Ebook Author Month: Manda Benson

Scientist turned author Manda Benson joins us today. When the Zombocalypse arrives, you’ll find her battling the hungry undead with recurve bow. Flying fatality, babies!

Her book, Pilgrennon’s Beacon, the first in a tetralogy, and it’s a technothriller featuring a protagonist with an autistic spectrum disorder, aimed at adult and YA readers.

GL: Hi, Manda, and thanks for dropping in. You mentioned that you’ve been writing since you could hold a pen.

Manda: When I was very young, I remember trying to ‘draw’ writing on a piece of paper with a felt-tip pen. “It’s writing,” I told my mother. “No it isn’t,” she said. When I started school, my grandfather gave me a big diary, one of those old sorts bound in fake leather, and I wrote stories about a nice werewolf and his friends in it. From then on it was a bad habit I couldn’t break.

GL:  I love werewolves. I’m all about Team Furry (shape shifters). What’s your preferred Team?

Manda: While I enjoyed writing about things that didn’t need an explanation when I was young, I’m more of a science-fiction writer today. I do love wolves and dogs, though, and one of the books in my Beasts series will have a science-fictional take on a wolf-human. I think I would have to go with the Cyber Team of mind-to-machine brain implants, if I had to pick one.

GL: Ooh, a new Team. I like it. Tell us more about your Beast series, please.

Manda: Beasts is a science-fiction-erotica trilogy that explores the nobility of animals and the often beastliness of humans, set in the next century when people are starting to colonise other places in the Solar system. The central premise of these books is brain implant technology that allows people in professions such as the military and police to interface directly to working animals, for example horses and dogs. The first book, Moonsteed, is published by Lyrical Press and available in electronic format. It’s about an action heroine and a timid scientist who are struggling to solve some strange goings-on around a settlement on one of Jupiter’s moons. As it’s partly erotica, it does contain graphic scenes of a sexual nature that some readers may find offensive.

GL: I’m glad you brought up the offensive topic. Do you think we, meaning people in general, are getting a little too gungho about finding things offensive? For myself, if I find something offensive, I just won’t read or watch it. And I’m not talking about illegal offensiveness, like sexually preying on young children. That shouldn’t be just ‘offensive’ to anyone, as it’s just plain wrong and horrible. But fiction (let’s be clear I don’t mean non-fiction works) isn’t real life, so I kind of think people going off about what they find offensive in stories over the top.

Manda: Yes, I do think a lot of people these days take being offended a bit too far. On the other hand, we have a justifiable right to be offended by things that intrude on our privacy or freedom. I think so long as what someone is doing only affects that person and other consensual parties, nobody else has any business being offended by it.

As a non-religious person, one thing I find incredibly offensive is a religious person trying to foist their beliefs on me or judging people who don’t belong to their religion by their own moral values, but that doesn’t mean I have anything against people being religious or practising religion with other likeminded people. In the end, every individual needs to work out what they specifically want from life and how best to achieve that. Whether they do it worshipping gods or engaging in consensual BDSM is their choice and theirs alone.

In terms of writing, publishers generally refuse to publish books that glorify or excuse sexual acts where one party is unable to give informed consent (such as people having sex with children, animals, or dead bodies), so you’re unlikely to find illegal activities of that nature in most fiction. The great thing about small publishing is that publishers are much more willing to take gambles with niche markets, and you can find good fiction about all kinds of diverse and interesting lifestyles, such as fetishes and transsexuality.

GL:  I adopted The Chihuahulhu. He runs my life with an iron paw. Do you have any pets?

Manda: Yes, I have a pink tarantula and two blue ones, two savage guard rabbits, an axolotl, and a standard poodle. Lots of people who have never met my dog have told me they don’t like her because poodles are for ninnies. I assure them she does everything any other dog can do, with the possible exceptions of moulting hair everywhere and smelling bad when she gets wet.

GL: Tarantulas come in blue and pink? I knew you could find them in rose…

Manda: Blue, and pink.

GL: Holy cows on crack. Huh. Well, now that you’ve taught me something new for the day, I suppose I’d better let you get back to your writing. Thanks for coming, Manda!

Manda: Thanks very much, I enjoyed answering your interview questions. Most of the ones I’ve had have just been a list of set questions and not so interactive!

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Find Manda at the following places: