Guest Blogger: Kathy Bell

It’s my pleasure to welcome Canadian author Kathy Bell as the special guest blogger here today at Thoughts in Progress on her virtual blog tour.

Kathy is the author of REGRESSION, the first installment in the Infinion Series with the sequel, EVOLUSSION, just recently released. Here’s a brief synopsis of REGRESSION:

Fourteen-year-old Adya Jordan swears that before her head injury she was a forty-year-old mother of six. Is she going crazy, or did she really live through an entirely different life? 1985 is nothing like she remembers, although her first day of high school certainly is! A typical girl with atypical genes, Adya tries to recapture her old life, hiding her growing conviction that she has done this before. Memories of the man she loved and a family she adored haunt her, even though her future husband doesn’t even know she exists. Accidentally discovering the secretive Three Eleven Corporation might know more about her situation than she does, she is convinced the twenty-eight men heading up the company are responsible for the changes in her world. Adya finds her way into their ranks, journeying to the tropical island headquarters to begin an orientation into their prestigious internship program. The Three Eleven Company controls the development and distribution of Twenty-first Century technology brought with them from the future. Charged with the task of preparing the world for an impending disaster, each member of the team uses his scientific background to create a solution for a problem the planet does not know it is facing. They don’t have time to deal with a feisty young girl poking around. Banished to the frozen Canadian Shield for asking too many questions of CEO Abraham Fairfield, Adya finds the men in the underground city of Sanctum are interested in more than just her genes as they search for the answer to her presence in the timeline. In the end, Adya encounters a choice no mother should ever face: save

Kathy stopped by today to talk about “What if…?”

It is my favorite question. I love to speculate. When I read a newspaper article about a new scientific breakthrough or technological marvel, my mind goes into overdrive imagining where the discoveries will take us. Even for something as simple as driving my car to work, I do “what if”…I can go right and drive into the sun, or left and not, both being about the same distance so I calculate the repercussions in my mind and choose based on time of departure (left has more traffic), angle of the sun (right had more glare) and other factors. So of course as I watched my fourth child develop some interesting quirks I pondered, “What if…?” I wondered if she would have developed the same way if I was younger when she was born? Or if she was first-born instead of fourth? Or if I was not a teacher? The “what ifs” around Trinity bloomed into the concept behind REGRESSION.
 
REGRESSION is the story of a woman who is forced to live her life over again from age fourteen forward. Most of us have asked ourselves the question, “What would we change if we could do it over?” Adya Jordan does not want to change anything, which makes the choices she faces that much harder since she would prefer to go back to the life she had been living. I can identify deeply with Adya – ask anyone who knows me and has read the book, it is semi-autobiographical. Because I am surrounded by strong women (mother-lawyer, sister-doctor, sister-in-law-university professor), writing a strong-willed, competent female character just seemed to make sense. They say write what you know, and that is what I know! Other than Adya, no other characters were really based upon people I know except in a most superficial manner.

As a high school science teacher, I love science. Researching the concepts for REGRESSION really was not a chore for me, and because I already had a strong knowledge base prior to writing the story, the scientific research was just a matter of delving deeper into the relevant topics. Wiki is a great starting point-I tell my students they can use it as a launch pad for their research as long as they find actual sources to cite and not just Wiki. Because I have access to electronic journal libraries through school, I can use those sources for much of my research as well. I have not found much use for my dog breeding resources, but perhaps I’ll eventually write a book on that.

I am a packrat…digitally. Websites and articles which can be used again go into folders on my computer, printed as PDFs…I have layers of folders to organize all my resources into sub-categories. I think being organized is a science fiction author’s best tool, because you do need to use so many pieces of information in ensuring the validity of your scientific aspects, and want to access them again and again. With four kids, a bunch of dogs, a full-time job, horses, and now writing, organization is what lets me make more out of my 24-hour day than what many other people can!

EVOLUSSION, the sequel to REGRESSION, was recently released. Although I was able to write REGRESSION while on maternity leave with my youngest, I literally had to buy time to compose EVOLUSSION and owe my husband big-time for all the days he took the kids away to allow me peace and quiet. Not sure how I’m going to arrange time for REVOLUSSION, but be assured, it will be available on 11/11/11!

Kathy, thanks so much for guest blogging here today. I must say I’m jealous of how organized you are. I can barely keep up with the blogs I follow much less anything else. REGRESSION does make one stop and wonder “What if….?”

Now for a bit of background on Kathy. As I mentioned earlier, she is Canadian and has called the Georgian Bay and Lake Huron area home for her entire life but has found books a wonderful way to travel through time and around the world. She lives on 60 acres with an amazing view of the Owen Sound city skyline in one direction and the sheer cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment in the other.

Writing only became possible after checking off most other things on the to-do list of her life: marry high school sweetheart (check); get an awesome career as a high school science teacher (check); have four wonderful kids (check); build her dream home (check); be a successful entrepreneur (check); breed Canada’s top winning bulldog (check); get a herd of horses (check). With all of these activities providing fodder for her fertile imagination, Kathy began writing with one hand cradling a fussy baby while the other pecked at the keyboard. 
 
Her first novel, REGRESSION, peaked at number seventeen on the Amazon Science Fiction and Fantasy bestseller list as a new release, and remained on the charts for twenty-eight days. You can find out more about Kathy and her Infinion Series at infinionseries.com or at northernsanctum.com.