Recently author Jade Kerrion asked me to write a blog post for her titled:
“Why did you.. Why didn’t you..” concerning my Sage Seed Chronicles series and questions readers have asked. I think it would be helpful to include it here for those who missed it.
“Why did you..” make the planet so small?
~Planets come in all sizes and I didn’t need a large one for the story. It isn’t as big as Earth and is mostly ocean. The settled section of the land mass needed to be small enough to navigate around in a week or ten days as everyone travels by horse or on foot (though some paraglide). There are outlying sections of the realm which increase the area that the story can expand into.. and it does that in later books. As the author I have the control and can grow land. (LOL)
“Why didn’t you..” allow the people to have cars?
~It was part of the world I created. The sun has extremely active solar flares and EM bursts which create lovely aurora borealis effects but also plays havoc with batteries and electrical grids. The people are resourceful and have compensated with many forms of “green” energy and localized batteries so each household can store some power. Strong EM bursts can wipe those smaller batteries also but they can be reset and recharged. I wanted the people to problem solve at a lower technology level and they do function quite well.
“Why did you..” make the planet with a low level of sentience?
~The low slumberous sentience of the planet Ose goes together with the need to have sages: people with psychic talent. It was the combination that started the premiss of the story. The planet doesn’t talk. It is just is barely aware. I wanted the sages to be part of that planetary cohesion and thus necessary on an elemental level.
“Why didn’t you..” make the sages live a normal eighty year life span?
~I made this a decision of the Ancients: the group of aliens who found the unusual planet and recruited the people to live there.. and subtly altered their DNA to cause a psychic individual to be born every two or three generations. The planet needs fifteen or sixteen psychic individuals to keep it seismically stable. I didn’t want there to be a lineage component. By that I mean I didn’t want a psi reign equivalent to the House of Tudors. I wanted these sages to be born randomly throughout the population and to have a down side to the gifts. The up side is that they have talents and can contribute to their world for a very long time. The down is that they out-live so many friends and loved ones.
“Why didn’t you..” write more about the Ancients? Who were they and what did they look like?
~The Ancients are not visible in the story. What they did and the role they played are part of the weave of the back story but and not in the story. I let the reader fill in that part from their imagination.
“Why are there..” so few people after that amount of time?
~Because the land mass is small if the population grew unchecked the people would find themselves without enough food to feed the burgeoning number of citizens. The Ancients realized this and made sure that the prospective colonists were aware of the potential hazard. It became part of the culture to have only very small families of one or two children. Occasionally there would be a family of three but that was rare. Another contributing factor to the slow population increase is the absence of modern medicines and surgical techniques. That lack increases the mortality rate. They function adequately with herbal medicines.
“Why did you..” have such a long span of time between the chronology of the first books in the series? I like to follow the characters I have met before through the series.
~I apologize for that. It was not my intention for you to lose contact with characters you like. There is a continuity with some of the characters between The Founders (book one) and Divergent Paths (book two) as there is between the second book and The Unraveling (book three). The first two books are necessary not just for world building but to give you the feel of the incredibly long lives the sages live. From The Unraveling forward the characters flow from book to book. You meet Ree as a young sage in Divergent Paths. The next book Unraveling also has Ree but now she is an old woman. Erin, who is the main character in that third book is also the main character in books four and five. Currently there are five books written in the series and there will be a sixth but only the first three are out as yet. When you read the books you will find their stories form a tapestry weaving lives together throughout the series.
I hope this helps my readers. Feel free to add your questions in comments. I will answer them is I can without revealing a spoiler.
~ P.S. There will be a blog tour starting April 1, 2013. I will post details.
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