Today I ran across a post on social media asking people what had led to their interest in science-fiction romance as a genre. An opportune question, given that we are now in the second week of the Summer of SFR, hosted by S.J. Pajonas on her blog. Give a click and take a gander. Ms. Pajonas is featuring The Passion Season: Book I of the Covalent Series on July 3, as well as a new title in this anything-goes genre each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until September 1, 2020. I'm sure there will be something for everyone. Many thanks to S.J. Pajonas!

To return to our question, my love for science fiction and fantasy began early. When I was nine or ten, I think, I read a book called Beyond the Paw Paw Trees. Below is the cover and publisher's description.

It all began on a lavender blue day—the kind of day when anything can happen. It was on such a day that Anna Lavinia’s father saw a double rainbow and went chasing after it. And it is on such a day that she and her cat, Strawberry, set off on their journey beyond the walled garden where the pawpaw trees grow, to a place where the buttercups bloom pink and the laws of gravity don’t always apply. Here Anna Lavinia will test her mother’s advice “Never believe what you see,” against her father’s wise words “Believe only what you see,” and just maybe she’ll finally be able to use the mysterious silver key her father left behind when he went chasing after rainbows.
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Beyond the Pawpaw Trees is a tour through a land as strange and wonderful as Oz, filled with people as delightfully batty as any in Alice’s looking glass. It is a place to return to again and again, beautifully brought to life in Palmer Brown’s fanciful words and intricate, sugar-spun drawings.

I loved this book beyond reason, the beginnings of my lifelong fondness for books with a blend of science fiction and fantasy, a blend that is present in The Covalent Series . 

A Wrinkle in Time is another book that had a profound effect on me, so much so that I blogged about this one already!

So, how did my girlish predilections become a fondness for science-fiction romance? I'll confess that much of my science-fiction reading was not romance, although many of these books had romantic subplots. In high school, I was obsessed with the Dune series by Frank Herbert. I love Hyperion by Dan Simmons, I adore Roger Zelazny and Ursula Le Guin, and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood spoke to my feminism more clearly than anything had before. Still, I've long been drawn to romantic stories on the screen, one of my favorites being the ill-fated love of Buffy and Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I guess you could say I was primed to combine two of my favorite things. So, I wrote a love story! The tale came rolling out of my head. Sure, a lot goes on in The Covalent Series besides the romance. The books feature a murder mystery, political intrigue, and a war (or two), but many of the wild things that happen are consequences of that central great love.

I have another confession. I've only become familiar with science-fiction romance since I began to write books in the genre. When I set out to write The Covalent Series , I thought I was writing a paranormal romance. A woman in the writers' group I was in at the time said to me, "Eh, paranormal romance? Everyone thinks vampires, werewolves, and shifters, not aliens." I have found this to be true. 

So, shortly after I published The Passion Season , I realized I need to find a better genre-home. Perhaps urban fantasy? I pitched a literary agent once who told me my series was urban fantasy because large chunks of it are set in the City of Philadelphia, an urban environment if ever there was one. But then I learned that urban fantasy fans demand straightforward magic and fantasy creatures like fae, shifters, and wizards. 

While my character Pellus may seem like some kind of wizard, what he does is actually quantum physics paired with his power as a member of an ancient race of beings known as the Covalent, who hold the elemental forces of Creation and Destruction in Balance and so preserve the cosmos. Long ago, when human society was primitive, the Covalent often visited the human world and became part of our mythology. We gave them many names: angel, djinn, avatar, god. Imagine how delighted I was to discover science-fiction romance! The Covalent Series had finally found a home.