Topic week: Susanne's influences

For me there wasn’t that one crucial epiphany that made me realize I wanted to write science fiction, nor is there only one book or one movie that inspired it all. For me it was a process; a process of slow realization. Of realizing what I like in books and movies, and that it’s okay to like them.

When I was a teen, unlike many of the girls I knew, I wasn’t interested in romance neither in book form, nor on the big screen.

I read books from Dean Koontz and Stephen King (mainly those with science fiction elements). I devoured their books, but of course I was aware that I was the only girl (I knew) that read them and I thought it was a relict from my pre-teen tomboy times, and so I stopped reading those books. I stopped reading books altogether – except for those I was forced to read for school.  Because the books I was interested in – science fiction or thriller with horror elements – was something I thought I shouldn’t read if I wanted to fit in.

But I still sneaked into the living room at night to watch reruns of the Alien movies because even though I’d stopped reading science fiction/horror I couldn’t quite give it up completely.

When I started writing, I suddenly remembered all those nights spent in the dark living room – scared and yet excited, heart pounding and still smiling -, I remembered my torn and crinkled copies of Watchers and Fear Nothing and The Dark Half and many more, and I wanted that for my books. I realized that I loved science fiction elements and horror, that I preferred dark undertones to funny, that while I liked romantic elements, I didn’t want them to dominate my books completely. The thrill I’d once gotten from books by King and Koontz, and from movies like Alien, I wanted to get them from my own writing now.