Interviews

My first novel, A Thousand Words for Stranger, started as a way to let my imagination get out and have fun with some biological concepts I was researching, namely evolution and population dynamics. I wondered how experiencing rapid evolution might affect a sentient species. I gave such a species, the Clan, an inheritable ability so desirable they made every effort to enhance it. I linked this ability, telepathy/teleportation, to a biologically hardwired selection process, making the 'cost' of increasing this ability rise geometrically with each generation. Thousand takes place as the Clan's evolution is about to hit the biological wall, a discovery made by one individual who struggles to overcome Clan xenophobia about other species -- Strangers -- in order to seek a solution. It was fun to write, especially when the characters took over the plot and surprised me!
—Julie Czernada