One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.
This week, we bring you Pandora, author of the Pilgrim Chronicles, whose latest, Pilgrim and the Fall of Kings, is forthcoming!
Everyday People That Experienced Extraordinary Things
Writing speculative fiction began at an early age for me, after having read voraciously the works of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Frank Herbert. My specific interest narrowed to extraordinary events occurring to everyday people and the idea that you should be careful what you wish for.
Specifically, works that begin firmly rooted in reality but alter by the introduction of a supernatural event, which appealed to my need for plausibility.
H.G. Wells’ When The Sleeper Wakes had a profound impact on me as a young girl and its message was underscored when my family transitioned from affluence to destitution. The story tells of a man who falls asleep only to awake two hundred and three years later to discover he’s the richest man in the world. It leaves him disabused of the idea of what wealth means to him and its negative ramifications to those around him. Wells was a socialist and wrote about the issues between social class and economic disparity, which form a prominent part of my writing. It wasn’t the characters in the novel which inspired me, it was the premise. The idea that, given our desires are made manifest, what are the consequences?
There are many books which continue to inspire me which contain elements of the genre, such as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which is a cautionary tale and results in the main character realizing they want to change. Dickens was the quintessential writer in highlighting the inequalities within the society of his time and though much has changed for the better, interestingly, to me, those distinctions are now even more prevalent within education.
Another inspiration lies within various books of essays, such as Daedalus or Science and the Future written by J.B.S. Haldane in 1924 (where an initial address was given to the Heretics Society). Daedalus moves from solving the world’s food shortage problem to ecogenics, where children are born from artificial wombs. I was intrigued, as one might be upon seeing fire for the first time. As a questioner of a speculative fiction world, given my interest in anthropological science, physics and maths, it meant I was only able to willingly suspend my disbelief in those works which are systemically based in reality. I vastly enjoyed stories involving the pitting our species against odds which initially appear to be insurmountable and the adaptations and sacrifices we might make to achieve our goals and realize what we are capable of.
These are the ideas which continue to spark my inquisitive nature and tax me for original thought. It’s my passion to pursue answers to those fundamental questions to which we’re tasked on a moral level. The research field of human genetic manipulation, which lends its self to a degree of entitlement considerably less evidenced within other scientific disciplines, is the underlying subject I am most drawn to. I see our human frailties and our need to indulge our weaknesses to our own detriment. Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne, takes place in a dystopian world where biotechnology failures are discarded and left to fend for themselves within a hostile sub-human society, inspires me to write about the pitfalls of genome manipulation in all living things. I love to explore how our temporal lives are inextricably linked to our belief in a supernatural intervention which can save us — if we prove worthy.
Lastly, for me, Stan Lee covers a lot of the bases. Many of his characters begin as human, but through their need to evolve/alter, they’re willing to sacrifice who they are to achieve their goals, which results in a level of conflict they couldn’t have imagined. This distillation of our psychological facets resonates when I’m working on character development. Lee continued to profess time and again how important diversity and its tolerance is to our humanity and strength as a species, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.
Pandora was born Claire Pandora Gearty in North London.
At age eighteen, she received her first award for writing and moved to Brussels, where she joined the Brussels Shakespeare Company and was involved with broadcasting. She gained an American Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in Administrative Management upon her return to the UK.
In France, she finished her debut novel Pilgrim: The Balance, which was published in 2015 and has sold in over nine countries with impressive reviews. She has completed the movie screenplay for Pilgrim: The Balance, edited by L. Smith former Literary Editor for Lucas Film LA.
Pilgrim and the Geometry of Fear released 2016 and will be followed by Pilgrim and the Fall of Kings due 2020-21.
Pandora currently resides in Devon England with her husband and two daughters. You can visit her website here.
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