Happy Blog Swap Sunday! (Note: This is not an official holiday, but rather one that I’ve made up as an excuse to convince another kickass author to share her talents with my fabulous readers while I attempt to explain my writing to hers.) I hope you’ll join me in welcoming the extremely gifted Science Fiction & Fantasy author, Moira Katson, to my little corner of the blogisphere. Also, don’t don’t forget to read on underneath her post for a chance to win one of each of our books!

And now-take it away, Moira!

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What is a Science Fiction and Fantasy author doing on A.M. Stoddard’s blog, you ask? Much the same thing that a mystery author is doing over on mine, as it happens! When discussing guest blogging, Anne had the excellent idea of talking about why we write in our specific genres. So, without any further ado…

The easiest answer to Anne’s query is this: Science Fiction and Fantasy are the story types that come into my head. I read an awful lot of genres: mysteries, some Regency romances (not a typo), historical fiction, non-fiction… But the stories that come from my fingertips are all speculative, set in times and places that have never been. And it’s been surprisingly difficult, in writing this post, to pin down why, exactly, that is.

I grew up in a rambling house full of built-in bookshelves, surrounded by yellowed paperbacks: mysteries, theological texts, Barbara Kingsolver and Bill Bryson. And then there was the SciFi and Fantasy: Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, Katherine Kurtz’s Dyreni series, every work by Madeleine L’Engle… These books showed me an escape: men and women displaying heroism they had never known they possessed. The protagonists of these tales had nothing, lost everything they held dear, and were able to continue onwards. Trite? Perhaps. If you’re picturing a little nerd with her nose in a book, dreaming of dragons, you’re not far from the mark.

What really got me, though, was that these characters’ lives truly meant something. These stories most clearly showed me how a wider world that could be changed by the actions of one person. They courted the overlap between character-based dramas and sprawling epics. There was a sense of a larger pattern, a world that could be altered by every choice. There was consequence and greatness all wrapped up with the personal joys and betrayals of the heroes. These were the big-kid versions of fairytales, in which the villains might be less than totally evil and the heroes not quite purely good.

In these stories, I found a paradox: if we strip away every familiar, “natural” aspect of our world and plunge human characters into an environment that is new and unfamiliar to the reader, we will what it is to be human. We think we know what we are when we have air to breath and the sound of passing cars and human voices, but what are we when we strip that away and plunge into the silent black of space? Who are we, when faced with predators we cannot possibly outmatch?

You might think from this that I never read or write happy things, but I promise you that is not true! Fantasy and SciFi have a healthy dose of humor thrown in, and in fact, the humor is not unlike that found in mysteries: dark and sarcastic! It’s worth saying that Anne has a much better grasp of this than I do; I’m still working on getting more humor into my books. In the meantime I am continuing to spin worlds out of blank pages- and I’m having a great time!

Thanks for reading! Since Fantasy and Scifi may not be your thing, I’ve included a list of some of my favorite books to help you dabble your toes in the genre:

For light and funny:
Alanna by Tamora Pierce
The Assassin’s Curse by Cassandra Rose Clarke
Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones

For classics:
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The Dyreni series by Katherine Kurtz
The Keltiad by Patricia Kennealy Morrison

For epics with vivid imagery:
Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (I know, we’ve all heard of it, and it looks incredibly long and insane - but it’s a very interesting read! And you can likely find a used copy for $1 somewhere)

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Check out Moira Katson’s Light & Shadow Triology (I’m reading Shadowborn later this month!) and more on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, or her website.

Simply leave a comment in the comments section below for a chance to win! I’ll select a winner using Random.org on Monday, July 22nd and announce him/her in this post and on my social media accounts! (No purchase necessary, must be 18 years or older to win. Winner grants permission for his or her name to be used on A.M.Stoddard Books’ social media accounts and website for promotion of this sweepstakes.)