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I used to think I was weird for not doing a
lot of written research and planning before writing, but the more author
interviews I read, the more I realize there are lots of people out there who
write just like me. And there are many more who write in a way I find
completely alien. I guess it’s just to each her own.
For me a story starts as one little
mini-scene or image. It could be a picture of a girl standing in a long hallway
alone. It could be a scrap of dialogue between two people—I don’t even know who
they are yet. But I just keep coming back to that image or that one line, and I
let it percolate for a week or so. By the end of that week, I usually have an
idea who this character is. I may not have an idea of what exactly is going on,
but I start with characters first and that comes later. I once saw a quote
about how writing is the one job where, when you’re staring off into space, you
actually are working. That’s very true for me. I used to think I was wasting
time, that I should just sit down and start writing, but I’ve accepted that
that’s not the way my brain works.
In Unsecure Connection, my newly released
cyberpunk romance novella, the first scene I wrote ended up somewhere in
Chapter Three, I believe. It’s the scene in which my hero and heroine have
their first real conversation. I had this idea that there was a male character
who was a bounty hunter, and the female character knew he was hunting her, but
she was drawn to him anyway. And I wrote a conversation about that. The novella
was built around that.
As far as research goes, I did a little bit
of tech-based research. I do work in technology, so I’m familiar with a lot of
the terminology. I didn’t always use the same terminology in the book, since
it’s set in the far future. But I wanted the characters to say things that were
similar enough to the real-life language and terms that they rang true. I
wasn’t about to necessarily plan out all my worldbuilding (how exactly my
characters’ virtual reality verson of the internet works, for example) in-depth
because it wasn’t a novel. There are things we don’t need to know for this
story to work.
The one funny research story I do have has
to do with where my story is set. It’s in Tarrytown, in the “Manhattan sprawl.”
And throughout the reading and editing process I kept having people tell me
Tarrytown isn’t in New York City. And I kept saying, “I know! I grew up in New
York State!” The thing is, in this version of the future, New York City has
expanded quite a ways up the Hudson River and engulfed some of the smaller
towns and cities to the north. So I really did mean the story to be set both in
Tarrytown and in New York City at the same time.
Alanna Blackett
writes science fiction and fantasy with a side dish of romance. Growing up, it
annoyed her that she always had to be Princess Leia when they played Star Wars,
because there weren’t any other female characters. She would much rather have been
Han Solo or Indiana Jones. She immediately set out to fix that through her
writing. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and two cats, and has a
weakness for video games, NBA basketball, and books about chicks who blow stuff
up.
Twitter:
@AlannaBlackett
Blurb:
Riley is one of the best hackers around. She’s always kept her online
identity separate from her real life… mostly because she doesn’t have much of a
real life. But someone is stalking her through the network. Someone who knows
about the big job she just pulled off and won’t stop till he finds out who she
is.
Two years ago, CJ was a hacker at the top of his game, until he got
caught. Now the prisoner of a ruthless corporation, he is forced to hunt down
his former friends and colleagues. He finds himself irresistibly drawn to the
woman he knows only by her alias, Samantha, as he traces her from virtual
nightclubs to the dark streets of the Manhattan sprawl.
But when Riley and CJ’s relationship crosses over into real life,
things get dangerous.
Riley pulled away, searching his face. His
eyes were strange and distant. He paused, biting down on his lower lip as his
hands gripped the bottom of her tank top. It was almost as if he was at war
with himself over whether to yank it up and bury his face in her breasts,
or....
And then she recognized the look on his
face: longing. For what? Why? It didn’t make sense. She was right here; he
could—
Words and numbers began to spill down the
side of her vision.
Riley’s awareness snapped back. Oh no.... No way. He was
tracing her address. Her real-life location.
His gleaming black eyes fixed on hers, and
his lip curled up. “Gotcha,” she
heard his smug voice say as the room
dissolved in a haze of tiny colored spots.
She pushed the floor-length window up with
both hands and vaulted over the safety railing onto the ancient fire escape. It
creaked under her feet, slanting alarmingly. She grabbed the central pole and
hung on. For a long moment, it seemed like the world spun and tilted around
her.
She was up. High up. She closed her eyes,
her pulse fluttering in her temples. Her hands were clammy and drops of sweat
pricked her neck. She sucked in a long breath. The cold air, a shock to her
lungs, knocked her back into rational thought.
The fire escape, it seemed, had decided not
to collapse under its own age and weight, after all. Riley opened her eyes.
She had no more than ten minutes, and only
one way to go.
