Darklight On... Shannah Jay: Living All Over the Universe

I’ve been reading fantasy novels since I was fifteen and I think they’ve greatly influenced the way I think - and live - as well as making me want to write them myself.

I grew used to looking down at the Earth, and seeing it as a whole planet, rather than huddling in one small country and seeing only that.

Asimov got me quite used to robots and why I can’t yet have one to do the housework, I do not understand!

C J Cherryh made me think about how our society is structured and I suspect she’s right. We’d be better with an Assassins’ Guild, which would allow the wealthy people who start wars to fight and kill each other one at a time, and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives.

So when my husband suggested we emigrate to Australia, it didn’t seem very far to go and I happily moved down under.

Mind you, I changed my mind about distance on the loooong flight out here - and still moan about it on every trip to and fro. Why haven’t they invented a gadget you just walk through and come out where you need to go? Instant travel has been around in the fantasy and science fiction universe for a long time.

A few years ago, after living in Australia for a few decades, my husband suggested we buy a house in the UK and spend half the year there. Great idea. Great way to live. I don’t mind hopping round the planet.

I’m waiting now for him to hear they’re selling holiday flats on the moon, or maybe on a distant planet in another solar system, and whisk me off there. I’d probably go.

Seriously, though, I really do think reading fantasy broadens your view of your own world and the universe, and allows your imagination to fly free as no other genre does. Which is why I love writing and reading it.

If you’d like to visit the planet I’ve created, which features in The Chronicles of Tenebrak, you can try the first chapters out on my website at:   http://www.annajacobs.com/science-fiction.aspx

 

 

To buy the series as ebooks visit Amazon, Smashwords or my website (Quest, Lands of Nowhere, Shadow of the Serpent, Price of Wisdom). If you’d like to experience a very different and rather sneaky way of forcing two warring countries to make peace with one another, try ‘Envoy’. It has a great romance in it, too. If you want a classic Sword and Sorcery tale, of the sort that first got the fantasy genre moving, try my ‘Sword of Azaray’.

Now, where am I going to travel in the universe next? I have this new story looking for a home . . .