What central themes do you find irresistible in a novel?
Sometimes it's interesting to hear writers talk about a particular book they've written in terms of the themes they and their characters wrestle with in a given book. This also applies to what themes compel a reader as well. My debut speculative novel PROSPECT OF MY ARRIVAL is about a human embryo allowed to preview the world before deciding whether to be born. The central question hopefully raised in the mind of the reader is: If I know when I was about to be born everything that I know now about the world and life -- would I have chosen to be born? Or would I have asked to be returned to the gene pool to wait for a later arrival time and a better world? So at one level, the novel is about evolution . Are we evolving or backsliding? How do we create better, happier humans? Another question is how does our world, our species, look to the complete outsider ? Does earth throw out a welcome mat to newcomers? Or would a newcomer observe us for a few weeks and go...