Roxanne Rhoads: Interview and Giveaway c3 by Sherrie Cronin

1. What inspired you to become an author?

I used to make up bedtime stories for my little sister. She was not only nice enough to beg me for more, she’s stayed nice enough to still be one of my best beta readers All my life characters have marched their way through my head, having all sorts of adventures and interactions while I waited at traffic lights or took a shower. It was more a matter of deciding that I really had to start writing this stuff down, which I started to do in 2010.

2. Do you have a specific writing style?

I really enjoy telling stories from multiple points of view, and of course I like reading books by others that do the same. I understand that not every reader appreciates this technique, and I work to keep my transitions clear and easy to follow.

3. Do you write in different genres?

I write novels that are a hybrid of contemporary fantasy and science fiction, and they fall in a sub-genre called magical realism. The world in my books should look a lot like the world you live in, but with occasional odd twists. In my case, they always involve various superpowers, so I guess you could say I write superhero books too. I’m also a fan of crime fiction, and I see a few whodunits in my future.

4. What is your current “work in progress” or upcoming projects?

I am working on this collection of six novels called 46. Ascending. Each book is the stand alone story of one member of a family as he or she discovers an extraordinary power to turn to when circumstances force them to dig deep.

The first book, x0, concerns telepathic Lola as she finds herself the unlikely hero in a rescue mission in Nigeria. The second book, y1, tells of her son Zane, who has always had an odd ability to alter his appearance. My third book, z2, is about an athlete who can warp time. c3, of course, is the subject of this blog tour.

I hope to finish the fifth book, d4, this summer. It will tell the story of the middle child in the family, a young woman named Ariel who can see the future. I am very excited about getting to finally start the sixth and last novel next fall, in which all five family members will use their powers to work together.

I can’t imagine that I will ever stop writing fiction, but I can’t say exactly what will be next after these six. I have a lot of ideas.

5. How did you come up with the title for your latest book?

I’m married to a math teacher and work as a geophysicist, so all of the titles in this collection grew out of a love of math. I wanted to name my first book “One” but as you might guess this is a title that has been used often. So I decided to get a little more creative and use x raised to the power of zero (written x⁰) because it is a mathematical expression for the number one. Because the book x⁰ celebrates the ways we are alike, and the second book celebrates the ways that we are different, I went with y raised to the power of one (written y¹) for my second title because y¹ is always itself.

Once I got started, I just kept going. My third book, z², is about time and cause and effect and the outcomes from our decisions and z² fits. My fourth novel uses the concept light radiating out from a point, which is described by the title c³perfectly. The fifth and six novels will have similar names.

I know this is a geeky approach, but to be honest, my books are geeky, speculative fiction books. My biggest problem is that superscripts are hard to do in so many places. I can’t get them on my own blog (where my books consistently show up as x0, y1, z2 and c3) or at Amazon or Goodreads, where they show up the same.

6. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

There are a few of them. I’m a pretty idealistic writer and I genuinely want my books to make the world a little better. At the core, my books are about how much we humans have in common and how important it is to treat each other with kindness and respect. It’s not a unique or surprising message, but I don’t know a more important one.

7. What books/authors have influenced your life?

Two authors affected me a lot as a young girl. Madeleine L'Engle and her “A Wrinkle in Time” hadn’t been out all that long when I first read it and I thought it was greatest thing ever. The other author, Jane Langton, wrote a book called “The Diamond in the Window” and I obsessed over that book in grade school. Both authors shaped my young view of the world and convinced me that there was real magic tucked in-between and all around the layers of ordinary reality.

8. What book are you reading now?

I can’t read other people’s long fiction while I write. I’m addicted to Daily Science Fiction’s flash stories, which handle my love of reading without taking over my momentum and my voice. I also like to read about subject matter that touches what I am writing about. When I was writing c³, I read “Half the Sky” by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It tells inspirational stories about the many women and men fighting for women’s rights everywhere. It’s an incredible book. At the moment I’m reading “This Cold Heaven” about Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich and “The Indomitable Investor” by Steven Sears. They both pertain to the plot of d⁴.

9. What books are in your to read pile?

As soon as I finish the sixth book in this collection I plan to dive into my TBR pile and enjoy. Top of the list right now is China Mieville’s “The City and the City”, Connie Willis’ “To Say Nothing of the Dog” and Charles Yu’s “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe”. I do like quirky speculative fiction.

10. Do you have a song or playlist (book soundtrack) that you think represents this book?

I do. My main character Teddie loves country music and I’ve selected nine country songs that reflect her changing frame of mind as her story unfolds. The songs, and links to live video recordings of them, are on my website.

46. Ascending

Sherrie Cronin

Genre: Fantasy, contemporary, metaphysical

Publisher: Cinnabar Press

ISBN: 9781941283035

ISBN: 9781941283233

ASIN: B00I58T5FU

Number of pages: 405

Word Count: 135,000

Cover Artist: Jennifer FitzGerald

Book Description:

Teddie likes her country music and her old pick-up truck and she's not sure how she let her best friend talk her into spending a semester abroad in Darjeeling India. Once she arrives, her innocence quickly collides with an underworld in which young women are bartered and sold. As she fights to understand a depravity that she never dreamed existed, Teddie finds that her own mind develops a unique ability for locating her friends and that an ancient group is willing to train her to use her innate skills for out of body experiences to save others.

It will require trust in ideas she barely believes, and more courage than has ever been expected of her. When it becomes clear that the alternative may be her friends' deaths and the unchecked growth of an evil crime lord's empire, Teddie accepts the challenge and shows those guilty of unspeakable crimes just how powerful a young woman can be.

Available at Amazon, and out in paperback June 10, 2014.

Note: this is a collection, not a series. The books can be read in any order

About the Author:

Sherrie Roth grew up in Western Kansas thinking that there was no place in the universe more fascinating than outer space. After her mother vetoed astronaut as a career ambition, she went on to study journalism and physics in hopes of becoming a science writer. She published her first science fiction short story long ago, and then waited a lot of tables while she looked for inspiration for the next story. When it finally came, it declared to her that it had to be whole book, nothing less. One night, while digesting this disturbing piece of news, she drank way too many shots of ouzo with her boyfriend. She woke up thirty-one years later demanding to know what was going on.

The boyfriend, who she had apparently long since married, asked her to calm down and explained that in a fit of practicality she had gone back to school and gotten a degree in geophysics and had spent the last 28 years interpreting seismic data in the oil industry. The good news, according to Mr. Cronin, was that she had found it at least mildly entertaining and ridiculously well-paying The bad news was that the two of them had still managed to spend almost all of the money.

Apparently she was now Mrs. Cronin, and the further good news was that they had produced three wonderful children whom they loved dearly, even though to be honest that is where a lot of the money had gone. Even better news was that Mr. Cronin turned out to be a warm-hearted, encouraging sort who was happy to see her awake and ready to write. "It's about time," were his exact words.

Sherrie Cronin discovered that over the ensuing decades Sally Ride had already managed to become the first woman in space and apparently had done a fine job of it. No one, however, had written the book that had been in Sherrie's head for decades. The only problem was, the book informed her sternly that it had now grown into a collection of six books. Sherrie decided that she better start writing it before it got any longer. She's been wide awake ever since, and writing away.

Twitter: @cinnabar01

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Number46Ascending

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5805814.Sherrie_Cronin

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sherrie-Cronin/e/B007FRMO9Q

Blogs:

x0: http://tothepowerofzero.org/

y1: http://ytothepowerof1.org/

z2: http://zsquaredblog.org/

c3: http://ctothepowerofthree.org/

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