ve tried to make it a story that’s suitable for all ages, from teen upwards.

Give me the first, middle and end line in Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café

1. “Is that it?”
2. I opened the book, expecting chapter and verse on one man’s rampage through the female inhabitants of the station.
3. Cy smiled, he had that look of contentment. “Mind your own!”

Does Andorra change or learn by the end of the book?

As the story opens, Andorra is running from a bad relationship. She thinks that it was all her fault and that what she needs is to get away. So far so normal. Then I added the sci-fi twist by setting the tale in the future and letting her run to the edge of the solar system. She arrives on the space station intending to have a quiet life, events conspire to make sure that it’s anything but.

As the story unfolds she learns a lot about herself and changes her opinion. Her friend Cy, who has stuck with her, always knew that she was so much more than she realised. Wisely, he lets her find out for herself. 

As I said before, I don’t plot my novels in advance. I had to write the book to find out who the villain was. Right up to the end, it could have been one of several. When I found out, it was as much of a shock to me as I hope it will be to the reader. And the way they were unmasked proved to Andorra that she was as clever as other’s thought she was.

Who would be your dream cast if Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café was made into a movie?

Someone like Miranda Hart’s sidekick Stevie (a character in the BBC TV show Miranda) would be a perfect Andorra. In case you’re not sure who I mean, Stevie is played to perfection by the excellent Sarah Hadland (if you’re reading this Sarah, tell your agent immediately!).

Sounds like Miranda Hart could play Andorra!

A sexier and younger version of her maybe!

You mentioned Andorra’s wingman, Cy. Who’d play him?

Ah, the late Alan Rickman would have been the perfect foil for her as Cy, with his dry wit and superb comic timing.

What about the villains in the book? All books need a baddie!

Indeed they do! I need a villain who isn’t on the face of it, but has a sort of undercurrent. The person who’d play them needs to be outwardly normal but with a mysterious side, which could be good or bad. Helena Bonham Carter or Matthew Macfadyen would be a possible fit. Would they audition, do you think?

If Andorra was one of your friends, what advice would you give her?

You can do whatever you want, as long as you try hard you will never fail

Good advice, and would she make the cut as a bestie?

Definitely, she’s loyal, amusing and actually very smart. She also has a talent for putting herself down and breaking things in an embarrassing way. I’d have to check with the wife first though.

Hit me with the most shocking one-liner from Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café?

Possibly… ‘My God, he was hoping to shag his way out of this!’

Introducing...

Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café

Meet Andorra Pett; with her trusty sidekick, she’s taken over a derelict café. On a mining station. It just happens to be orbiting Saturn!

She’s hoping for a fresh start, away from all the drama of her old life. It’s a chance to relax and start again in a place where nobody knows anything about her or her past.

Buy NOW!

But the café holds a secret, and secrets have a habit of coming out; whether you want them to or not. And being accident prone doesn’t help. The more you try to pretend that you know what’s going on, the worse it gets.

Andorra’s plans for peace and quiet get lost amid the revelations and skulduggery and she soon realises that the fate of the whole station lies in her hapless hands.
In space, you can still trip over your feet; the question is, will you land upright?

For more from Richard check out:

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About Richard Dee:
A native of Brixham in Devon, Richard Dee's family left Devon when he was in his teens and settled in Kent. Leaving school at 16 he briefly worked in a supermarket, then went to sea and travelled the world in the Merchant Navy, qualifying as a Master Mariner in 1986. Coming ashore to be with his growing family, he used his sea-going knowledge in several jobs, including Marine Insurance Surveyor and Dockmaster at Tilbury, before becoming a Port Control Officer in Sheerness and then at the Thames Barrier in Woolwich.

In 1994 he was head-hunted and offered a job as a Thames Estuary Pilot. In 1999 he transferred to the Thames River Pilots, where he regularly took vessels of all sizes through the Thames Barrier and upriver as far as H.M.S. Belfast and through Tower Bridge.

In all, he piloted over 3,500 vessels in a 22-year career with the Port of London Authority. Richard was offered part time working in 2010, which allowed him to return to live in Brixham, where he took up writing and blogging.

He retired in 2015, when he set up and ran a successful Organic bakery, supplying local shops and cafés. The urge to write eventually overtook the urge to bake but Richard still makes bread for friends and family. Richard is married with three adult children and two grandchildren.

Click for an excerpt below:

A disgraced aristocrat, distant planets and a new identity - Zara by .@MarkHenwick #free #scifi #serial

Zara - A Name Among The Stars

by

Mark Henwick

Your family’s been murdered, the estates illegally confiscated, and they’ve turned it around so people think you’re the criminal. The warrant for your arrest is a fiction, and you face a stone cold certainty you’d never make it to the prison cell alive.

To get off the planet, you forge a new identity and take the first job you might be qualified for.

You didn’t expect what happens next. To fall in love with everything about your new role – everything – including a man who can’t possibly respond. And then to find that the same conspiracy that destroyed your family is intent on destroying his as well, using you as a weakness in his defences.

Run away? Stay and fight, knowing that even victory will leave you alone again?

Read the  first two episodes for FREE!

You are nothing without me. Nothing! It will serve you best to remember that.

My grandfather shouting, looming over me. Terrifying man, utterly terrifying. Strong and confident adults were afraid of him, let alone a fifteen-year-old slip of a girl as I was at the time. Those wild eyebrows over the cold, piercing eyes. That cruel mouth, and the voice that issued from it; born to command. The way he carried tension in his body, as if it could break out into violence at any second.

…remember that.

I remember. He’d spoken those words standing in front of the panoramic window in his study.

That window looked over the formal manor gardens, past the ornamental lake and down into the stretching crop fields below. There were misty woods in the far distance. No inch of ground that he saw from that window was not under his ownership. The manor itself bore his Name.

You are nothing…

Quivering in fear, I had stubbornly refused to believe it then.

The arrogance of untried youth. I’d put a lot of faith in the weight of history that lay on the manor and estates. Even later, as I began to see the troubles that he’d long known, I refused to believe.

Nothing!

The weight of history, I’d thought, though I’d not dared to say it aloud.

But history has no weight, and forms no shield. History is simply a long time to collect enemies.

…without me.

And I am without him now. He is dead, murdered by exactly the enemies he warned me about, not six years after that lecture in his study.

The large counter at the front of the room clicks loudly. Everyone’s eyes jerk up, even though we know the number displayed is one more than the last number, and we all know what number we hold in our sweaty hands.

The last woman who’d entered the office at the front hadn’t come back. She’d gone out another way, gone through. They’d let her through.

As a distraction, I try to call her to mind. Young, tall, thin, short blonde hair, serious look. Nervous, but then all of us are. Who is she? A student perhaps, hoping to join some distant university off-world? A course unavailable here?

I don’t know. All I really know about her is she has been let through; that she’s getting off this planet.

Would I trade places with her? Without even knowing who she is and where she’s going?

She didn’t look stupid; she wouldn’t trade with me, even if it were possible, not for all my ‘privileges’ and ‘history’.

And neither would I trade with her.

Fool! Arrogant imbecile! Your pride will slow you, and then the hounds will drag you down into the dirt where you will die. I imagine my grandfather’s anger at my refusal to trade places with the student, spitting out the kind of hunting metaphor he always used.

In a strange way, it is comforting to imagine him still here, still angry at me.

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