abgayle

This was the first story I ever wrote. I conceived the idea while atending the 2009 Australian Romance Readers Associaton and jotted down the premise on the back of one of the handouts.It was originally entitled "Beauty, the Beast and the Betrayer" and as such was a finalist in the RWA STALI competition.As I wrote the story, I used to print it out chapter by chapter and give it to a lady I worked for. She had just been diagnosed as having secondary cancer and was happy to have something to distract her. It was great seeing her reactions to the story as it progressed and how her reactions to the hero changed.Throughout I wanted to make my story real. At every stage I said to myself if this really happened, what would the next step be. Once you get away from pure speculative fiction, it's amazing how many mundane details have to be considered. Set a scifi 1000 years into the future and anything can happen, but put it into the here and now, and the story changes. Who would get picked. What would they take. The whole concept fascinated me.Once the story was finished, it sat in my drawer while I wondered if it was good enough to be published. I subbed it to one large ebook publishing house without success.Then I saw that Total Ebound had a submission call for science fiction romance. So off it went and was accepted. They felt there were a few problems plotwise (which I had already noted) and their suggestion (start the story earlier) paid off. I wrote one new chapter and what I did have as the beginning got rewritten and appears much later! So thanks Stacey and all the crew at TEB!As for inspiration? I have a friend with a lower leg prosthetic who is determined not to let that get in the way of living life to the fullest. I'm also intimately acquainted with people sitting isolated (supposedly) in their rooms to play computer games. Mind you that's how my daughter met her current boyfriend four years ago, by playing Guild Wars together.I've already written the first chapter of the sequel "Nature" which can be found on my website here: http://www.abgayle.com/wip---nature.html Our heroes will finally reach their destination and discover who and what the Saa'ar really are.