Here's a great guest post from Nathaniel Danes, a fellow writer:
I
can't speak for any author other than myself but I find the world
ripe with seemingly insignificant scraps of information begging to be
nurtured, grown into a story. I look at my ordinary life with the
goal of finding hidden adventure.
I'm
low vision, functionally blind in most situations. As you can guess,
my degrading retinas restrict what I can do in the real world. I love
skiing, scuba diving, and a host of other activities I can no longer
do, or do how I want to do them. This fighting retreat has been the
story of my life since being medically discharge from the Army at the
old age of seventeen, following my diagnosis.
Simply
put, I can't live the life I want to so my imagination has become my
keep. My final impenetrable stronghold, impervious to the ravages of
my affliction. I can go anywhere and do anything. It's an escape I
utilize regularly.
Maybe
it's just me because my mind is so desperate for new material to chew
on but I'll grad ahold of a minor piece of information and build an
entire universe around it. That's how my latest novel, BattleMaster
was born.
Several
years ago I saw a short segment on TV about the US Air Force's
experiments with craft controlled by a pilot's brainwaves. The pilots
were hooked up to simulators but the results were still very
interesting. A female subject remarked that initial findings
suggested women were better at this method of operation.
The
seed had been planted.
That
fact whispered in my ear for years and I combined it with others I
picked up. Such as, knowledge the female brain is wired to maximize
multitasking while males are superior at focusing on a single
objective. Both have their advantages and are likely a result of
survival demands dating back millennia. Men hunting and providing
protection while woman cared for the young and performed any number
of important tasks.
Theses
two bits of information are what formed the roots of BattleMaster. I
asked myself, if women are better at multitasking and the future of
warfare is drone based, wouldn't they one day reign supreme on the
battlefield? My imagination went from there and the story blossomed
until it found its way to the page.
So,
pay attention to the world around you. Seeds of imagination are
adrift everywhere.
Nathaniel Danes is a
self-diagnosed sci-fi junkie and, according to his wife, has an over
active imagination. Mostly blind, he writes to create universes where
he has no limitations. He lives with his wife and daughter in the
Washington, DC area.
Website:
www.nathanieldanesauthor.com
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