Science fiction author journeying the vast regions of imagination, discovering places and times unknown in this world and in the worlds beyond. Travel with me to explore exotic places, alluring people, and advanced technologies in stories of wonder and peril. Indulge yourself in fantastic adventure!
Since I’m well into this new novel series I thought I’d share some of the inspirations I had for writing it. Since I already have a few novels in different genres under my belt, and a completely different novel series in a different setting planned out, I wasn’t sure which direction to go. My wife is a big fan of Seed of Aldebaran and recommended I pursue the follow-on series, so I went with that. I had been poking around with ideas for the AlCent Sagas series for years, and had even done some world building on the Alpha Centauri binary star system. (I went as far as I could with known astronomical observations and extrapolated the rest.) Since I was a pleased with the James Van Wert character, and since a fleet officer would get to do and see more than an enlisted man, he would be a logical choice to take center stage. I then wrote out all I knew of the characters and settings in a canon-style document for future reference and got to work on the manuscript.
I first gathered all of the notes of the ideas for this series that I had written over the years and tried to put them into some kind of chronological order. I realized that the ideas were very sketchy and I as began writing out the manuscript I was soon staggered at the idea of trying to come up with interesting story threads for a four or five book series. But I plodded on, and soon found out that I was able to not only come up with plot points that met the needs of the story, but the process of writing itself inspired even more ideas. I usually like to outline my novels before I begin, but the outlines for this series only account for about 25% of the manuscript. The other 75% arise during the act of writing the rough draft. Soon I found my security and was able to move ahead, now confident that I would be able to not only complete the series, but would be able to make it interesting as well.
At the same time I was working with my new cover artist Wojtek Kapusta on ideas for covers for the books in the series. More on those later. You can see more of his work at – https://www.artstation.com/kapucha76 .
The attached image is a drawing I did while in the process of world building the Alpha Centauri system. I had first written Seed of Aldebaran in 1995 and since I was already thinking about a series after it, I had to build this fictional world in the AlCent system incorporating elements of Seed and the new series. I rewrote Seed of Aldebaran in 2020 and 2021, and thus set the stage for the AlCent Sagas series. (I also had to relearn all I knew about using genetic engineering to fight viruses – the futuristic technology had actually come to pass in the intervening 25 years and I had to know it to get it right, not only in what we now know, but in what might be a future direction it will possibly run. I’m so glad I love to write science fiction novels! The process would be torture if I didn’t absolutely love it!
It might seem that there a plethora of science fiction stories that are set in Alpha Centauri, but as it’s the nearest star system to us at about 4 light years away (including nearby Proxima Centauri), it’s still a logical and probable first step as humans begin to travel out into interstellar space.
So have a look at an early world building drawing of the fictional Alpha Centauri system. More details about the series and the process will be coming shortly. Enjoy!
james crawford 