It’s like the introduction to every “…For Dummies” guidebook: ‘So you want to write a novel—welcome to the club! Being an author must be an awesome job. I mean, you get to work whenever and wherever you want, and mostly you just travel around signing your books, right?’

If only! It’s not enough to just want to “be” a writer. For starters, you need to have a story you want to tell (hopefully more than one, but one is a fine place to begin). Excellent, you can do totally that—all you need to do is come up with a plot and you’ll be set…right?

Not exactly, it turns out.

Despite the fact that I've been writing for several years now, when I decided I was going to write a real novel, I immediately laser-zoomed in on that question—what's it going to be about? What's going to happen?

My husband diplomatically pointed out that the writing I had been doing up until this point was far more about the characters than the plot, and it was an approach which had worked out rather well for me. Then I came across several blog posts discussing the importance of characters in making a novel memorable and engaging.

Then I saw an interview with the terrific mystery writer Lee Child in which he said, to paraphrase, ‘character is king. The plot is like a rental car; all the better if it's a rental Jaguar instead of a rental Pinto, but either way it's a rental car—designed to get someone from where they are to where they need to be. The story is about who is riding in the rental car.’ Properly and thoroughly chastened, I endeavored to adopt a new perspective on the creation of not just my story, but any story.

As I said in my first blog post, initially I had little more than a vague image in my head. The image was of a woman, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, sticking her head out from the hull of a small starship in a hangar bay. To those of us who admire elegant craftsmanship, the ship was of course beautiful. The woman was obviously working on the ship; I had the sense it was her ship. I decided I would consult with her on the issue.*

And so Alexis Solovy was born.

I didn't know that was her name to begin with, of course. I didn't know anything about her, except she lived sometime in the future, owned a starship, and knew how to work on it. Also, she had a story she needed to share with me. Her story.

Inspired, I sat down and hurriedly scribbled out an initial draft of what eventually became Chapter 1. But what those early words really constituted was a first step in discovering who Alexis Solovy is. It turns out, she's damn intriguing—she'd better be, she's the heroine after all!

As I started getting to know her, the world she lives in began to reveal itself in grand, rousing strokes. Funny that.

Over the last several months, Alex and I have gotten to know one another rather well.* And the tale which wound itself around her is astounding—with such an epic scope it will require three novels to tell. (Believe me, I did not start out intending to be so audacious as to just go and proclaim I would be writing a trilogy.)

To be fair, I was a little annoyed when Alex informed me she was a starship pilot.* I knew far less about flying than I did about space; my research load had just doubled. But I had little say in the matter.

After all, it’s her story—which is exactly how it should be.

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