I got nominated for this by RJ Barker and apparently bad things happen to you if you don’t answer the questions and pass it on. So, fingers crossed, here goes…
What is the working title of your book?
I’m currently putting the finishing touches to the second book of my Apollo Quartet, The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself. It needs a little more work in places, but my beta readers all think it is a stronger work than the first book of the quartet, Adrift on the Sea of Rains, which pleases me.
Where did the idea for the book come from?
I blogged about this in a series of post on the Whippleshield Books blog – Genesis of Apollo parts one, two and three.
What genre does your book fall under?
Literary hard sf. Or “art house hard sf”, as one person has described it.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
If Steve Forrest were a couple of decades younger, he’d be perfect for the lead role.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A scientific station on an exoplanet, humanity’s only presence outside the Solar System, has vanished and they send the first man on Mars to find out what happened to it.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It will be published by Whippleshield Books, which is, er, my own small press.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
About four months. It’s a 22,000-word novella, but it required a lot of research.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I’m not sure there are any. Outside the genre, Ascent by Jed Mercurio, perhaps.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landings – see Genesis of Apollo parts one, two and three. But elements of the plot of The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself were specifically inspired by Lavie Tidhar’s review of Adrift on the Sea of Rains (see here).
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It suggests a reason for the Fermi Paradox.
Nominate five people to roll this onto
I shall cheat as RJ Barker did, and nominate a single person – Neil Williamson, who writes excellent short fiction and has even been known to enjoy an Opeth song or two on occasion.
It Doesn't Have To Be Right... 
October 24, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Not because I feel at all responsible for pointing some deranged lunatic to your blog door but rather, because the first of the quartet was so damn unexpectedly good – please put me down for any pre-order nonsense on the second and get cracking.
Unexpected, not because I thought you the author was some sf clown-monkey cobbling a few bits of cardboard loo-roll holder and tinfoil taken from his anti-radiation/shower cap – and having made a novella from its less than whole and definitely non-heat resistant material – but because I’ve been pretty much unable to find any sf in the market that has made me happy for the past several decades.
Now that I’ve found at least one such author, and who is still alive, I’m all for chaining you to a desk and keeping you there in perpetuity until I’m unable to read or death takes you to that great low earth orbit in the sky.