There's a New Captain Aboard! Carol Van Natta Takes Charge of the Pets in Space® Dynasty

If you've been keeping up with Science Fiction Romance news, you're probably aware that author Carol Van Natta will be taking the helm of the wonderfully successful Pets in Space® SFR franchise for 2021 and into the future. Carol is well known in the community and among readers as an established and popular author with several wonderful sci-fi romance series.

I wanted to ask Carol a few questions about this big transition and she graciously agreed to do an interview. Read on to hear what the new PISA Captain has to say and if you have anything special you'd like to ask her regarding Pets in Space®, be sure to post them in comments. 

Carol, first of all, many congratulations and kudos on assuming the reins of the Pets in Space® dynasty. Can you talk a little more about how this all came about?

Thanks for your kind words. I'm excited and a bit intimidated at the same time. I have some very stylish shoes to fill.

The transition owes largely to serendipity and friendships. Pauline Baird Jones and Jean Walker (who writes as Veronica Scott) came up with a fabulous concept for Pets in Space®—even the name makes people smile. Add science fiction romance goodness and the excellent charity component, and it's a winner.

In the past (crazy) year, Pauline and Jean began looking for someone to take the helm, as it were, and my name came up via a mutual friend. I love the anthology, the charity, and the possibilities. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Besides, my cats insisted the world desperately needs more stories with felines. Please don't tell them about the stories with non-cat heroes.

As a writer for three of the past five volumes of Pets in Space®, what's your vision for the franchise going forward? Any surprises in store?

Pauline and Jean built a strong foundation and a devoted fan base. I've managed plenty of projects in my career, but never an anthology, so I know I have a learning curve. My plan for Pets in Space® 6 is to keep all the things readers love—favorite and new authors, brand new stories, pets, adventure, and science fiction romance.

I do have a few ideas for the future, but if I told you now, they wouldn't be surprises. 😸

Do you plan to continue with the usual involvement of 9-12 authors and the regular schedule of October releases for future Pets in Space® volumes, or will there be some "changing up" in the usual process? Do you also plan to continue to support the Hero Dogs charity with future releases?

Yes, I will be inviting 9 to 12 authors to participate in each anthology. As with the previous anthologies, some authors will be returning favorites, and some will be new. That number gives readers a nice buffet of stories to choose from without being overwhelming.

Unless the 2020 Calamity Fairy hangs around like a grumpy guest overstaying their visit, Pets in Space® 6 will release in October 2021. The October time frame has been good for the anthology. It will still be a limited edition, too, meaning it will leave the galaxy forever after a few months. It helps us maximize the donation amount for the charity, and quickly returns rights to the authors so they can do whatever they like with their stories.

And we will most definitely keep our relationship with the Hero Dogs charity for as long as they'll have us. Its mission to provide trained service dogs to disabled veterans and first-responders is a perfect match made in the stars for Pets in Space®. As a side note, I understand that you, Laurie, recommend the Hero Dogs charity and support them yourself, so kudos to you, too.

Pets in Space® 2: Embrace the Romance was the only volume ever released in a print version. Do you think any of the future collections might also be produced in a print version?

I am sentimentally fond of my only paperback copy of Pets in Space® 2, but it's a monster. Print books have a page limit, and every subsequent Pets in Space® volume has exceeded it by a goodly amount. I suppose we could print in tiny type and hand out magnifying glasses with each one, but I'm not sure how we'd package that. And the purchase price might be prohibitive, too.

All in all, I won't say "never," but I will say a future print version is unlikely. 

Is there anything else you'd like to say about your new role or the future of Pets in Space?

Please send black tea for me and cat toys to distract my felines. I have a feeling I'm going to need them.

Carol, I have a feeling you and Pets in Space® will have a long and happy voyage ahead. Many congratulations on taking the helm of this dynamic Science Fiction Romance anthology series, and thanks for chatting with us about its no-doubt bright future. 

Thanks for stopping by the Lounge today. 

______________

If you'd like to learn more about Carol Van Natta, visit her website here: Carol Van Natta

You can also follow Carol at these book-centered sites:  

Goodreads         Bookbub

If you have any thoughts or questions for Carol, 

please post them in comments below. 

StoryBundle Offer – Including Pets in Space 5 and For the Greater Good

The OUR HEROES SCI-FI BUNDLE will be available for a few more days -- then it's gone!

See it here: The Our Heroes Sci-Fi Bundle – Curated by Melissa Snark

The hero is at the core of every great story—facing fierce foes, defying death, fighting for the greater good… 

The Our Heroes Sci-Fi StoryBundle celebrates the men and women who undertake an epic journey, sacrificing so that others may be spared pain and suffering.

Our collection features a robust range of science fiction books from subgenres ranging from space opera to time travel to galactic exploration. These novels have been handpicked based on their excellent reviews, professional editing and covers, and, of course, superior storytelling—all curated especially for you, our loyal readers.

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For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. 

For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

• For the Greater Goodby Greta van der Rol
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• Star Cruise: Outbreak by Veronica Scott

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus seven more! That’s 11 books total! 

• One Two Punch by Pauline Baird Jones
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StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.

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BUILDING CHARACTER – Bringing People (And Aliens) to Life Through Words - Part 3

In Part 1of my Building Character blog posts, we discussed how a character’s unique traits will determine how they react to anything and everything in the story. I gave a list of 14 things that make a character unique. You can read that post here. In Part 2, we dove deeper into three of them: experiences, perspective, and beliefs. You can read that post here. In Part 3, let’s discuss the unique ways our characters can sense their world.  

SENSING THE WORLD

Whether on Earth, another planet, or in a spaceship, your characters will sense their worlds differently. Everyone is familiar with the five basic senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. But did you know there are other senses?  

Proprioception is the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body. Dancers and athletes can be very in tune with where their body is in space.

Intuition is the ability to know something without any proof. It’s sometimes referred to as a “gut feeling,” “instinct,” or “sixth sense.” Right-brain people seem to be more intuitive because the right brain is visual and processes information in an intuitive way. Left-brain people processes things in an analytical or logical  way.

Sometimes, people don't even perceive senses the same way most of us do. People with synesthesia (si·nuh·stee·zhuh) can see sounds as colors or associate certain sights with smells. There’s a plot bunny for you!

Other senses your animal or alien characters could have are: 

Thermoception - the sensation and perception of temperature.
Magnetoception - ability to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude or location. In the Survival Race series my telepathic aliens are sensitive to EM Fields. It scrambles their brainwaves.
Echolocation - ability to determine orientation to objects through interpretation of reflected sound (like sonar).
Electroreception - ability to detect electric fields.
Infrared Sensing - ability to sense infrared thermal radiation
Hygrorecption - ability to detect changes in the environment’s moisture content.

I’m sure you can research even more. The point is to think about your characters and make them unique in how they sense the world around them.

How do your characters see their world? Do they notice geometric shapes and patterns? Do they notice color? Do they notice light and shadow? Do they see its beauty or the ugly in it? This can also stem from their perception, which we discussed in the earlier posts. Does your character not see the world at all?

Are your characters touchy/ feely? Do they hug everyone or touch others when they talk? Are they tactile or kinesthetic learners? Kinesthetic learners need to move. They wiggle, tap, swing their legs, bounce, and can’t seem to sit still. They learn through their bodies and their sense of touch. They have excellent “physical” memory. They learn by doing. They are often gifted in physical activities like running, swimming, dancing, and other sports. They are often coordinated and have excellent proprioception.

Do your characters have a heightened sense of smell? My daughter loves fragrance, essential oils, and men’s cologne. Some people don’t. If your character has animal traits—like a werewolf or dragon does—or your character is an animal, you’ll want to be sure to incorporate their strong sense of smell into their characterization.  

Have you given thought to your character’s taste? We tend to like the foods we grew up on because we’ve grown accustomed to those flavors. For example, Americans consume a lot of sugar. Japanese don’t. Therefore Japanese candies and cookies are not as sugary and sweet as American treats. I noticed this difference on my travels to Okinawa, Japan. Okinawa donuts are not as sweet as ours. Can your characters taste things that are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, savory, or maybe they can’t taste anything at all? I lost my sense of taste and smell when I had Covid-19. It was an odd sensation, but thankfully I got it back. Some people have more tastebuds than average and are called supertasters. What kinds of foods would your alien race eat if they were supertasters? What would they eat if they had no taste buds?

How does your character hear things? Let’s take music as an example, and I’m not referring just to what is pleasing to your ear or the kind you like: classical, rock, country, heavy metal, rap, reggae, etc. Did you know people listen to music differently? I didn’t learn this until my drummer son, who is 22 now, was a teenager in high school. He loved heavy metal music and wanted me to listen to some with him. After a few minutes this was our exchange.

Me:  “These lyrics are terrible.”
Son:  “Oh, I don’t listen to the lyrics.”
Me:  “You don’t hear all this swearing?”
Son:  “No.”
Me:  (Assuming he’s fibbing because he doesn’t want to get into trouble with Mom.) “Then what are you listening to?”
Son:  “The beat.”
Me:  (Surprised) “You really don’t listen to the lyrics?”  

Nope. He wasn’t. He enjoyed the exciting rhythm of the double base drum and the snare and symbols and toms.

I’m a story teller. I love words. I love lyrics, which is why I get irritated when song lyrics don’t make sense or I can’t understand the lyrics and have to look them up and realize I’ve been singing my own mondegreen (a misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from mishearing song lyrics). So I then asked my daughter, a ballet dancer, what she hears to when listening to music. She replied, “The way the song as a whole sounds on the ear. And then I listen to the words.” It makes sense a ballet dancer would hear the melody as I believe ballet arm movements (port de bras) move with the melody. A tap dancer would be very beat oriented.

Keep in mind the best way your character would express something based on how they sense the world.

I hear what you’re saying. (Character may be an aural/ auditory learner)
I see what your saying. (Character may be a visual learner)
I know what your saying. (Character may be a logical person or shows cognitive intelligence)
I feel you. (Character may be an intuitive person or shows emotional intelligence).

Understanding how our characters sense their world allows us to write richer characters. 

Miscommunication between characters who don’t understand how their partners sense their worlds can be fun. However, be sure to help them learn to understand how their partners sense the world by the end of the story, as better communication will lead them on the path toward their happily-ever-after. 

 

K.M. FAWCETT

Romance with a rebel heart

www.kmfawcett.com

 

Where to now for The Mandalorian?

 

I think The Mandalorian is the best thing that has happened to Star Wars in several years – since Rogue One, in fact.

The Mandalorian is set in the Star Wars universe after the demise of the Empire. Removing Vader and his Emperor would have started the process but it would have taken years for the still-powerful Empire to fall completely – and even more for the New Republic to take over. Out there in the frontier regions pockets of Imperial loyalists would use what muscle they still had. We see Imperial stormtroopers in grubby white armour co-existing with bounty hunters and bandits. Law and order is sporadic and local. I can imagine this is the sort of thing that would have happened as the Roman Empire crumbled so I find that setting eminently convincing, made more so because I know what happened to the Empire in the past.

The show has been described as a spaghetti western in space and that's pretty accurate. In each new episode, the Mandalorian (a mysterious man in a mask) arrives in a new setting, looking for a way to reunite Baby Yoda with his own kind. That quest is the thread that ties the series together. Mando is usually told he can have the information he seeks if he carries out a certain task – which, of course, he does.

The Star Wars background is always there. In the first series we had a number of blasts from the past. In one of the earliest scenes in episode one Mando strides through a frontier town and we spy a creature being roasted on a spit. It's the same species as the nasty little critter we saw in Revenge of the Jedi sitting next to Jabba in his palace, enjoying Leia's torment. When Mando takes on the bounty, he is assisted by Kuiil, an Ugnaught who had been indentured to the Empire. The Ugnaughts appeared in The Empire Strikes Back in Cloud City, scavenging parts which turned out to be sections of C3P0, who had been blasted by Imperial troops. IG-11, the bounty-hunting droid, first appeared on the bridge of the star destroyer Executor in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader sent out bounty hunters to find the Millennium Falcon. And so it goes.

In the first season, we never saw a Jedi – although it was clear that Baby Yoda had the power. The characters were fresh and new, with no lingering nostalgia about the Skywalker legacy.

 

 

 Enter season two. We still have the spaghetti western vibe, with each new episode a new adventure. In the first episode, Mando returns to Tatooine to help kill a krait dragon, which looks remarkably like Dune's sand worms. You might remember the skeleton on a sand dune, in shot as we see C3PO struggling in the desert early on in A New Hope.) We meet a group of Mandalorians who don't keep their helmets on at all times. They are true Mandalorians, from the planet Mandalore who want to regain control of their planet. (That's a bit of history you'll find in the animated Clone Wars series.) They want the dark sabre, a symbol of Mandalorian kingship currently in the possession of the series villain, Moff Gideon.

In a later episode we meet Ahsoka Tano, a Jedi who had been Anakin Skywalker's padawan. And then Boba Fett reappears. It seems the legends were right – he survived being ingested by the Sarlacc (Return of the Jedi).

I loved the final episode of season two of the Mandalorian. I was on the edge of my seat several times and found the ending – frankly, quite astonishing and very convincing.

And yet…

To me, the Mandalorian is a masked stranger riding into town to right wrongs, the Lone Ranger in space. He's a tough, resourceful individual – but he doesn't have any super powers. He's not a force-wielder. I hope the producers don't go down the Skywalker path. Keep on setting fun stories in that Galaxy far, far away but don't try to resurrect the old characters as was done in Solo: A Star Wars Story. And keep the Jedi encounters to a minimum.

After that final episode, after the credits, there is a short teaser starring Boba Fett. I gather, though, that The Book of Boba Fett is a spin-off, not The Mandalorian season three. It should be fun.

And for those who like flashing light sabres, Ahsoka Tano apparently gets her own series, too, set within the timeline for The Mandalorian. Ahsoka will debut on Disney Plus around Christmas 2021. 

Disney has finally admitted there will be a Kenobi series, starring Ewan McGregor. It sounds promising.

So there'll be plenty to see in the Star Wars Universe. What The Mandalorion season three will bring is anybody's guess. There's plenty of room for more content, for instance the battle to regain control of Mandalore. And what actually happened to Moff Gideon? And why do they want Grogu's blood?..

But please, please, please - nothing resembling The Force Awakens. Please. 

And since you're here... one of my books is part of the Our Heroes story bundle. You can buy 4 full books for $5 or 11 for $15. It's great value and part of the profit goes to Hero Dogs which helps to support veterans returning to civilian life. Here's my contribution

Interested? Pop over to Story Bundle and check it out