Some Other Traveller by Lyn McConchie

 Please welcome Lyn McConchie author of Some Other Traveller

Lyn McConchie will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Some Other Traveller

by Lyn McConchie

 

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GENRE: Post-apocalyptic

 

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

A complete accident, I joined SF fandom in 1980. The editor of our national magazine asked me to do a book review, then an article, and finally could I write a short story? Turned out I could.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre? 

Something fantastic, unexpected, something that mustbe dealt with. And I mayhave a romance - anything from throwaway mention, to quite graphic - Vestiges of Flames.) 

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

This is the fourth in a series of standalone post-apocalyptic novels. In my own lifetime I’ve survived catching the Hong Kong flu that hit NZ in the mid-1970s, plus a long string of scares about bird flu, SARS and so on. And in 2014, I started wondering what would be one of the most dangerous aspects of a virus. Being deadly, yes. Civilization added air travel to that. What else? My imagination promptly said if everyone had it and doesn’t know, and if to survive you have to fulfill/have fulfilled twoconditions. After that I was off and running. The first one was set here in New Zealand, after that I did Australia, then America, Scotland, and have completed two more – Canada and Cornwall (England)

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

Two things really. I’m a fast reader, genuinely so. Around 600 wpm and while nowhere near photographic, I tend to retain anything I find odd/interesting. And I have a vivid imagination like the energizer bunny. Average time for writing a book is ten weeks at absolute most. In a normal year nowadays, I complete two to three. Last two years it’s been 2 books and a short story theme collection each year, and I have that in mind for this year too.

5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

I often use two things. One is aspects from my own life, one of my Sherlock Holmes novels used a fire I was literally in that killed seven people (I also later wrote a non-fiction book looking at that and similar fires). And my next post-apocalyptic set in Canada uses quite graphic personal events from my own childhood. The other item is that many cats or dogs in my books existed, they were mine, or belonged to close friends. And friends also appear, in Some Other Traveller. Cheryl, the alpaca-breeder, is a real person, a long-time friend who does indeed breed alpacas. However she never has shot anyone. In my short story theme collection,The Way-Out Wild West, the son of a friend appears as responsible for a school’s infestation of skunks.

6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

To keep writing so long as my eyes and my brain hold out. Currently I have a little list – several theme story collections, two more Holmes, another post-apocalyptic… and in my experience, any time I sit down to start a new novel, somewhere in the course of that, the idea for one, two, or three more will pop up. (Energizer bunny…)

7. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?

I’m almost 76; what happens to those who are older when everything goes to hell? There’s an assumption they all shudder helplessly, fall over and die, but what if they don’t? What if they have a background that gives them an advantage? What if they’re fit, healthy, have common sense, and are smart? So my imagination immediately produced.

Donal and Sheila McArn who are both seventy, they live in a remote glen in the highlands of Scotland, on land owned by Johnny McAlister the Laird and their best and oldest friend. Everyone in the glen is known to them, and many are also good friends. Donal was black-ops, Sheila was a paramedic. Then the world falls around them. If they do nothing, everyone they know and care about will die. Okay, they’ve been retired ten years but – Did you reallythink Donal and Sheila would stand by and watch that happen? Or that they’d be ineffective?

8. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

My short work as per question 1, it went on that I began entering my short stories into SF Convention competitions, a friend seeing me go up yet again as the winner suggested I try selling to magazines. So in 1990, I sent out three stories to three magazines, and sold two. Light dawned. Gosh, you could write stories and be paid.

My first book I also stumbled into. For years I’ve had friends who live in overseas cities. I live on a few acres, I had a house cow I hand milked, a small flock of coloured sheep, piglets, plus free-range hens and geese. I used to write long letters about my animals and friends. I also belonged to a small writer’s group at the time. I read one of my letters about a weird sheep. The group collapsed laughing, and someone said, why didn’t I offer that to a smallholder’s magazine they knew. It was a quarterly, I printed out four of the letters and offered those. They bought them as a year’s worth of articles. I was delighted but thought no more about it until the magazine editor phoned to say he was also an editor at a publisher. They were looking for short books to bring out for Mother’s Day. Something that was, like my stories, true, funny, and with animals. How much material did I have? A lot. How long would he want the book to be? 35-40,000 words. I had it to him in three weeks, they accepted, and Farming Daze,appeared February 1993. 

9. What is the best and worst advice you ever received?Best?

Read any contract very s..l..o..w..l..y and carefully. Then read it again. 

An offered contract is the start of negotiation not the end.

Ignore critics.

Worst, take a writing course. I never did, but I can list half a dozen people I’ve known who did and were so put off they quit writing. Too many professors running such courses want literary’ authors. If you’re SF/F/mystery/romance, don’t apply. The majority denigrate or ignore you.

10. Do you outline your books or just start writing? 

I just start writing. All I usually have is a single scene, a snatch of dialogue, a character. In one case I started writing a Sherlock Holmes book and didn’t know who’d committed the murder until Holmes was explaining it to his audience about 3 pages from the end. That’s when I also found out. I was sitting there saying, yes, oh yes, of course.

 

11.How do you maintain your creativity?

 Prolonged fit of giggling. Energizer bunny. My problem is never that, it’s maintaining the physical energy required. I’m 76 and was crippled in an accident in 1977. My last book I wrote 95,000 words in five weeks because I was worried I’d crash physically before I finished, so I pushed.

12. Are your plotting bunnies, angels or demons?

 “I” don’t plot. I simply write, my imagination looks after all that while I take dictation. As an old friend and fellow writer told me, like her, I’m an instinctive writer, I just sit down and write, often without the faintest idea of where I’m going, who’s going with me, what will happen or much else. At times things are as much a surprise to me as to my characters.

13. Anything else you might want to add? 

Writing is great. You may make money at it – although you probably won’t make much. You may make great friends – and probably enemies too. In my case, the only real effort isphysical, I sit down four days a week, read the last sentence I wrote and I’m gone again – 3,500 - 6,000 words before I stop. I’ve never had a writer’s block, and since 1990, I’d had 50 books published, another 7 sold, and around ten more I’ll get around to submitting some time. About 350 short stories published too, plus some 200 articles and opinion pieces. (Energizer bunny…) and I’m happy. So, until he died last year, was my cat. His human stayed home, was always available to feed him, cuddle him, and talk to him – he heard a lot of ideas. 

BLURB:

 

When the world’s civilizations collapse from a lethal pandemic, being old can mean you have the experience and wisdom to survive and to see that friends and family do as well. Donal and Sheila McArn are seventy when most of the world is dying, and they must hold the line for everything they know. They may not have long, but so long as they live, they’re going to do their best – and anyone against them had better step back. NOW!    

 

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EXCERPT:

 

Kaylie died an hour later. Ricky had all his things packed by then, Donal had dug a small grave, and we placed her in that, the teddy bear – a bright pink one that Ricky said she still loved – tucked in beside her. After that, he clung to my hand. 

 

I drove home, and when I would have left the lad with Janet, he clung to me like a limpet, his eyes wide in fear of losing someone else. I put him to bed in the spare room, slept in the bed opposite, and took him with me the next morning. Janet took the accumulated cash, along with a list and several friends, utes, and her car with a trailer. We removed the Black and McMallan animals, several small portable sheds, and salvaged useful items from houses and outbuildings. During which time Ricky was never out of eyeshot, and when my hands weren’t employed, he clung to one of them.

 

We drove home to eat dinner, I put him to bed, and when he asked, I answered, “Yes, this is your room now. You’ll go to school here once it opens again. The place is called Glen Mhairi. It’ll be your home.” And then the tentative question that almost broke my heart. “Aye, you can call us Grandma and Grandpa if you want. We’d like that.” He fell asleep still trustfully holding my hand, and as I looked at that peaceful face, I knew the truth.

 

After all those years and with never a child of our own, we finally had a grandson.

 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Lyn McConchie started writing in 1990 and within a year had short stories and poems published. In 1993, her first book – a humorous true-life work (Farming Daze) about her farm, friends, and animals appeared – this was followed by six others in that series. As a joke between them, a long-time friend of Lyn’s, Andre Norton, was given a book Lyn had written set in one of Andre’s worlds. Andre was impressed with the work and took it to her agents who sold it to Warner books. This led in turn to Lyn writing another six books in Andre’s worlds, which were published either by Warner or TOR. Lyn has won seven short story Muse Medallions from the (International) Cat Writer’s Association, and six Sir Julius Vogel Awards for her books. Since the original book, Lyn has seen almost fifty more books appear plus over three hundred short stories, and says she has no intention of stopping so long as she is able to write.

 

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/lyn.mcconchie.397

http://lynmcconchie.com/new/

 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1134674

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/some-other-traveller-lyn-mcconchie/1141107461

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/some-other-traveller

 

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

 

Lyn McConchie will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

RAFFLECOPTER: 

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4150