Ask the Author: Arlene F. Marks
Answered Questions (12)
Arlene F. Marks
Hi! I'm glad you enjoyed the story! Here are the answers to your questions:
1. Maury and Shred were a gay couple back on RinYeng and they've remained together on Earth. Travis must have wondered while growing up whether he had grandmothers as well, but Grandpa M would have explained the situation to him truthfully, since it's no longer something they have to pretend about.
2. Since the Nash'terel are shapeshifters, they can appear to be male or female (or something in between), as the situation demands. Given the choice, most prefer to take the same shape as their birth gender. However, some consider themselves to be "two-spirited" and are equally comfortable appearing male or female. Shred is one of these, and so is Polley.
3. Warriors sometimes have a "nom de guerre"--a name they use when they go to war. Barron and Gershred are warriors who have fought together in many battles over the centuries. Barron's "nom de guerre" is Barney Ross and Shred's is Gordie Sharp, and this is how they sometimes refer to each other.
4. Finally, you will definitely be seeing more of Travis, Leo, and Oscar in future books in the Nash'terel series. Rocket Man, Coyote, and the Ninja aren't going away anytime soon.
Thank you for your interest. I love that you're so invested in these characters!
Stay safe and well,
Arlene F. Marks
1. Maury and Shred were a gay couple back on RinYeng and they've remained together on Earth. Travis must have wondered while growing up whether he had grandmothers as well, but Grandpa M would have explained the situation to him truthfully, since it's no longer something they have to pretend about.
2. Since the Nash'terel are shapeshifters, they can appear to be male or female (or something in between), as the situation demands. Given the choice, most prefer to take the same shape as their birth gender. However, some consider themselves to be "two-spirited" and are equally comfortable appearing male or female. Shred is one of these, and so is Polley.
3. Warriors sometimes have a "nom de guerre"--a name they use when they go to war. Barron and Gershred are warriors who have fought together in many battles over the centuries. Barron's "nom de guerre" is Barney Ross and Shred's is Gordie Sharp, and this is how they sometimes refer to each other.
4. Finally, you will definitely be seeing more of Travis, Leo, and Oscar in future books in the Nash'terel series. Rocket Man, Coyote, and the Ninja aren't going away anytime soon.
Thank you for your interest. I love that you're so invested in these characters!
Stay safe and well,
Arlene F. Marks
Arlene F. Marks
Happily, I'm one of those people who don't get blocked. I do get right brain fatigue from time to time, and that's when I turn to left brain activities such as editing or marketing, or updating my web site. Sometimes I write a blog if I have something to say. As long as I'm doing something writing-related, I know the time is being well spent.
Arlene F. Marks
I would love to ride a dragon sometime, so Pern would be my choice. I have a number of Anne McCaffrey's books and have loved them all.
Arlene F. Marks
You're welcome, and thank you for loving them as much as I do!
You'll be happy to know that Angie gives birth to a human-appearing baby boy named Travis, who is a main character in the next Nash'terel novel, coming out at the end of March, titled The Bloodstone. In this book, Travis is 15 years old. He's been living a normal human life in Collingwood with Maury and Shred (Grandpa M and Grandpa G) and has dreams of becoming an NHL star --until his alien half shows itself and he has to go to B.C. where his parents are, to train his Nash'terel talent. As you can imagine, it's not an easy adjustment for him to make, but he's not the only one having to adapt to change.
Maury and Shred have adopted an outwardly human lifestyle while raising this human boy for the past ten years. They love each other, and they love Travis because he's their grandson, the only one they're going to have, but grandparenthood has been an adventure for them. And in The Bloodstone, family relationships become even more challenging.
Thank you for reaching out with your questions. I hope you'll continue reading and enjoying the Nash'terel novels. There's a lot more story to come!
All the best,
Arlene F. Marks
You'll be happy to know that Angie gives birth to a human-appearing baby boy named Travis, who is a main character in the next Nash'terel novel, coming out at the end of March, titled The Bloodstone. In this book, Travis is 15 years old. He's been living a normal human life in Collingwood with Maury and Shred (Grandpa M and Grandpa G) and has dreams of becoming an NHL star --until his alien half shows itself and he has to go to B.C. where his parents are, to train his Nash'terel talent. As you can imagine, it's not an easy adjustment for him to make, but he's not the only one having to adapt to change.
Maury and Shred have adopted an outwardly human lifestyle while raising this human boy for the past ten years. They love each other, and they love Travis because he's their grandson, the only one they're going to have, but grandparenthood has been an adventure for them. And in The Bloodstone, family relationships become even more challenging.
Thank you for reaching out with your questions. I hope you'll continue reading and enjoying the Nash'terel novels. There's a lot more story to come!
All the best,
Arlene F. Marks
Arlene F. Marks
I don't know how far I'm going to get, but here is the list of titles I'll be working my way through:
A Thousand Words for Stranger (Julie E. Czerneda)
Cinco de Mayo (Michael Martineck)
The Martian (Andy Weir)
Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett)
The Fabric of the Cosmos (Brian Greene)
The Iron Assassin (Ed Greenwood)
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (Catharina Sundberg)
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Jumped Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson)
Wish me luck!
A Thousand Words for Stranger (Julie E. Czerneda)
Cinco de Mayo (Michael Martineck)
The Martian (Andy Weir)
Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett)
The Fabric of the Cosmos (Brian Greene)
The Iron Assassin (Ed Greenwood)
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (Catharina Sundberg)
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Jumped Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson)
Wish me luck!
Arlene F. Marks
If by "mystery" you mean an unexplained event such as a disappearance, or a nagging unanswered question about a found object, then I have to say that there has been no mystery in my life. However, as an author of speculative fiction, I am constantly asking myself two questions: "Why?" and "What if...?" And sometimes I ask them about my own life. What if things had happened differently? What if I (or someone else) had chosen X instead of Y?
When I was quite young, my parents were advised to put me into a special school for gifted children. I don't think my IQ had been measured, but I'd taught myself to read at the age of 2 and had a nearly eidetic memory. The school was quite a distance away. The commute would have been an hour each way by public transportation (we could't afford a car) and we weren't well off, so I was kept in the local grade school where I didn't really have a peer group. School was a torment for me. I had no real friends until grade 10. And I can't help wondering, what if I'd been able to go to that special school? What would my life have been like? Would I have blossomed early and accomplished great things? Or would I have ended up being a guinea pig in someone's educational experiment? I'll never know.
When I was quite young, my parents were advised to put me into a special school for gifted children. I don't think my IQ had been measured, but I'd taught myself to read at the age of 2 and had a nearly eidetic memory. The school was quite a distance away. The commute would have been an hour each way by public transportation (we could't afford a car) and we weren't well off, so I was kept in the local grade school where I didn't really have a peer group. School was a torment for me. I had no real friends until grade 10. And I can't help wondering, what if I'd been able to go to that special school? What would my life have been like? Would I have blossomed early and accomplished great things? Or would I have ended up being a guinea pig in someone's educational experiment? I'll never know.
Arlene F. Marks
This is a toughie. I have a lot of "favorites", for a lot of different reasons, all having to do with relationships. It's safe to say that my favorite book is generally the one I'm currently reading. However, one pairing that has really stuck with me is Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings. Tolkien took friendship to epic heights with this trilogy, and I love the devotion that these two characters have to each other, and the way Sam's strength and decency turns him into the real hero of the story.
Arlene F. Marks
I open my eyes in the morning and lie in bed for about 20 minutes, mentally reviewing all the writing I did the previous day. Invariably, I'll have an epiphany about this character or that plot development, or a great new story idea will leap off the back burners of my mind and smack me in the imagination...and then I'm ready to get out of bed and write. Most days I can hardly wait to sit down at the computer. Since I'm usually working on three projects at the same time, that's a good thing, right?
Arlene F. Marks
The most important piece of advice I can give to someone who aspires to write publishable literature is to read and write as much as you can. Writing is a skill that improves with practice. And if you're constantly measuring yourself against professionally published authors, then you'll find yourself learning and growing as an author yourself. This process never stops, by the way. I had my first novel published twenty-five years ago, and every book I read still has something to teach me about plotting, description, and character development.
Arlene F. Marks
I get to live in two worlds -- the one outside my body and the one inside my head. And I have people I care about in both places!
Arlene F. Marks
I have three writing projects on the go right now. I'm plotting and writing a sequel to The Accidental God. I'm six chapters into the third novel of Sic Transit Terra, a series of books set at the turn of the 25th century. And I'm working with my bff and co-author, Bette Walker, on a revised version of our popular literacy program for Grades 4-8, called Let Them Write, which will be published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Arlene F. Marks
The Accidental God was inspired by the stories of two authors whose work I grew up reading. One was Thorne Smith, an American humorist who wrote during the late 1930s and early 1940s. One of his novels, Turnabout, was about a bickering husband and wife who literally get to find out what it's like to be each other. The other author, Edwin A. Abbott, wrote a book called Flatland, about a three-dimensional person who discovers and visits a two-dimensional world. The Accidental God is dedicated to them both.
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