Ask the Author: Skylar Ray Foxx
Answered Questions (3)
Skylar Ray Foxx
I have been focusing on publishing The Adjacent Probable (TAP) as an Indie Author. I think a lot about the next book in the series in my spare time. Writing has been a hobby, and TAP has been quite the journey. It took 11 years for the story to incubate in my mind! I don't think it'll take that long for the next book(s). We'll see!
Skylar Ray Foxx
Creative ideas occur to me all the time. When I get excited about a particular idea, I daydream about it. I write notes in my journal and play with how I might develop the idea more. I find books on technical subjects related to the concept and read those. I often participate in NaNoWriMo if work and life allow it. As such, I have written half a dozen books - not good enough to publish by my standards. The Adjacent Probable is my first published novel, and it is one of many ideas I have had. But it rose to the top of the list because it was the "loudest" in my mind. I also worried that some of the technology would become a reality sooner. So much progress has been made since I first had some of these ideas over ten years ago. Beyond that, it was a matter of "getting going."
Skylar Ray Foxx
The main ideas for Dr. Ramsey's "procedure" came to me in two parts. First, a brain swap came back in 2011 when I was thinking about ways one could cheat death from cancer or some other fatal disease. That turned into a foray into all kinds of ethical questions. For example, one question was under what circumstances would it be morally okay to transfer a brain to a clone? Another was how one could do it all under the radar. Initially, the story's conflict was going to center on the ethics of the procedure after the hero gets a "do-over" of her childhood. But then I fell in love with making it a thriller. That was challenging because all I could come up with for the bad guy was a cliché mobster. I put the idea on the shelf, and life went on. Over the years, for entirely unrelated reasons, I decided to re-read some of the classic dystopian novels such as Brave New World, Animal Farm, 1984, etc., and the idea of the mobster was replaced with a corrupted government leader. The technical notion of a neuro-digital interface with an AI system also came to me as I read an introductory book on neurology (for fun) while reading up on machine learning (for work). All these ideas solidified in my random daydreams as I walked to my car from work, stood in grocery lines, or watched the kids practice sports between 2019-2021.
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