The Accidental Sci-Fi Writer

[This is a guest post from Tara Altebrando, who has a new sci-fi thriller out, called Take Me With You. -- Mark]

The Accidental Sci-Fi WriterBy Tara Altebrando

Its always nerve-wracking when the first review of your newest novel appears in your inbox. Its particularly terrifying when that review is from a publication whose anonymous reviewers are not known for their tendency toward high praise. So when I clicked through an email from my editor and saw that this particular anonymous reviewer liked my YA thriller Take Me With YouHurray! said my editorI was pleasantly surprised. And then just plain surprisedbecause they tagged the book as Science Fiction.

What? Who me?

I actually said to my husband, How on earth did I become a science fiction writer?

But upon reflection, its not as crazy as I first thought. Yes, I spent a lot of my YA career writing solidly contemporary realistic YA. Way back in 2005, my first YA, The Pursuit of Happiness, was a textbook, semi-autobiographical coming of age story. As recently as 2013, Sara Zarr and I coauthored Roomies, which is firmly grounded in the reality of two-college bound teens. Even my 2015 book The Leaving could technically be thought of as contemporary realistic in that it could maybe happenbut not reallyso maybe thats when I started to delude myself.

The Leaving tells the story of six children who disappear when theyre five years old then return (well, five of them do) when theyre sixteen with no memory of where theyve been. Read the rest