Three books, or a thousand pages or so, and I hope to have Abigail’s story down. For a future series, I’m toying with the idea of advancing the clock forward on Northern Arcadia by a thousand years or thereabouts. Not least among the attractions: the ability to forecast technologies and fads of the near future. Stuff like…

• Cosmetic skin packs
• Personal biometric scanners
• Camera contact lenses
• Clean room parties
• Global pharmaceutical trusts
• Universal control sticks
• Bulletproof fashion
• Personality mining
• Private police forces
• Flash clubs
• Permanent nervous system migration
• Professional retraining centers
• World universities

How would the Sisters of the Moon respond to advances like those? Not to mention the rise of rationalism, the suffragette movement, the sexual revolution… fertile ground for speculation, I think.

‘Speculative fiction’ describes what I aim to do better than ‘sci fi’ or ‘fantasy.’ What if you had proof that gods existed? How would that change the way you approach faith and religion? More urgently, what if you had the choice between personal happiness or worldly power?