Recently I watched the man-on-man movie BROS. About half way through the video was dedicated to the confession of feelings/emotions from one lover to the other. That complex interaction took eight, thirty minute episodes for the BL (Boy Love) K-drama, SEMANTIC ERROR (available on Rakuten Viki). I can’t stop watching it, wondering how the storyline was constructed, how the direction and editing was done in such a genius way.

If I’m ever going to be an exceptional writer of romance, the slow burn of emotions is what I’m aiming for.

This month, I’m re-editing all my work and republishing it. I’ve spent over twenty years working on sci-fis and over the last ten years publishing my novels (stand-alone contemporaries with elements of science and sci-fi) and two series (LEGENDS OF THE GOLDENS (mostly urban fantasy) and AGES OF INVENTION (mostly historical, time travel, sci-fi).

I have worked hard with my published critique partners to make my stories accessible to my audience. A scientific generalist with three advanced degrees needs to do that.

What makes my work stand out to me (as opposed to other sci-fis (both hard and soft/social sci-fis)) is a knowledge of how things really work in our physical reality and an ability to communicate such without overwhelming my audience. I also increase the intensity of my characters’ deep POVs with internal dialogue that is so prevalent in Asian webtoons, webnovels, and screenplays.

What I’m most focused on in my stories as romances, is illustrating how no matter how negative the behavior of some, there is always a positive to come out of it. Yep, you got it. I’m addicted to HEA (Happily Ever After), as should any rabid romance writer.

Besides fixing my over ten novels to be republished with what I’ve learned over the last ten years, I’m preparing to send my last completed novel (SPACE FOR US, a sci-fi romance (SFR) and space opera) out to hundreds of agents and editors for the first time in my career. SPACE was a three-year project in which I worked on all the items of improvement listed above. What makes this different from other hard sci-fis (instead of angular metallic spaceships) is the propulsion system is based on buoyancy. SPACE FOR US literally tells the story of how boundaries fall and space is created for relationships to evolve (whether it’s a relationship between two people, or two civilizations in nearby solar systems).

Buoyancy as a motive force for spacecrafts comes from buoyancy cubes kept within the fuselage of my spaceships. Another name for buoyancy cubes is the name I’ll give to this series of novels: SQUARE BALLOONS.

The heroine in SPACE FOR US works at a military base in aerospace forensics (as did I) and the hero is what I always wanted to be, before writing novels, that is: an astronaut.

I really enjoyed my secondary character who’s an A.I. and the growing humor that ensues as our artificial conscious being gets used-to her human avatar body.

At present, I’m working on two new novels: THE CHARIOTEER (an A.I. growing up to thwart the actions of a corrupt government that created it) and THE WALL BETWEEN US (as a continuation of the SQUARE BALLOONS SERIES, fleshing in the society and romance of the alien Sledanis from Proxima Centauri. The Sledanis are people who marry-in/live-in relationship clouds, but when they return to Earth to spy on us, they end up isolated in individual bodies and must learn all over again how to form healthy relationships).

How could I end this post without the assurance that LEGENDS OF THE GOLDENS has at least one more novel coming after DANCING DRAGONS? I call it VAMPIRES IN SPACE, where our Aminali golden hybrid brings a big old naughty vampire, Drake, to his knees) For those reviewers who liked LOVE ME, BITE ME, this is written along the same humorous lines (good vampire (Golden) matched up with a baddie).