Then, my first book, A Thousand Words For Stranger, was published and did amazingly well. Almost immediately, readers wanted to know what happened next. So did my editor. I blinked in astonishment and offered an unrelated story, Beholder's Eye, instead. Again, it did well and readers wanted more about the main character, Esen. I was seeing a pattern.

So for my third book, my editor and I talked about a sequel. I already had something in mind, since, when I looked back at Thousand, I knew I'd dealt with the two protagonists but left the consequences of their actions to the imaginations of readers. Those consequences were interesting to me as well, so I was happy to write more.

Meanwhile, I had such fun writing about Esen, I was eager to keep going with her. Suddenly Changing Vision is out. So as a consequence of basically having a lot of fun and filling in what I hadn't put in my first books, I wound up with two ongoing series, The Trade Pact and Web Shifters. DAW has bought more books in each. Who knew?

There will be books outside either series. For one thing, I still have that drawer filled with ideas. So next out from me will be a standalone SF novel. This may become a trend. As I've discussed the future with my editor, it looks likely that I'll be doing a series title, then something new, then perhaps another series title, and so on -- as long as I'm enjoying it and so are readers. I apologize ahead of time for leapfrogging from one to the other, but I find it keeps me excited to think about new places and stories, while being able to revisit old favourites occasionally.

First and foremost, I'm a sense of wonder person. Writing about the far future lets me rip loose from the here and now in every way I want to imagine. I can have settings and aliens that let me pour out my own curiosity about what might be. In a real sense, my novels are where I play. As you can probably tell, it didn't actually occur to me which type of SF was more popular. If anything, I started writing because I couldn't find enough of what I wanted to read. Does the popularity of my novels mark a change? I can't say if it's a change so much as that I suspect there are other readers out there who haven't lost their sense of wonder either, and have been looking for science fiction that gives them the future through that lens.

Then I began writing science textbooks and other resources for classrooms. As you mentioned, I'd go into classrooms to do workshops on a variety of things, including what scientists were like. I used examples from SF literature as well as media SF to draw out students' preconceptions and ideas. Soon, I was delivering entire topics using SF, and it worked wonderfully. It didn't matter if the kids came into the classroom as SF readers or not -- the material has suffused our popular culture to the point where I always had some way of using SF to get their attention and focusing it where I wanted.

To me, the importance of introducing students to SF became not so much about its versatility, but how students' imaginations open up as they are exposed to the way science fiction explores ideas. To me, speculation and critical thinking about science are automatic. But many young people never think about science as a human activity, full of creativity and imagination, as well as consequences. They are facing a subject that can seem all-knowing and permanent, but science is neither. I've found SF readers to have minds supremely capable of absorbing change and seeing its potential -- good or bad. While I won't claim to have turned entire classrooms into such readers, I will say that after using SF with kids, their minds are much more flexible and they aren't afraid to challenge concepts. What more could you want?

In a broader sense, the issues that interest me most deal with biology and intelligence. I'm fascinated by the interactions between species on every level. Let's just say I don't see myself becoming bored any time soon.