Lance Erlick writes speculative fiction, science fiction, dystopian and young adult and likes to explore the future implications of social and technological trends.
Can you tell us a bit about your Rebel series?
The Rebel series takes place in America after a second Civil War, with the nation divided. The stories follow teen rebels fighting against their respective societies’ excesses.
The Rebel Within is Annabelle’s story. She is confronted with having to join the military unit that killed her father and imprisoned her birth mother or being exiled herself. In a society where males are banished, she hunts for her birth mother, helps escaped boys, and tries to survive a grueling training program in the dreaded elite military.
In Rebels Divided, we pick up with Annabelle pledged to marry the Outland warlord as part of some secret deal. We also meet Geo, estranged son to the woman who took Annabelle in, who fights for survival in the feudal Outlands under the ruthless warlord. Pursued by military forces from both sides, Annabelle and Geo are thrown together as enemy combatants. While trying to survive, they must work together to rescue her sister from the warlord and gain justice for the murder of Geo’s father. At the same time, they must deal with growing feelings for each other despite inherent mistrust.
Can you give us an insight into your main characters?
Annabelle is the main character of The Rebel Within and a significant player in Rebels Divided. She lost her parents when she was three and transferred that ache and need to bond to her younger sister, Janine, who is not to know about Annabelle being adopted. Annabelle grows up rebellious without focus until she spots a boy escaping his prison. She helps him and gets herself into a fix that requires that she join the military unit that took her birth parents. She has always been a tomboy and independent, but she is caught between protecting family and doing what she believes is right. In Rebels Divided, Annabelle has matured into a confident mechanized warrior. Then, for political reasons, she is pledged in marriage to the Outland warlord. When she is kidnapped by the warlord, she has no one she can trust in her quest to rescue her sister, Janine. Then she meets Geo.
Geo only appears in The Rebel Within as a reference to a world forbidden to Annabelle (the Outlands). In Rebels Divided, Geo is a main character, itching to be treated as a man in a world where men are drafted into the warlord’s Rangers to perpetuate his evil. Geo is a bit of a Daniel Boone woodsman, with small-scale high-tech skills he’s gained from his engineer father and constant battle to survive in a rugged world. His urge to be treated as a man gets him to take risky actions that result in his father being murdered. Then he really has to become a man to survive.
Why did you choose to write from the female perspective?
The Rebel Within takes place in a world where males are outcast and rounded up. I didn’t want to take the path of the victims (males), but rather of a rebel (Annabelle) who is drawn into helping the boys. She has to deal with the question of do we consider injustice only that which attacks us personally or that which is inherently wrong. I believe she was the most interesting character in the story and the one with personal growth.
Also, I had the idea of Rebels Divided before I wrote The Rebel Within and wanted to capture how Annabelle became the character she becomes in Rebels Divided.
You’ve said that you like to explore the future implications of social and technological trends, can you explain a bit?
I am drawn to fiction that puts us in new situations, such as Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Wool by Hugh Howey. The social implications I wanted to explore in the Rebel series was what would happen in this country if the extremists held sway and we were unable to reconcile our differences enough to live together. That could bring a split and with that, the extremists would fight to keep their ways in a divided nation without the opposition they had before, which was on the other side of the border. Except, given human nature, there will always be those who challenge the norms, and that would include these extremist societies.
As for technology, over the past 15 years, we have made great strides in fertility research that borders on being able to fertilize one egg with another, requiring no male involvement. While that opens up new opportunities for infertile couples, it could also allow a society without males for the first time in human history. What would happen if, for economic reasons, a society chose to become all female?
How do you organise your writing?
My writing comes from a variety of sources, providing ideas, situations, and characters. I accumulate notes until I have a good idea of where the story begins and where it ends. Then I work through the various ways the story could go in between. Only then do I begin to actually write the story. I often find the story takes on a new direction after I start, and as long as I have a clear idea of beginning and end, this works for me.
What is the hardest thing about writing?
Ideas flow to me when I am not writing, and particularly while I sleep. I can’t say I’ve ever had writers block, but I have had slow periods while working through a difficult scene or problem, but it’s just a matter of working through it. For me, the hardest part is editing, editing some more, and then re-editing. It’s rather like doing plastic surgery on your child to straighten the nose, change eye color, and strive for perfection until it is almost unrecognizable to where you started. Unlike the child, the story ends up much better through the process.
How are you publishing this book and why?
I decided to publish through Finlee Augare Books with Createspace, KDP and Smashwords after receiving a number of agent rejections that said, in various forms: Love your story, but don’t think I can place it in today’s market. I decided to take matters into my own hands see if I could find the market for my stories. In the process, I have had a lot of fun, met a lot of people I would not have otherwise met, and have learned a lot about the publishing business.
In the process of marketing the book myself, I found that the stories appeal to a younger and older audience than I originally expected.
Do you have any advice for other authors on how to market their books?
First thing I learned in publishing my own novels is that if I had been ‘lucky’ to be traditionally published, I could probably expect to have my book in a physical bookstore for all of 3-4 weeks. If during that time it did not become a blockbuster (better odds of catching an asteroid with a baseball mitt), it would be returned to publisher and never heard from again. If I wanted a traditionally published book to succeed, I would have to do much of the marketing I have been doing. So this had been a great learning experience.
The second thing I believe I’ve learned is if you choose to self-publish, it pays to have a large social network before you actually publish. This was a career change for me and my writing social network was not as large as I would have liked when I began.
Third, I would state the obvious. Changes of earning above minimum wage in writing is slim. If that’s your goal, hopefully you have a great hook and a huge network, or you will face disappointed. On the other hand, if you write because you enjoy the process and interacting with people who read your books, this can be very rewarding as I’ve found.
What kinds of books do you read?
I read a variety of books from science fiction to history and non-fiction, but my real joy comes from speculative/futuristic fiction, speculating about where we might be heading. I like writers who push the envelope in terms of where we might be heading like David Brin and Vernor Vinge. Non-fiction reading spans history and science, both areas of discovery.
What’s next?
I am working on another book in the Rebel series and several unrelated books, primarily in science fiction.
