Illiya - Taylor Neeran Chronicles #1

Acknowledgements

Every book is the product of many influences and many minds. We are all influenced by what we have read before, the people we know, the people we see - they all feed the idea factory in our heads and shape our lives in one way or another. Some directly, many indirectly, and sometimes we are influenced in significant ways. Growing up, I was amazed by the masters of Fantasy and SciFi such as Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Kurt Vonnegut, J. R. R. Tolkien and many others. With nothing more than words on a page they could paint visions in your head as they transported you to ancient lands or far-off worlds and galaxies so you could get to know exotic races and worry about the lives of characters that never really existed except in your head.

It's pretty powerful stuff.

And then... then you have the audacity to go off and write a sci-fi book like them. Foolish mortal you.

But you don't do it on your own.

Certainly, the author is responsible for pulling all of the words together into some semblance of bare readability based on a core idea, a concept that might or might not work. After that, the long process begins of taking those shreds of story and shaping them into something more readable, fixing the holes, and adding detail where it makes sense, and changing things that simply don't work. Some things get cut altogether. And then, other eyes and minds are called upon to pull it apart, critique it, find the holes, make suggestions and point out that some of those things simply don't make sense together.

The author then licks their wounds and humbly takes back the tattered shreds and threads them back together, weaving a better, stronger fabric, making the story gradually better and better until you hopefully end up with something worth reading.

I am ever grateful to the many wonderful people who provided their feedback on the review drafts (sometimes reading many drafts, in full or versions of single scenes). There have been countless dozens who read snippets and gave their feedback on a few scenes at a time - thank you! However, there is a core team of people who have had the greatest influence in helping me bring Illiya to fruition, and hopefully a very readable story for you.

To Christine Pemberton, Sean Budd, Clare McKissick, Paul Haley, Tony Van Krieken and Tegan Southon, thank you all for your honest (sometimes painful) feedback and insights as the series took shape. I'm sorry you had to be subjected to the early versions but you're much of the reason the book is as good as it is now, so thank you all for that. If anything is still broken, that's my fault and not yours. And of course, thank you for wanting to continue reading past book one.

A special thank you to George Smiler, Kaitakawaenga and my Te Reo Māori guide for helping to make sure that Henry's pepeha and the references to Māori history, language and culture were handled appropriately. Tēnā rawa atu ki a koe.

Many of the concepts in this book are not new. Physics is physics, black holes and wormholes (the heart of a jump gate) are the stuff of science and the bread and butter of science fiction. Cryogenic pods - also not new, but a cool idea. ;-) Stasis fields are used widely in science fiction (but not in practical science so far). Thank you to those who first invented the idea - it's a handy device for taking a time-out. The same with force fields.

The rest of it, for better or for worse, is stufffrom my head, either a fresh idea (I hope), or a twist on something else(nanos, anyone?). The Illiya are more interesting than they appear on thesurface, as is their home, but you need to read through books 2 and 3 to learnmore about that (no spoilers here, sorry).