Enchanted Orb: Imogene Nix

Welcome to the Enchanted Orb - a look at the inspiration behind the DarkSider's tales.

Our guest today is Imogene Nix. Take it away, Imogene!

Inspiration

Welcome to my run at the Enchanted Orb with the Dark Siders. It is a real thrill to be here (and among some seriously huge names), as I have just celebrated the release of my first novel, Starline, a SciFi Romance, I kind of on a bit of a high.

Where do you start? Well, that is the question, kind of, isn’t it? What brought me to this time and place in space? By that, I mean writing romance with a science fiction bend? I have been a romance reader since my teens. I was one of those kids with a secret addiction of Mills and Boon (yes, I too used to steal my mother’s – but don’t tell my youngest daughter because she tries to do that now!), New Idea with the serialized books (Janet Dailey was right up there for me), not to mention my local travelling library. Gosh, that just about says it all, doesn’t it? But how do you make the jump from a good Mills and Boon interspersed with frequent helpings of Barbara Cartland and Janet Dailey to writing Science Fiction? Blame Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony and others of the same ilk for that one, I’m afraid. Add to that a true love of romance (sorry, can’t hide that no matter how hard I might have tried in the past. Now it is no longer an issue!)

My inspiration didn’t stop there, though. Making the leap from sweet romance to science fiction needs a little more help, so along the way I picked up Alexander Kent’s Richard Bolitho series (and yes I am still collecting them as he continues to release the titles in this series), which gave me a grounding into naval life. You need that to understand lots of the talk about intelligence and command structures and I just soak those up. (Well that is what I tell my husband anyway!)

It certainly wouldn’t have been complete without the help of Star Trek (sorry, not the original or even Next Generation – though I did enjoy it on a purely visual basis). Voyager opened up the completely strong female leader thing for me, and Seven of Nine helped along that path as well (sorry Ba’Lana but I found you harder to take to – could have been the little Miss Turtle Head thing). Throw in the likes of Firefly, Farscape and even the works of Linnea Sinclair and you get a bit of a broader idea of how I got here. There is something though about standing under a dark moon, and watching the stars twinkle. You wonder what it would be like to travel to far distant planets and be the first to walk on the surface as a human. Exploration bubbles in my blood, keeping me alive and young.

That wasn’t the end of it. Not by a long shot. After I discovered Anne McCaffrey and Linnea Sinclair, I started looking around. But no matter how hard I scoured, I hate to say it, but good Science Fiction romance is still very thin on the ground (well for that matter, so is Bad Science Fiction Romance Lol!). I struggled to find books in that vein that were enjoyable and not a “boys own” with a smattering of romance thrown in, or a good romance, that just happens to have SciFi concepts.

Naturally then, I decided my first book would have to be a SciFi romance. Once again, it kind of harks back to my daytime job. I sell books. For a living J But I just don’t see a lot of SciFi romance coming along. Not that this is my main reason for writing it, but it just is such an empty category.

Anyway, I also don’t mind the odd bit of blood and gore…oh and intimate moments too. Not that I am a voyeur, but there is something in those moments where two people find the ultimate connection. I do not mind some of the encounters. Nothing wrong with a bit of spice in your life. Mind you, I was as surprised as all heck when I got classified as erotica. Me? Writing erotic fiction? Wow! That rather astounded me.

My addiction to romance though, took a major turn in 2011 when I decided the time had come to stop procrastinating and actually achieve something positive. Sure, I was one of those people who started – many times…wrote half a dozen paragraphs and never went back to writing them. Maybe it was a case of not ready, the wrong genre or one of a dozen other reasons. I really don’t know, myself. Maybe it wasn’t time and the stars needed to align properly, but many of those ideas faded like a week picked flower.

In 2011 though, I decided the time had really come to knuckle down. So I did. Between March and May I wrote. Did very little else, while the housework piled up, the kids griped and husband was extremely understanding. I wrote all hours of the day and night. I tapped away on my poor little laptop until I finished the story that was screaming in my head to escape. Oh boy…so now what I asked myself? Between May and October I kept asking myself that, but I found people I could ask, talk to when I joined the Romance Writers of Australia and haven’t looked back since. Now, what does that have to do with inspiration? For me, lots. These were people from all walks of life, finished and published, or new to the writing scene, or waiting for publishing…they were at all stages and they all had some piece of knowledge and experience to share. I soaked up the experience on those boards.

Having said all this about Science Fiction, don’t get me wrong because I also dabble in paranormal, and yes, fangs are the word du jour. Honestly, there is just something so sexy about a man with fangs, that you just want to…well, hang on, yes, this blog is PG rated after all. Lol!

Anyway, I hope that gives you an insight into my inspiration for writing, the burning desire that keeps me up until 2 am in the morning tapping on the keyboard, so that by the time I take the kids to school, I am definitely bleary eyed. Imogene Nix