Wars have happened throughout human history. They’re usually the result of one country invading another – much as is happening in Europe at the moment. Russia has invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainians are resisting. But sometimes wars can start over si...

The very first book I ever wrote was published way back in 2010. I’ve written quite a few books since then, but The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy was my first book baby, the one where I learned many hard lessons about the craft of writing. It wasn’t my f...

The idea for An Unexpected Sunturn began with Christmas dinner. Many cultures have celebrations that bring light into the darkest part of the year. Christmas falls close to the northern winter solstice, Hanukkah features the lighting of candles, and...

Fireglass grew out of one of those “what if?” questions I love. What if life doesn’t always depend on carbon and water? For a long time, humans have searched for life using those assumptions. We look for planets in the right zone around a star and w...

If you’ve read The Thunder Egg, you’ll know that the egg in question contains something rather more interesting than a collection of minerals. But thunder eggs themselves are real. My husband and I bought one during a visit to Mt Hay Gemstone Touris...

How stories arrive in an author’s brain and how they evolve is a fascinating process. Someone read my short story, Ink, and asked me this. “Ink is so fully realized for so short a story. Which came first? This or the novel? Did you always know why t...

When I first started throwing around ideas for my new Ptorix Empire book, I knew quite a bit about the leading man. Tall, handsome, an admiral. A promising start. 🙂 Konrad Valperez had already appeared in The Iron Admiral: Deception, where he took a...

I write mainly space opera. So you might be forgiven for raising an incredulous eyebrow when I talk about writing what I know. I guess you guys all know I write mainly space opera. So you might be forgiven for raising an incredulous eyebrow (maybe e...

I write space opera because I find astronomy and cosmology fascinating. How was our planet created? How did the solar system come to be? How did the universe start? I’m not special in that respect. Humans have looked at the stars and asked questions...