Ages when I "discovered" my favorite authors

Andre Norton 

Age 10-11 "Warlock of the Witchworld"

My oldest big brother brought home a coverless used paperback copy. My introduction to adult Fantasy. Magic as personal, unique, familial legacy, and frightening. The rest is history... 

Lois Duncan

Age 12 "A Gift of Magic"

I lost a lot of Summertime as a kid because I was always stuck in Summer School(which is also a favorite 80s movie of mine. My first film showing a pregnant teen and the storyline NOT punishing her for that). I found this book on the school library spinner rack(found so many favorites over the years on the spinner rack). The cover was a touched-up photograph of an eerie-looking pre-teen white girl. Her eyes aglow while she sat crouched in an easy chair, her fingers digging into its arms while she stared at the viewer. Behind her was another photo of a younger girl seemingly floating in shades of blue. The story was as surreal and real as a story could get about a regular girl inheriting her matriarchal line's ability to telepathy, telekinesis, and prescience.

Anne McCaffrey 

Age 20 "The Rowan"

Now in the realm of far-future SF with a psychic woman protagonist(thanks to A Gift of Magic) I started to relish reading about. This title was the first in a family drama/space opera series. The protagonist is in blue clothing and seat on a seat likened to a throne, appearing as regal as any queen. An orphan, she is considered one of the most powerful psychics in human-inhabited space. She sits straight with her ankles crossed, her arms straight with her fingertips on her seat's arms. She is flanked by a smallish(serval-size?) snow leopard-like domesticated cat. More psychic abilities and alien-implied invasions of the galaxy. The first story where the protagonist and her intended get together, she gets pregnant, and they don't immediately marry(they marry in the second book when she's pregnant with their third child). That blew my mind and I appreciated this subplot point. 

Ursula K. le Guin

Age 23(?) "Catwings Returns"

I know I read this story late in my local library, not even realizing it was a series. It had cats with bird wings born to a regular black cat mama. The cats flying through a city felt very real to me and delighted me that another writer could make a story about a cat character that could fly. Disclaimer: My first character I made up as a kid was a brown and white cat with bat wings I called Cat the Bat.😊😄 I worked as a substitute teacher at the time.

It took two years, but...[*edited*]

It's been two years and four months since I finally completed my main character alien species, the Aturan. 

For those who haven't read my short stories yet, I have two short stories that appeared in Kyanite Press: The Journal of Speculative Fiction: THE HUMAN NETWORK and CATCHING FEELS.

To make a long story short(see what I did there?), my short story series takes place in a near-future New York City where an alien species known as Aturan live among us. Most of us don't know they exist because they are natural shape-shifters or polymorphs, to use a Star Trek term, and so can look like many other alien species, including us.

In April 2018, I started work on how these aliens would appear and was bored by the regular heteronormative binary that 'plagues' other aliens in other stories. Not only did I work on figuring out that my aliens defaulted as polysexual, but I wanted to use the term omnisexual, an ElfQuest series' term, to mean that my aliens were not only sexually and romantically attracted to other sexual identities and genders among their own, but that they could be romantically and/or sexually attracted to other aliens too.

Now in September 2020, I finally completed the last four identities. If you want to see them in their technicolor glory, head on over to my Instagram page: handdrawnbycarmenjr. I also have explanations for each of the identities but purposely remained vague. I want readers to learn more as they take in the stories. 

Lastly, I can count on one hand which science fiction writers heavily influenced me into writing complex alien characters. 

The first is Andre Norton. Her explanations on how aliens viewed and explained things to the humans in her novels and short fiction is nothing short of amazing. 

The next is Anne McCaffrey. She shows that aliens can often get along with humans and have their own senses of humor.

The next is C.J. Cherryh. I can't begin to tell you how often I read her stories over and over just to get a sense of her physical descriptions and biological explanations of aliens, their societies and even their history. Just the way they interact with humans and view things is something I rarely saw in most of the scifi I read.

And last is Octavia Butler. Yes, her aliens invading and changing humankind's destiny is nothing short of glorious. To see Black characters forging through and participating in said future is magnificent to read. And that she seamlessly weaves in racial injustice, oppression, and racism into the fabric of her hard-hitting stories is breathtaking.

Book Covers As Art Galleries - The Sequel!

About a year ago, (whoa!) I spoke about a nice memory on a favorite book. It was a science fiction trilogy that later became a series, and what struck me was its front cover.

Again, the cover is by Romas and it's with the Rowan's daughter, and not even the eldests but the youngest child. I'm the baby in my family and this story struck me harder than I thought it would. 

Look at Afra, the man in the starry background. He is the family friend and will become VERY important to events in the story. 

The red panda that sits with Damia on her throne (all the head psychics who help with communications across the galaxy have their special seats/thrones). This is very much a science fiction story with elements of the epic fantasy. 

Yes, Anne McCaffrey's books may be dated and some elements not so polite, but her books have heart, wonder, and the ability to inspire. And that's what speculative fiction should be about. 

Book covers As Art Galleries

Since I'm uploading art on this blog and will upload to my DeviantArt account later this week, I wanted to talk about how book cover art has influenced and continues to influence me to this day.

I don't wish to get into a long discussion but I will split these blog posts into a mini-series by focusing simply on ONE particular science fiction series.

'The Rowan' Anne McCaffrey (pb)

During my community college days, I 'discovered' this paperback in the college bookstore.

These were the days before college/university bookstores were still owned by their schools.

Done by the artist known simply as Romas, his full name is Romas Brandt Kukalis, he has done mostly front covers mostly in the speculative fiction field. As a very young art major, book covers became my art galleries and I not only devoured the stories but also 'ingested' the covers!

Here, what I can only assume are the hardcovers:

(Hardcover version)

(Hardcover version 2)

Dynamic, huh? Still a fan of these covers. The heroine's/shero's strength of character, her superiority/insecurity complexes, the distinction of her authority, the outfit and fashion of her time period, and her potent psychic abilities seemed to radiate from the paper.
Now, why do I speak on this?

 Well... Most of my reading material have become 'classics' and therefore, in need of updating. While I can't complain that books need re-editions and updating like everything else, I'm a little troubled by a lot of contemporary cover art. Back then, different genres had different 'looks', different aesthetics. And while things weren't perfect, and plenty of speculative fictional books were given a bad rap in poor-looking artwork, book covers that didn't tell a story, there were still gems and once you looked at enough bookshelves, you began to tell, even if the book was stuck on the wrong shelf, this was a romance, this was horror, this was a thriller, this was comedy, this was memoir, fantasy, suspense, etc. Nowadays, it seems book cover art is suffering from sameness.

(Updated cover for 'The Rowan')

Take a look at the updated cover art for The Rowan now:
Nice cover. Nice art. Sigh. But I don't feel anything, and if I didn't recognize my late favorite author's name, this would be the cover to any other genre. As an emerging author who may have books published one day, I feel kind of sad that my cover won't be distinct and unique from others. Because, as a new name, I will already have obstacles to get my titles out there, and as a lifetime reader and lover of books, a bland front cover will prove to be another obstacle.