Author interview - Rene Astle

And her super secret pen name

Yes, that’s really me. I believe that’s my dad’s finger telling me I should be looking at the camera. This is the only picture from the photo booth, so I guess I decided I wasn’t going to do that.

I think I’ve always been an author. Or at least a creator of worlds. Not my earliest memory but one from maybe late elementary school has me lying on the living room floor with a ceramic lobster and a couple of stuffed animals. In front of me was an old school tape recorder on which I was recording an undersea news radio program all by my lonesome, with voices and everything.

I came to science fiction and fantasy early as well. My mom reading either The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Hobbit as a bedtime story is one of my earliest memories. I mention in my bio that between that and my dad’s interest in science and space, I was destined to be a scifi and fantasy writer.

I wrote throughout my childhood. Then I went to university and it all ground to a halt. I still wrote, but I wrote about books rather than writing them myself.

Q: What inspired you to write your latest series?

A lot of my stories start with a scene in my head. I don’t know anything about the characters or the setting, but the story builds as I ask questions about them, where they are, and what they’re doing there. Sometimes there is no story there, but in this case there was. That scene had a ship’s engineer, a muscled-bound fighter, and a slight crew member with hair falling over his eyes: Tink, Alek, and Ish. In the end that scene didn’t make it into the book. The story evolved as I got to know the characters.

The Bloodborne Pathogens series (which I write under my super secret pen name) started in a similar way, although in this case this scene occurred in a dream. There was a vampire escaping into a church – what? Why?

Q: Super secret pen name?

When publishing my first book, I had this thought that I shouldn’t publish under my own name, so I came up with a sort of pen name: C. Rene Astle. When I published scifi, “they” recommended that I shouldn’t use the same name as for the urban fantasy. I realized that was going to be too much trouble, so I kept my scifi name mostly the same but simplified. I should have just used one name from the start. Lessons learned.

Q: What do you enjoy most about writing scifi and fantasy? Reading it?

As a writer, I love the opportunity it gives me to explore worlds that don’t exist and make up new creatures, or let me riff on mythological monsters.

Q: As a reader, what draws you to a book?

I am absolutely a sucker for a good cover.

I absolutely picked up Cinder (from Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles) because of the cover. Same with Persephone Station. And Station Eternity … though I did also have a recommendation on this one. I see a commonality in these three.

Though I grabbed A Memory Called Empire based on a cover + recommendation combo. I loved the grandness of it.

I’m sure there are others I can’t think of right now. Every year, I say I’m going to track the books I read … and every year I fail.

Q: If you had the opportunity to live anywhere in the world for a year while writing a book set in that place, where would you choose?

That’s a good question, and a hard one to answer. If I have to choose a place, I’d probably say Istanbul. There’s so much history there, and it’s at a crossroads of worlds and cultures. I’d love to visit Gobekli Tepi and Çatalhöyük while I was in Turkey. And then there’s the food.

Hmm, I’m not sure I’d actually get much writing done.

Q: What behind-the-scenes tidbit in your life would probably surprise your readers the most?

I sew and crochet. I ferment things (non-alcoholic) and grow beans (as well as some other things). I love jigsaw puzzles. There’s not a lot of that that comes through in what I write. It feels like those should be the hobbies for a cozy mystery author … though I want to write a scifi cozy mystery!

Q: What’s on your TBR shelf?

I recently finished Eating to Extinction, which made me want to read more about the history of food so I another book about that (if you have any recommendations, let me know), though the library just delivered Station Eleven and An Immense World at the same time.

Station Eleven has been recommended many times, and I started An Immense World earlier this year but didn’t get through it before the library took it back, so I had to get back on the wait list. It’s a fascinating book about animal senses.

Q: What’s up next for you as a writer?

Well, I’ll be writing another book in The Lyra Cycle, but first I want to tackle a couple of short stories. One is set in that same universe, and tells the tale of how the cat, Grim, came to be aboard the Lyra. The other is a spin-off from my urban fantasy series, following one of the characters from that series as she sets out on her own.

---

If you aren’t a subscriber, now is a great time to sign up.

Don’t forget—for this month only you can get upgrade to a paid annual subscription for 50% off