Greta van der Rol

The first book I ever wrote is ‘The Iron Admiral’. I read it again just the other day, after not having touched it for the good part of a year. And I must say, I enjoyed the read. Very much. Sure, I tweaked a little. (I’m a writer. You always want it to be the very best.) But not much. So yes, I’m pretty happy with my work.

 Mind you, I thought it was pretty good when I finished the book maybe two years ago. I started writing it probably four years ago. I cringe a little at the memory. It reeked of Jedis and superior mental powers, all by other names, of course. All that got tossed out quite early, rest assured, never to resurface.

It was always going to be about an admiral and a conflict with an alien race, though. And a girl. I didn’t think about it at the time but really it was inevitable that I’d end up with star-crossed lovers. It makes me smile, now, when I think about my amazement – and yes, embarrassment, when I recognised I’d written a Romance!! I read ‘serious’ science fiction as well as fluff like Star Wars; Asimov was a long-time favourite, as was Arthur C Clarke and many others. These days it’s Jack Mc Devitt and Elizabeth Moon. I suppose, in reality, I read some romance books, too. But never the Mills & Boon types where the romance was the whole story.

Still and all, after I’d accepted that’s what I’d written, I went along for the ride. Certainly the characters in the book I read the other day are not the same as the ones I started off with. They’ve grown and changed and in parts of the story, they simply told me that’s NOT how it would have happened. He wouldn’t have done that; neither would she. I listened to my characters and I feel I’ve ended up with a good book.

And now I feel I can go and finish the second book, “The Admiral’s Choice’. They deserve to be together.