Author Interview: O R Lea

Iseult: I’m very excited to have the author of Riebeckite and Torpor’s End, O.R. Lea. stop by the blog today to answer some questions about the Bruised Moon Sequence. 

Welcome, O.R.  I’m a big fan of your work and I loved Torpor’s End. It’s even better than Riebeckite!

I love the riebeckites. They are very unique, fascinating and absolutely terrifying! What inspired these alien particles?

O.R.: I very distinctly remember being at work, in a portacabin set up as a asbestos bulk analysis lab, pondering the old adage that you should write what you know. Looking down the microscope at asbestos fibres all day for weeks on end gave me the idea of an asteroid made of something like asbestos hitting the earth and creating a huge health risk for humans. Thing is, that’s not really all that scary or exciting, so I started thinking about alien threats I’d seen elsewhere in scifi horror – nanobots, the Andromeda virus, parasitic species of the cordyceps fungus – and looked for a gap to fill in that spectrum. I remember picturing the alien asbestos forming great coral reefs on earth…which was when I remembered that coral is actually made up of millions of tiny creatures, and I found my direction.

Iseult: You’ve certainly created something original, fascinating and scary. I loved how they developed from book one to book two. I can’t wait to find out what book 3 has in store!

You have created such a believable future that I’m convinced you have actually travelled in time to 2078 and are reporting rather than making things up! How detailed are your notes for keeping all the world-building in order?

O.R.: Probably less detailed than you’d think! I am a heavy plotter, for sure, in the sense that all my novels start off as big documents full of notes that gradually get overwritten by prose. Some of the world-building happens at the planning stage, as I draw in elements I know I want to include. For example, the prologue of Riebeckite draws a lot of inspiration from the real-life pogroms of Baku and Sumgait. The whole idea of Azerbaijan being a powerful US ally that has annexed the majority of Iran is really just an extension of the modern history of Israel – a fact acknowledged when Zareen refers to Azerbaijan as America’s “Israel of the Caususes”. 

Aside from that, most of the world-building happens when I get to a point in the story where I know I need things to be a certain way, and I ask the question “How could they plausibly have got that way?” Then I work backwards as far as I need to. Of course, in doing so, I sometimes find that it makes connections that inspire other ideas or plot elements. An example of that is how, in the book setting, drones are a ubiquitous part of life, used for delivery and all sorts, which provided a rather creative way for Tahira to fend off a quadcopter pursuit in Riebeckite.

I’d never dream of saying there is a right or wrong way to do world-building, but I feel like this is the right way for me. Not least of all because it avoids the temptation to try to shoe-horn world-building elements you’ve worked hard on and are proud of, whether or not they really serve the plot. Another thing I keep in mind about world-building is that we learn about the world through the characters, who always have biases and limitations of their understanding. This is an excellent opportunity to tie world-building to character, as the way the world is revealed to you through different characters tells you something about those characters.

Iseult: That’s a good point. I love your future tech. Speaking of drones, they come in useful in Torpor’s End too.

I love how Riebeckite is primarily set in Azerbaijan and Iran, and Torpor’s End has characters in Somalia, among other places. Where did you start your research for these countries and cultures?

O.R.: The early incarnations of Riebeckite involved the asteroid actually hitting Earth, and I wanted that to happen in a large body of inland water which would become the main location for the story to unfold. I decided on the Caspian sea, which in turn prompted the choice of Azerbaijan as the setting. I love learning about different parts of the world, and I always try to make contact with some people from the country I’m writing about, learn a bit of the culture and language. (Most readers will have noticed that language is a favourite theme of mine.) Azerbaijan inspired me hugely, so I wanted to keep the location there even when I moved the asteroid impact to the moon.

Learning about Azerbaijan inevitablty led me to learn about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Armenia. Reading some of the heartbreaking stories surrounding that seeded the idea of the protagonist forming a friendship across the conflict border, which of course developed into Tahira and Zareen’s friendship. Unfortunately, whilst I was writing Riebeckite, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict flared up again and I decided it would be insensitive to use it directly. So I invented a fresh new fictional conflict with Iran for Tahira to form a friendship across.

As much as people are wary of it, I think Wikipedia is an incredible source for writers. As long as you accept its limitations, it’s fantastic for going off down a rabbit-hole of information and often coming back with something that’s inspired you. But there is no substitute for talking to real living people, and listening to them for details and anecdotes you can use. For example, my friends in Voronezh (the ones who produced the photo series of Tahira) post things on social media that tell me details about Russia I would never have learned from just reading: such as that they have a popular and unique type of coffee called a “Raf” with a rather interesting origin story, or the fact that in Russian memes, cats refer to their humans as “leathers”. Obviously those are not details which made it into my books (yet!) but they are the sort of thing you can hear and then drop into your story to give it extra authenticity.

Iseult: Leathers! I look forward to you using that in a future book. 

Tahira is a great main character. I love her loyalty to Zareen, her compassion, and her intelligence. How did she come about?

O.R.: Like so many things, Tahira became what she is mostly through a series of decisions about what I didn’t want her to be. The words “strong female protagonist” have almost lost all meaning due to overuse, and I didn’t want her to become the sort of character who starts off as a mild-mannered librarian and later turns into Jason Bourne. So really Tahira is a product of me trying to find a path between all of the overdone tropes and traits, and the result is, I think, actually a very ordinary woman who has to rise to extraordinary circumstances.

I also knew I wanted to portray a realistic scientist: not the movie kind who have ‘eureka’ moments and make huge-ground breaking discoveries every day, but the real-life kind who spend most of their time doing very repetitive, thankless tasks (like trudging around in the mud collecting riebeckite samples).

Imperfections and flaws are what make people interesting, and so, for example, when a colleague of mine told me she was seeing a hypnotherapist about her ornithophobia, I immediately thought how interesting it would be for a character to be afraid of birds in a world where drones are always flitting overhead.

Iseult: I wouldn’t call Tahira ordinary, but she certainly is believable. 

I would love to see Riebeckite and Torpor’s End turned into movies (or a tv series would be even better!). Who would be your dream director/studio/casting?

O.R.: I think Edward Zwick would do a great job of directing it, not least of all because Blood Diamond is one of my favourite movies and, along with District 9, captures the sort of ‘feel’ I’d love for these stories.

In terms of casting, I saw Xaria Dotson in Devil in Ohio and thought she’d be perfect for Tahira. If one factors in that it would probably take a few years to get from movie deal to production, she’s the perfect age too. Iranian actresses in the right sort of age range are hard to come by, but perhaps someone like Kimiya Hosseini. (If you disregard age, then I think Tala Ashe would be perfect.)

Iseult: Great choices.  

What are you working on at the moment? 

O.R.: Right now, the tombola that is my brain is still spinning and I’m waiting to see what falls out. There’s a cool “ghost ship in space” idea that I’m quite excited about, but I’ve also got a more literary piece that I’ve been working on for years. I still haven’t decided if it has any commercial value, but it’s the book I have to write before I die.

Iseult: They both sound great, and I look forward to reading them, as well as the third book in the Bruised Moon Sequence, which I hope will be published soon.

Thank you, O.R., it was lovely interviewing you and fascinating to learn more about your process.

Torpor’s End is the exciting second book in the Bruised Moon Sequence and is available for purchase as both an ebook and a paperback.