This past week, co-host Chandra Adams and I interviewed Science Fiction author Mari Atherton about herself, her first book Merari and other projects she has in the works. However, you can learn all about her right now! :)
Charles: Mari, please tell us where are you from and when did you start writing?
Mari: I’ve been writing since I could hold a pen in my hands (yes, a pen. I hate writing with a pencil and refuse to do so). My first book was written in a small spiral notebook and was called The Dog Who Married a Woman. I’m sure it was very cute for something written by a six-year-old!
I fell in love with Science Fiction when I read the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury in junior high school. I promptly wrote my own science fiction book that, mercifully, has long since been consigned to the recycling bin.
I grew up in Indiana but moved to Texas when I was in High School. The show Star Trek probably saved my life then because I moved from a small town to a big city and felt like a bird with no feathers. I was miserable and spent most of my time wishing I was back in Indiana. Then I went to a Star Trek Convention one weekend and the following Monday, a girl in one of my classes came up and said she had seen me at the Con. We became friends, and I hooked up with a bunch of other geek kids who loved the show and found a place where I fit in.
Charles: What made you come up with the concept of The Dreamer’s Way?
Mari: The Dreamer’s Way started as a short story, which I incorporated into the prologue of the book. It actually started in my mind as an image of a great ruler, the Tzeh Cher, who had supplicants come to her each day to ask for things. When they came, they had to stand on a colored square on the floor and would move forward a square as the line moved up. When the Tzeh Cher was finished hearing supplicants for the day, then the people left standing on the squares had to go away and try another day. Originally the Tzeh Cher was a cruel ruler and very subject to whimsy. In the original story, Alodi was brought before the Tzeh Cher as a criminal, a person who had dangerous visions, and she had to wait several days before she was actually able to see the ruler. She was then sent into exile.
The short story received a lot of favorable comments from publishers but at 6000 words was too long for a short story and too short for a book or novella. So I decided to explore what happened after Alodi went to the City of the Dreamers and turned it into a novel.
Charles: What can you share about your main character in your book, Flita? What type of person is she and how does she cope in the nightmarish world she lives in?
Mari: Flita is actually rather self centered and spoiled. She resents her mother, Alodi, because Alodi left her when she was a small child, even though Alodi had no choice. Flita is not ashamed of being a Dreamer, as most people are. She is rather in-your-face about it. She’s a teen-ager and feels the world revolves around her. She copes with her world by creating visions, which gets her in trouble inside the Protectorate. Then when she arrives at the City of the Dreamers, she is very unhappy to find that instead of the Golden City she expected, it is very drab and run down. So she readily joins with the group of rebels because she doesn’t see why she should use her powers to maintain the Protectorate when the Dreamers are persecuted by those within the Protectorate.
Charles: I understand you wrote another book, Merari. What is the difference between the two books? Are they set on the same planet?
Mari: No, they are on different planets, but Merari’s planet is every bit as nightmarish as Flita’s. The books are similar in that they both have very strong female characters, but that’s about it. Merari’s planet, Marianthia, is a planet with a living, telepathic, fungal technology. The people on Marianthia are divided into very rigid classes based upon their occupation—and they have been genetically engineered so that a person can be readily identified as belonging to a certain class. They also cannot come into physical contact with someone from a different class because a severe allergic reaction will result, causing major burns.
Merari is a member of the Surrogate class, an all female class whose sole function is to get pregnant and deliver babies. They provide the babies for everyone else on the planet—they are a living baby assembly line, so to speak. However, Merari wants to test the boundaries of her class, and she does so when she meets Aviv.
Please tell us about the traveling salesman in Merari Who is he and what types of troubles does he get into?
Aviv Gerbo is a traveling salesman for a Space Technologies firm. He is a smooth talker and doesn’t take life too seriously. His spaceship malfunctions as he is exploring new sales territory and he crash lands on Marianthia, a planet that nobody knows about because they screen themselves to keep from being found by aliens. Aviv crash lands in the jungle outside of one of the cities and the giant fungus that covers the planet thinks his spaceship is a piece of litter and eats it. Aviv escapes, but then gets injured in a battle with the Secures, a huge, brutish police force who come out to find the alien invader and kill him. Aviv manages to get away from the Secures and literally stumbles into Merari, who helps him escape from the Secures and hides him for several days. His one goal is to find a way to get off the planet, although he’d also love to take the amazing living technology with him and become rich off of it.
Charles: Mari, obviously you enjoy writing Science Fiction. What interests you about the genre? What excitement do you get out of writing a book?
Mari: I love writing Science Fiction because I enjoy creating new worlds and exploring them. In creating different worlds, I can explore various aspects of our society—for instance, Merari explores bigotry, prejudice and terrorism, and The Dreamer’s Way explores self- sacrifice and a society’s dependence on unfounded mythological beliefs. I love it when i come up with a new idea for one of my worlds that helps to expand it—when I came up with the fungal technology for Merari I was so excited that I nearly ran my car off the road.
Charles: In doing research on you, I discovered you wrote short stories in the past. Would you be kind to share them with us and have they made it into print?
Mari: My short stories never made it into print—they were either too long or I just wasn’t persistent enough in getting them published. I then found that I really enjoy writing novels more because it gives me more time to explore an issue. It is very difficult to write a good short story, and for the amount of energy that I put into it, I don’t get much in return. However, I am probably going to give them to Swimming Kangaroo (my publisher) to post as one of the freebies on their site—since three of the stories resulted in the development of novels, my readers might be interested in seeing the genesis of the worlds in Merari and The Dreamer’s Way.
Charles: Are there new projects in the works? What can we expect from you next Mari?
Mari: Merari is the first book in a trilogy. I haven’t started writing the second book yet (my publisher will probably kill me when she reads this!) but I’ve got it planned out in my head. I don’t want to say too much about it, but Sabian and Aviv Gerbo will definitely be back, as will Amice—she makes such a wonderful villain!
And I would like to do another book set on the planet of The Dreamer’s Way—maybe explore what happened when people first landed on the planet and how the Protectorate and City of the Dreamers was developed. At this time I don’t think I’m going to do anything more with the characters of Flita and Alodi as I kind of feel as though their story has been told. However, it might be interesting to tell Silvan’s story. We get snippets of it in the Dreamer’s Way, but I’m sure there’s a lot more of a story there.
I have a lot of ideas so there are a lot of books to come!
Charles: Where can interested readers find out more about you, your books and your upcoming events?
Mari: I have a page on MySpace: mariatherton@sbcglobal.net I’ve started blogging on it and I have details about cons that I will attend, etc.
And I maintain my Author’s page on www.amazon.com. My publisher wants me to set up my own webpage, and I will probably do that in the next few months.
Charles: Anything you would like to share in closing?
Mari: I really appreciate your giving me the opportunity to talk about my books. And I’ll tell you, there is absolutely nothing like the thrill that comes when you hold your first book in your hands—unless it’s when you receive your first fan letter!
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