Veronica Scott for AMAZING STORIES: Welcome to my periodic series of author profiles. Today I’ve chosen Ruby Dixon to highlight, for her contributions to science fiction romance and her Ice Planet Barbarians (and other stories too). I’ve been a huge Ruby Dixon fan since the first IPB book came out so it was a thrill for me to be able to ask her some questions.
VS for ASM.: What was the first science fiction romance book you ever read and what did you like about it?
RD: I believe it was Anne McCaffrey’s The Littlest Dragonboy and it was in a textbook in my English class. I was fascinated that someone had wrote about dragons and from there I gobbled up CS Lewis, Piers Anthony, and the rest of McCaffrey’s backlist.
ASM.: That’s my all time favorite piece of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern Dragonriders series! I had to go reread it after seeing your answer. Such a good little gem of a story. Which of your SFR books is the bestselling?
RD: Ice Planet Barbarians, though I feel this is an easy answer. J
ASM.: Well true, I probably could have skipped that question. None of us can ever pick a favorite book or character but if you had to go live in one of your own books, which would you choose and why?
RD: NOT ICE PLANET BARBARIANS. Lol. I love the characters but the constant ice would be awful to me. I would probably go live on Risda III and make a farm and kiss all the cows on their cute little cow noses (I like animals).
ASM.: How do you go about world building? Do you do elaborate planning, keep a big file, use post its, wing it – what method works for you?
RD: I’m a gosh-darn mess and my method is not recommended. I basically world-build in pieces and build on it as I go. I try to think of things that the characters would notice and focus on. For IPB I wanted the world to be absolutely inhospitable and really suck, so I made it frozen. But the heroine needed running water, so I went back to my worldbuilding and made the planet have a lot of volcanic activity to allow for the hot springs, but adding one thing (volcanoes) inspired others (earthquakes, the island, the elaborate cave systems, etc). Basically when I world build, I plow ahead in my first draft and go back and ‘correct’ as I go, so I’m constantly tweaking earlier things in the book.
ASM.:Which of your characters do your readers love to hate?
RD: This answer keeps changing. Right now it’s Rhonda from Corsairs: Bethiah. Prior to this it was Bek until he got a redemption book. (ASM Note: Corsairs: Bethiah was a serial running on the author’s website which is tentatively scheduled to be issued in book form in the March time frame.)
ASM.: Your own favorite tropes? Least favorite tropes?
RD: I don’t like marriage in peril (even though I’ve written one!) because I like for things to be happy after the couple gets together. I don’t like cheating, either. My favorite tropes are probably fish out of water and a feral hero/beauty and the beast. I know, everyone is totally shocked.
ASM.: Do you have a ‘writing buddy’ pet? Care to share a photo?
RD: Zoey is my 10 month old kitten who loves to bite everything and has never met a cord she does not wish to destroy. She’s also really cute and funny, loves the sink, and has the most pathetic sounding chirps instead of meows.
Here she is laying on my deadlines sweatshirt.
ASM.: What’s next for you?
RD: I want to work on Worst Guy (book 3 in the Bad Guy series) and Servant to the Spidae which I started about this time last year and had to put aside due to deadlines.
ASM.: What’s on your To Be Read List?
RD: The new Lydia Hope and pretty much all of RK Munin’s backlist.
Give us your short author bio and where you can be found on social media.
Ruby Dixon is an author of all things science fiction romance. She is a Sagittarius and a Reylo shipper, and loves farming sims (but not actual housework). She lives in the South with her husband and a couple of cats, and can’t think of anything else to put in her biography. Truly, she is boring.
FB: https://www.facebook.com/RubyDixonBooks
Instagram: @author.ruby.dixon
TikTok: @rubydixonbooks
Ruby Dixon Blog: https://rubydixon.com/wordpress/
ASM.: Ruby’s most recent book in the Ice Planet world is:
R’JAAL’S RESONANCE (ICE PLANET CLONES BOOK ONE) by Ruby Dixon
R’jaal has waited many turns of the seasons for his khui to resonate, only to be disappointed time and time again. But when he is taken captive by strange beings hiding in the very tunnels of the fruit caves, he wakes up to find himself in a strange underground cage. Also in the cage? A very pretty unfamiliar human female. She says her name is Rosalind. She makes his khui sing. It’s finally his time. There’s a big problem, though — Rosalind has no khui of her own. And if she doesn’t get one soon, she could die.
Source: Auto Draft
Source: Auto Draft