A New World by Augustina Van Hoven

The Write Way Café welcomes Augustina Van Hoven, who shares her process for world building.

How many of you grew up watching space movies like Star Wars or television shows like Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Farscape, or Babylon 5?  I did.  Anytime a new science fiction show came on television, I would be sitting in front of my set watching all the fascinating characters and all the places they traveled to.  It was a childhood fantasy of mine to also go to the planets in all these stories and see everything for myself, to have some of the adventures that the characters were having, and be someplace other than earth.  I read a lot of science fiction books too, from authors like Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Larry Niven.  It took me a while but last spring I finally started laying the ground work for my own futuristic romance series called A New Frontier.

The series takes place approximately one hundred years into the future, the moon and Mars have been colonized and earth’s residents are moving farther out into the universe.  The series will follow the colonists aboard the Starship Halcyon, from the preparation to leave earth and the misfortunes that befall them along the way and after they land.

World building is an essential part of any futuristic novel.  There were so many details to keep track of that I had to start a special story bible.  Besides the human characters, I had to figure out what sort of sentient beings live on the different planets?  What are the physical characteristics of each planet?  What are their political systems?  What are their religious beliefs?  Which species get along with each other and which ones don’t?  What do they eat?  What type of housing do they have?  Is it above ground or below?  In short, each civilization had to be constructed from scratch.  It saves a lot of time to have it all written down and easily researchable.  I use excel spreadsheets organized by categories for all the things I need to keep track of.

My first story in this new world was for the anthology, Pirates (A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology Book 3).  The prequel for the series is a novella called The Last Christmas on Earth.  The first novel will be out on April 24th and it’s titled A Scattering of Seeds.

Do you enjoy reading science fiction romance?

Augustina Van Hoven was born in The Netherlands and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, two dogs and three cats.  She is an avid reader of romance, science fiction and fantasy.  When she’s not writing she likes to work in her garden or in the winter months crochet and knit on her knitting machines. 

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