Women of Character – Citizen Meyer

Before we jump into the latest Women of Character interview, something from the newsfeed: In about a week, we’ll be revealing the cover for Wasteland Renegades…and other surprises! Keep checking the Warpworld comms or sign up for our non-spammy newsletter for a reminder. Now, on to the good stuff… On Ama’s world, women do not hold positions of power within the political system. And, as on our world, whenever a group of people has no political voice, those people exist at the bottom of the social ladder, sometimes resorting to extreme acts to claim their rights and freedom. Ama becomes…

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Women of Character – Leslie MacKeen, Cultural Theorist With a Heart

In Warpworld, Cultural Theorists travel across the dimensions to explore new worlds and blend in with Outer civilizations. It’s a dangerous job and only a handful of People are smart enough, or tough enough, to do it. On our world, travel to some parts of the globe is still considered exotic, glamorous, and, yes, sometimes dangerous. Leslie MacKeen, has traveled to many of those places, not to steal vita but to lend a helping hand. Fittingly, I met Leslie in 2003, in Costa Rica, while she was backpacking from the tip of South America to her home in the United…

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Women of Character – Skyrider Bobbi Powers

Where do fictional strong women come from? Well, they are partly imagined, but they are also inspired by lots of real life women of character. At the end of Warpworld, readers meet Rider Pilot Shan Welkin, who is also known as a skyrider. Today, I’d like you to meet real life skyrider Bobbi Powers. I met Bobbi on my first trek to Baja California Sur, Mexico, in 1998.  She was a pilot and a flight instructor, equal parts gutsy and sweet, and I liked her immediately. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of sailing, flying, hiking, and back-roading with Bobbi…

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Women of Character – My Han Solos

“I don’t want to be Princess Leia!” If you had been among the small group of neighbourhood boys with whom I played Star Wars, back in 1977, you would have heard this phrase a lot. We were, like most kids who were eight-years-old when Lucas’s opus came out, obsessed with Star Wars. For me, our re-creation of the world of Luke Skywalker was not just play, it was a portal to another dimension, a chance to become a swashbuckling space hero. The only setback to playing Star Wars was that, as the group’s only female, I was always cast as…

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The State of the (Warped) World

There is no such thing as a hiatus for Josh and I anymore. Even while Warpworld was getting ready to extrans to the real world, we were hard at work on the second book. Now that that manuscript is off to the copy editor, we paused long enough for some well-earned high-fives, then got right to work on outlining the third book. So, in case you’re wondering where we’re at, the second book is being copy edited, we’re working on things like the cover art and various blurbs, discussing an audio book version of Warpworld, and outlining the third book.…

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Ho Hum, Just a Photo of Warpworld on Everest…

OK, so I happen to be friends with mountain gurus/legends Tim and Becky Rippel. This spring marks Tim’s cajillionth season guiding climbers to the top of the world and his and Becky’s adventures over the years definitely rival Seg and Ama’s. My apologies to the Sherpa who had to lug Warpworld all the way to base camp! You can follow Peak Freaks Expeditions up Everest (and beyond) on their blog: Here! Oh, and Tim, since you’ve now taken up scuba diving, I expect a photo of you reading Wasteland Renegades from the bottom of the world. ~Kristene

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50 Ways to Save the Ocean

  Warpworld is not a book (or series) with a message. Let me be clear about that. No message. None. Zero. Zip. Josh and I did not sit down with an agenda when we wrote the first book. Heck, we didn’t even sit down with a plot outline. The story demanded to be told and we have spent the ensuing years as its helpless caj. In his recent review of Warpworld, author Noah JD Chinn captured our vision perfectly when he said… …the authors are simply laying these cultures out there as things that exist, rather than proxies for someone’s…

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Sex Equals Death – The Dangers of Breaking the Rules of Writing

In 1970,  The Five Man Electrical Band belted out the iconic “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” Sorry to say, 70’s rockers, things have only gotten worse since then. Rules, they’re everywhere. Art isn’t something we usually associate with rules, but every medium comes with its own set. Anyone remember Scream‘s The Rules of Surviving a Horror Movie? “Sex equals death?” Oh man, I’m dead. Yep, even when being chased by a masked, knife-wielding psychopath, there are rules. My brother, stage name Verbs, is…

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Ama and the Perils of Mexican Mouthwash

I’ve just returned from a six week camping adventure to Baja, Mexico, and points beyond, with my husband, Fred, and a group of friends.  Like the Warpworld protagonists Josh and I created,  I am an explorer at heart, always eager to see what’s around the next corner and try new things.  Whether joyous or disastrous, my travel experiences inform my writing, my characters, and the worlds I build. Perhaps no more so than with the character of Ama Kalder… as I was reminded during a recent run-in with a bottle of Mexican mouthwash. We were in the small, quaint town…

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A Government by the People and for the People

So who’s in charge of the World, anyway? Short answer? Nobody. Longer answer: The World is essentially anarcho-capitalism run amok. As is often seen in dystopian Cyberpunk storylines, the World is governed by a confluence of powerful interests. Each of the seventeen major city-states, which house millions of Citizens, is technically an independent political state with its own regulations. In practice, the city-states are perhaps the weakest players on the field. It is the layers above that conduct the true business of the World, leaving the city-states to the untidy, messy bureaucratic chores of handling the Citizenry and such public…

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