10 books like Revenger

I first stumbled on the idea of colonizing space when I read Adrian Berry's The Next Ten Thousand Years and T.A. Heppenheimer's Colonies in Space, back in the late 1970s. In those post-Apollo, pre-Space Shuttle years, colonizing outer space seemed inevitable. I was hooked: this stuff was real, and it was going to happen. It might even happen to me. But living in space isn't very exciting to read about. Of course, just a few years after reading those books I was watching Indiana Jones dodge deathtraps in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Combine the two: space colonies full of danger and surprises are much better!

I first stumbled on the idea of colonizing space when I read Adrian Berry's The Next Ten Thousand Years and T.A. Heppenheimer's Colonies in Space, back in the late 1970s. In those post-Apollo, pre-Space Shuttle years, colonizing outer space seemed inevitable. I was hooked: this stuff was real, and it was going to happen. It might even happen to me. But living in space isn't very exciting to read about. Of course, just a few years after reading those books I was watching Indiana Jones dodge deathtraps in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Combine the two: space colonies full of danger and surprises are much better!

I first stumbled on the idea of colonizing space when I read Adrian Berry's The Next Ten Thousand Years and T.A. Heppenheimer's Colonies in Space, back in the late 1970s. In those post-Apollo, pre-Space Shuttle years, colonizing outer space seemed inevitable. I was hooked: this stuff was real, and it was going to happen. It might even happen to me. But living in space isn't very exciting to read about. Of course, just a few years after reading those books I was watching Indiana Jones dodge deathtraps in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Combine the two: space colonies full of danger and surprises are much better!

Before I even started writing my outline, I spent four months researching everything I could on quantum entanglement. I read textbooks, watched seminars and lectures, and even went to Tokyo, Japan to visit the quantum physics exhibition at a museum! I have immersed myself in time travel novel, films, and even music (i.e., Electric Light Orchestra’s Time album, where my novel gets its title from—track #2 on the album is “Yours Truly, 2095”) since I was very young. I even gave a presentation to the Library of Congress on the differences between time travel with engineering and time travel with physics.

I’m a YA fantasy writer, and I’ve been addicted to stories of adventure for as long as I can remember. My love of story filled me with a heart for other worlds and realms and a fondness of reading things that challenged my heart and mind here in the real world. Stories are what make us human, and we storytellers are tasked with challenging readers’ assumptions about how the world, life, love, and humanity works. My obsession with story-telling led me to write my YA fantasy series The Annals of Lusiartha. 

As a massive nerd from a very young age, I have always gravitated towards science and sci-fi stories. When it comes to YA and NA novels, most tend to be dystopian fiction or borrow heavily from fantasy. Hard sci-fi scenarios and real scientific speculation are hard to come by. When well-researched science meets an awesome storyline, that is my definition of perfection—what I love reading and also what I strive for as a writer. 

As a massive nerd from a very young age, I have always gravitated towards science and sci-fi stories. When it comes to YA and NA novels, most tend to be dystopian fiction or borrow heavily from fantasy. Hard sci-fi scenarios and real scientific speculation are hard to come by. When well-researched science meets an awesome storyline, that is my definition of perfection—what I love reading and also what I strive for as a writer. 

I took an introduction to philosophy class in college and the professor showed us how to think about thinking. Can you know something if it’s actually untrue? Can people in a universe with an omniscient god who knows what they’re going to do have free will? Are there universal principles of justice, or is justice based on circumstances? The class changed my taste in reading. I’d read science fiction and fantasy since I was a child, but after this class, I looked for fiction that made my brain hurt but also told a wonderful story. I try hard to meet this standard in my own fiction.

I’m a criminal defense attorney, mom, and wife who grew up along Lake Michigan in Wisconsin and lived there for 35 years, staring out at the vast water of the “Inland Seas” aka The Great Lakes. Intrigued by pirates, the criminals of the water, and the stories of pirates roaming the lakes, when I began writing fiction, I absolutely had to write a modern pirate series set in the area where I grew up. I’ve read dozens and dozens of historical non-fiction books about pirates, watched all the classic films and shows about them, and have read pirate romances my entire life, so writing my own was the next logical step.

I am the author of over twenty books for children, including National Bestseller Unicorn Day and the sequel, Unicorn Night: Sleep Tight, as well as Help Mom Work From Home!, Goodnight Veggies (a Jr. Library Guild Selection), and One Snowy Day. My poems have appeared in many anthologies and children’s magazines, such as Highlights and Spider. I grew up in New York City and still live nearby with my firefighter husband, two children, and a dancing dog.