Sci-Fi Author Gem Jackson #Interview
Gem Jackson Interview
1. Congratulations on your upcoming sci-fi release The Aggressive! It sounds amazing! Can you please tell us a little about the book and what inspired the plot?
The Aggressive is my attempt at an action packed, sci-fi thriller. I wanted to write a story that was first and foremost a piece of entertainment, but wasn’t just stringing tropes together. The book is set 150 years in the future and follows three people who are at the heart of the Solar System descending into war. There’s Anton Biarritz, a terrorist paid to carry out an attack on Earth, September Long, a brilliant but disgraced agent who has been on his case for a decade and Leon Wood, a young pilot who gets caught up in it all and just wants to make it out alive. By chance, they all end up on the same warship, The Aggressive, and the story unfolds from there.
I’ve always been fascinated by how significant events in history are played out by individuals who are just trying to solve their own local problems. For example, take Gavrilo Princip, who shot Franz Ferdinand in 1914. He didn’t know he was triggering a world war. He was acting as a part of his own cause of Yugoslavian nationalism, but circumstance put him at the centre of WW1. In the same way, I wanted to tell three personal stories that feed into a much larger narrative.
2. This is book one of the Titanwar saga. How many more books can we expect to see in the series? Do you have everything mapped out or are you more of a pansters?
In my head, it’s a four book series. I know where I’m going to end up and some of the major plot points, but not much more than that. My writing is always inspired by music, and a song that sits at the heart of the series is Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World. I love the idea of driving the stakes higher and higher for my characters, forcing them to make hard, complex choices. It’s just going to get worse for them as the series progresses.
In terms of planning, I tend to plot ten chapters at a time. I plan each chapter scene by scene, write them and move onto the next section. With The Aggressive I was really structured in some ways. Three parts, each made up of ten chapters, each chapter is three scenes and each scene is around a thousand words.
3. Let’s talk writing. What is one tip you wish you had known about publishing before you went through the process?
I wish I appreciated the importance of networking. It’s a horrible term, but the principle of working with other writers, reviewers, BookBloggers and so on is such an important one. For a start, it’s just really nice to be contributing to a community of talented people. As a writer, I get a lot out of it myself. Plus, it has the advantage that you’re not an unknown quantity when the time comes to publish your own book. If I had my time again, I’d be a lot more involved, a lot earlier on.
4. If your book were made into a movie, who would you want to play Leon Wood, Anton Biarritz, and September Long?
This is a great question, though my answer might be a bit odd as I can only answer for two of the three. For Anton, I’d want either Peter Capaldi or Michael Fassbender. If you’ve ever seen Peter Capaldi give a death stare on the BBC comedy The Thick of It, that’s Anton; tall, wiry, grey, charismatic, explosive. I’ve always imaged Anton as a kind of Harkonnen James Bond, if you’ll forgive the Bond-Dune mishmash. He’s brilliant and hands-on, but is utterly self-interested.
September is an interesting one. There’s an actress called Rebekah Staton who played a fantastic character, Della, on a TV show called Raised by Wolves. The character is a single-mother raising her daughters in her own style of working-class intellectualism. She’s super confident, glamorous albeit in her own way, and simultaneously terrifying and magnetic. Another great choice, especially given September’s Spanish heritage, would be Stephanie Beatriz.
For Leon—I have no idea. This might sounds strange for a writer, but I don’t have a picture of Leon in my head. Never have done. At the start of the story he’s just a gawky kid who is trying to make something of himself without dying. Let’s say either Asa Butterfield or Dev Patel. In a lot of ways he’s the antithesis of Ender Wiggins. I could never square how Ender was morally neutered in Ender’s Game. It’s as if Orson Scott Card wanted to have a military genius kid, who could end civilizations through strategic masterstrokes, but wanted him to be morally pristine at the same time, untainted by his actions and choices. Leon is the opposite of that. He’s going to have some big choices to make and he has to bear the responsibility for them.
5. When did you love of science fiction first develop?
Super early. I was the kid who read everything, growing up. Books, cereal boxes, whatever I could get my hands on. I remember sneakily reading Jules Verne and Alduous Huxley at night when I should have been sleeping aged 9 or 10. I’d already been introduced to Star Trek and Star Wars so it all just developed from there.
6. What is your favorite sci-fi book?
Dune, hands down. It’s not an especially creative answer, I know, but reading it as a young teenager was a transformative moment. I was blown away by this expansive, complete universe all found within the pages of a book. It’s a masterpiece of science fiction as a complex, multi-layered piece of art, wrapped up in a fine story. Whilst it’s not quite contemporary, I’d say Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy runs pretty close. Biotech is going to be such an important field in the near future and Atwood hits the nail on the head in her depiction of a dystopian bio-hacked society.
7. Okay, I may regret admitting this, but I prefer Star Trek over Star Wars. How about you?
I want both. Is that cheating? If we’re asking who would win in a fight? Star Wars. I’ve never understood why they don’t makes the ships bigger in Star Trek. It’s not like you’d run out of metal if there are thousands of systems to explore. Star Wars is such a great demonstration of scale through the Super Star Destroyers and the Death Star. Which universe would I like to live in, though? Star Trek. I’d be captaining (is that a verb?) a miranda class science vessel and avoiding Khan like the plague. The miranda classes are such cool looking ships.
8. Okay, this is my favorite question to ask writers. We all know writers have, um, interesting search histories. If the FBI seized your computer right now, what would they find on it that is “totally for research?”
There’s some pretty nasty stuff about torture and interrogation. Parts of The Aggressive deal with a military junta taking control of a population and asserting control, so I did a lot of research on what occurred when this happened in places like Argentina, Chile and Greece. Mrs J was reading the book a few days ago and as she got to a nasty bit, asked ‘What’s wrong with you? This is horrible!’ Luckily, I was able to reassure her that she shouldn’t be worried about me, but that some unpleasant stuff tends to go down when the wrong people take over a state. It’s all there in my internet search history.
9. Where can people find you online if they want to follow and support your work?
You can follow me on twitter as @gemjackson2, on facebook on my website where you can also sign up for my monthly mailing list.
10. Last chance! Anything else you’d like to include?
Just a big thanks to yourself for the interview & your readers who made it this far down the page! Look out for The Aggressive on pre-order and it’s release at the end of August.
