Originally from Western Australia, Leonie now lives in NSW in the Upper Hunter. She is the author of “Frontier Incursion” (YA Speculative Fiction) published in October 2012 by Hague Publishing, and also works part time as a physiotherapist. She dabbles in poetry, and has had a short story published in Antipodean SF.
Frontier Resistance, part two of the Frontier Trilogy was published on the 3rd of October 2014, and she has also finished the first draft of the concluding book. They’re full of glow-in-the-dark cats who like to sleep on the bed, alien invaders, and a planet out to kill the unwary.
She has a past life as a volunteer firefighter and State Emergency Service member, and once trekked almost six hundred kilometres with eight camels and several other human beings. She is married with two late teen kids, two dogs and two cats, one of whom frequently handicaps her ability to use a laptop computer.
Twitter: @RaeYesac
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The much awaited sequel to Frontier Incursion.
The Garsal have landed and Frontier has changed forever. Now Shanna and her friends must master their new gifts that will enable them to seek out the alien invaders before they enslave her world.
On the plateau the Council under Tamazine (the Senior Councillor) allies with the Starlyne race. Only united do the Scouts, their starcats, and the Starlyne have any chance of surviving, but Tamazine's distrust of the alliance creates a fatal weakness.
Below, the Garsal plot. They need a new pool of human slaves to expand their empire, but first, they must locate the humans already on Frontier and subdue them. Time is running out for both invader and settler, and the outcome hangs in the balance.
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Q) What inspired you to write this story?
This story has been percolating for a long time. I first had the idea for the story over twenty years ago. In my mind’s eye, I saw a young girl scaling a cliff above a dangerous jungle. I immediately knew that the girl’s name was Shanna, that the jungle Below was very dangerous, and that there were aliens involved. I’ve always loved Science Fiction and Fantasy, and as I thought about it, more and more images appeared, and I eventually wrote them down.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
Frontier Resistance took about a year to write, however it’s Book 2 in the Frontier Series, and as such, part of a greater story. When I began to write what became Frontier Incursion, the first book, I naively thought that I’d get the whole thing done in one book. Somewhere between 130,000 and 150,000 words I realised that that idea was incorrect, and had to decide where to stop. That book became Frontier Incursion. This one follows almost directly on from that stopping point, and I’ve just finished Frontier Defiant, Book 3. That’s the end of this trilogy, and the end of what I originally began to write, but when you add them all up, it’s about 390,000 words and five years!
Q) What is your favourite thing about writing?
My favourite thing about writing is the adventure of loving my characters and becoming completely involved in the story. Because I’m a sequential writer who knows the starting and ending points and some, but not all, of the major plot points that happen along the way, there’s always room for the characters to move. I love the moment (usually in the shower or while drinking coffee) when I have an epiphany about something that’s happening or will need to happen down the track.
Q) What is your least favourite thing about writing?
My least favourite thing about writing is killing off some of my characters. It may sound ridiculous to some of you, but I become attached to them. The problem is, that when your characters are living on a dangerous planet that’s being invaded by a warlike species of alien, human beings (and starcats) get hurt. I’m a bit pathetic actually. I cry when I kill my characters. In fact, sometimes I cry when I just injure them badly…
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
Now, that’s a tricky one! I have too many people I’d like to be! So far I’ve thought about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien because I’d love to know what went on inside their minds, but no, I don’t think I’d want to be them. Possibly Emmeline Pankhurst - mainly because I’m a bit of a feminist, and she embodies the passion of the early feminists when she was leading the campaign for women in the UK to have the vote. We owe a lot to our early feminists. They put their lives on the line in order to point out that women are human beings too.
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
Now, that’s a scary question. Fortunately I recently cleaned out the fridge so it’s not too embarrassing! However, there are some fairly elderly jars of mustard pickles and Christmas Chutney that I made about this time last year… I’ve been looking at them wondering if I dare take the lids off and taste. They could be good, or they could be potentially lethal even though I did sterilise everything before I cooked!
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
I’ve finished Book 3 of the Frontier Series, so hopefully readers will have that one in the not too distant future, and I’m also playing with a few new characters. At the moment I’m writing about space plagues and thinking about alien invasions (two different stories) as well as toying with an idea which came from another image in my mind. (It was an image of a girl waking up with a talking wombat on the foot of her bed!)
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Q) What inspired you to write this story?
This story has been percolating for a long time. I first had the idea for the story over twenty years ago. In my mind’s eye, I saw a young girl scaling a cliff above a dangerous jungle. I immediately knew that the girl’s name was Shanna, that the jungle Below was very dangerous, and that there were aliens involved. I’ve always loved Science Fiction and Fantasy, and as I thought about it, more and more images appeared, and I eventually wrote them down.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
Frontier Resistance took about a year to write, however it’s Book 2 in the Frontier Series, and as such, part of a greater story. When I began to write what became Frontier Incursion, the first book, I naively thought that I’d get the whole thing done in one book. Somewhere between 130,000 and 150,000 words I realised that that idea was incorrect, and had to decide where to stop. That book became Frontier Incursion. This one follows almost directly on from that stopping point, and I’ve just finished Frontier Defiant, Book 3. That’s the end of this trilogy, and the end of what I originally began to write, but when you add them all up, it’s about 390,000 words and five years!
Q) What is your favourite thing about writing?
My favourite thing about writing is the adventure of loving my characters and becoming completely involved in the story. Because I’m a sequential writer who knows the starting and ending points and some, but not all, of the major plot points that happen along the way, there’s always room for the characters to move. I love the moment (usually in the shower or while drinking coffee) when I have an epiphany about something that’s happening or will need to happen down the track.
Q) What is your least favourite thing about writing?
My least favourite thing about writing is killing off some of my characters. It may sound ridiculous to some of you, but I become attached to them. The problem is, that when your characters are living on a dangerous planet that’s being invaded by a warlike species of alien, human beings (and starcats) get hurt. I’m a bit pathetic actually. I cry when I kill my characters. In fact, sometimes I cry when I just injure them badly…
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
Now, that’s a tricky one! I have too many people I’d like to be! So far I’ve thought about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien because I’d love to know what went on inside their minds, but no, I don’t think I’d want to be them. Possibly Emmeline Pankhurst - mainly because I’m a bit of a feminist, and she embodies the passion of the early feminists when she was leading the campaign for women in the UK to have the vote. We owe a lot to our early feminists. They put their lives on the line in order to point out that women are human beings too.
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
Now, that’s a scary question. Fortunately I recently cleaned out the fridge so it’s not too embarrassing! However, there are some fairly elderly jars of mustard pickles and Christmas Chutney that I made about this time last year… I’ve been looking at them wondering if I dare take the lids off and taste. They could be good, or they could be potentially lethal even though I did sterilise everything before I cooked!
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
I’ve finished Book 3 of the Frontier Series, so hopefully readers will have that one in the not too distant future, and I’m also playing with a few new characters. At the moment I’m writing about space plagues and thinking about alien invasions (two different stories) as well as toying with an idea which came from another image in my mind. (It was an image of a girl waking up with a talking wombat on the foot of her bed!)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
