Q&A with Selso Xisto discussion

Go on, ask away!

Which was your favorite character to write and why?

Xavier was originally supposed to be the main man, but as his journey gets tougher, he becomes harder with it, and less of a sympathetic character. My favourite has to be Aja; she doesn't really ever know what the hell is going on around her and her motivations are so simple: she just wants to survive! I always had doubts over whether I could write good women characters so, fingers crossed!

Yeah, so far I'd say the MC's are Aja and Una, and Xavier is somewhere in their midst lol As a woman, I can attest you've written a good female character. :) I think Aja is cool because her motives are, like you said, so simple, but she's still a complex enough character. Una is devastating, and I tend to be drawn to those type of bittersweet sacrifices. lol All your chars have been very real to me and I'm only a quarter of a way in. That's something not every book manages.

Did you base any of your chars on people you know in real life?

That's good to know! In the beginning, Xavier was partly based on myself. Not because I'm scary or hard, but his introduction where he dreams of breaking the news to his mother. That was based on (a pretty awful!) short story I wrote a long time ago in the first person where I imagined telling my mum that I was going off into space. I'm a bit of an anomaly within my family! I've known lots of people from pretty wildly varying social classes and grew up in a very working class family; my parents were farmers before they came to England! So I like to think I'm not writing from a strictly middle class point of view. I hoped to capture a sense of that with Aja; so many stories of is nature are focused on the movers and shakers within a given fictional world, I thought it would be interesting to have a real foot soldier who actually doesn't know what's happening and doesn't really have a say in proceedings. I guess the main characters are an amalgamation of all the strange people I've met!

Very cool. I like the foot soldier point of view. It's very "eye level" with the war going on.

So where did the concept of the cover come from? And how many covers did you go through until you found one you like?

Rainy's wrote: "Very cool. I like the foot soldier point of view. It's very "eye level" with the war going on.

So where did the concept of the cover come from? And how many covers did you go through until you fo..."

The cover was a lot of fun; I created it out of photos I took out of the window of a plane over Portugal! Photoshop is awesome :D
I thought the cloud tunnel image was really striking and its a pretty core setting in the story so it felt like a perfect fit. I did LOTS of versions of the cover before I was happy. Originally I was working on a close-up of a woman's eye with the gas-giant planet reflected in it, but I couldn't get the effect to look photo-real enough or stylised enough to stand out. Plus it felt kind of cliched. I'm really happy with the final design, I'm lucky that working in TV means I work with a lot of awesome designers so a lot of their sensibilities (and photoshop tips!) rub off on me.

That's an awesome way to get a cover! I have a question :D Why did you choose science fiction as your chosen genre? Was it an easy or hard genre to write in?

Thanks :D
I had no choice in the matter. Although I've dabbled with other genres in terms of what I read, I was only ever going to write science fiction; its the one I love and I don't see any point in writing in a genre you don't love. I think it is the most criminally underrated genre of them all!!!

I'm mystified by the snobbery against scifi in a lot of literary circles; I think its a really hard genre to write well. You can't just 'make everything up'; you have to build a WORLD - a consistent world with its own consistent rules, social conditions, politics, etc. It requires an immense amount of thought and effort. The reward however, is that the setting itself is part of the story. I would feel my imagination far too constrained by trying to write in another genre.

Good question, Bri!

Do you think Particle Horizon will be continued into other books, novellas, short stories, etc? Or is it intended to be a stand alone only?

I wrote Particle Horizon with the intention of it being a complete, enclosed story... having said that... The original Star Wars movie was meant to stand alone too, despite Lucas' later proclamations! ;p
I have lots of ideas of where I could take the story further; if the book does reasonably well, I will be very tempted to continue the story. When you read the ending I think you'll agree that it's full of possibilities!

Have you thought about doing spin-offs? This last year I've been experimenting with stories that are set in the same universe, but focus on other smaller characters (and in Rowlandos' case, having some fun with them) and expand my universe. Have you ever thought to dabble?

Hi John, I have definitely thought of doing spin-offs though I have to admit being a little cagey at the moment as to what the next project will be! I put so much work into building the universe and in particular the whole LightBringer cult (which I think still has immense untapped potential) that it would be surprising if I didn't expand it at some point. Having said that, I spent so long inhabiting this universe that my creative side has itchy feet and wants to try something totally different. I'll keep you posted!

Describe your writing process.

I tend to splurge out a few pages and then re-write and chip away until I'm happy. I find inspiration comes in short bursts so I tend to try and get as many of the ideas and themes I come up with down on the page before I forget. Particle Horizon was a particularly complex story and I gave myself a lot of headaches to fix during the editing stage! I'm happy with the final result though, it all made sense to me!

I worked out a rough chapter outline at the beginning with a clear arc for each character to follow through to the conclusion but found this changed a lot as I got underway. It helped to tie everything together though. I also kept separate note files on each character and lists with specs and distances, etc, to keep all the scifi elements as consistent as possible.