Ask the Author: Athena Grayson
Answered Questions (3)
Athena Grayson
I have this love-hate relationship with celebrity gossip. I think it's a disturbingly accurate reflection on what we value in our society (versus what we say we value), and it both fascinates and repels me--why do we love watching "beautiful people" mess up so badly? And why does celebrity so often make people into hot messes? I wanted to explore that, and Ione (my main heroine) came to me in the form of "What if I put a 'hot mess' celeb like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan...in space?"
We like to think the scandals are a result of bad life choices or people acting out of control, but I've always suspected that even the public figures who find themselves at the end of one outrageous headline after another are not stupid people. One thing the characters of all my stories share is that they are more than they appear on the surface. I wanted to explore what kind of person could a spoiled space princess become when her wealth and privilege are in peril? Can she rise to the challenge of overcoming her dependency on her position, or will she accept the chains that lock her into her social position and the role her society demands of her?
We like to think the scandals are a result of bad life choices or people acting out of control, but I've always suspected that even the public figures who find themselves at the end of one outrageous headline after another are not stupid people. One thing the characters of all my stories share is that they are more than they appear on the surface. I wanted to explore what kind of person could a spoiled space princess become when her wealth and privilege are in peril? Can she rise to the challenge of overcoming her dependency on her position, or will she accept the chains that lock her into her social position and the role her society demands of her?
Athena Grayson
I'm currently working on a new "spin-off" series of sci-fi romance adventure called "Scions of the Star Empire" which takes place in a sister star system to the system where "Huntress of the Star Empire" takes place. Meet the Scions--the elite progeny of the ruling families, whose wealth and privilege gets them anything they want...except a future.
Party-girl Princess Ione is the most spoiled of the rotten, and at the Academy where she and her contemporaries learn the skills they need to one day run the star system, one of their first lessons is that their privilege comes with a price. Their social capital depends on both what they know, and who they know. The right friends are the difference between influence and obscurity. Ione plays fast and loose with her reputation via the probabilities exchange, manipulating her social ranking for short-term gain, while long-term independence seems further away with every passing day. When a gossip journalist catches her in a compromising position with her boyfriend, the chase to retrieve the embarrassing holo-feeds takes them out of their gilded cage and on a journey to the depths of the planet beneath their strato-scraper homes, to the lies shoring up the crumbling foundations of their society itself.
Party-girl Princess Ione is the most spoiled of the rotten, and at the Academy where she and her contemporaries learn the skills they need to one day run the star system, one of their first lessons is that their privilege comes with a price. Their social capital depends on both what they know, and who they know. The right friends are the difference between influence and obscurity. Ione plays fast and loose with her reputation via the probabilities exchange, manipulating her social ranking for short-term gain, while long-term independence seems further away with every passing day. When a gossip journalist catches her in a compromising position with her boyfriend, the chase to retrieve the embarrassing holo-feeds takes them out of their gilded cage and on a journey to the depths of the planet beneath their strato-scraper homes, to the lies shoring up the crumbling foundations of their society itself.
Athena Grayson
The best thing about being a writer is that I get to create entire realities for the people who live in my head! I get to go to outer space, to fantasy realms, to big cities and small towns and foreign countries. I get to imagine other people--how they live, what challenges they face, and how they fall in love. I get to imagine a better world, and then I get to share it with other people. What's not to love?
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